Komatsu Ltd. last week announced it executed a basic agreement with Chikashi Shike, representative director of BigRental Co. Ltd., who owns 42.1 percent of the shares in BR, with an eye to integrating BR with Komatsu Rental Japan Ltd., which is a consolidated 100-percent subsidiary of Komatsu.

Komatsu plans to integrate BR with KR by acquiring 57.9 percent of the shares in BR from BR’s shareholders other than Shike; engaging in share exchange between KR and BR with a planned effective date of April 1, 2008; and merging BR with KR with a planned effective date of April 2009 or thereafter. After such integration, Komatsu and Shike will hold 79-percent shares and 21-percent shares, respectively, in the integrated company. The two parties tentatively plan to name the integrated company Komatsu Rental Ltd.

As the ratio of rental construction equipment used at civil engineering and construction sites in Japan is growing, Komatsu has positioned its rental business in sales of new equipment, rental of equipment and reselling of used equipment, and has been strengthening the rental business segment centering on KR.

BR is a construction equipment rental company with a strong business presence in the Tohoku and northern Kanto regions of Japan. It has achieved high quality and a high utilization rate of its rental fleet through optimal applications of IT to its rental asset management system, while attaining a high share of the rental market with high-efficiency operations in its 10 years of operation.

At the integrated company, Noriyuki Sudo, currently representative director and president of KR, will be appointed as representative director and chairman, and Shike, will be named representative director and president of the integrated company.