September 23 in business history: a Kyoto card shop, a $9 offer, and the last £200 million
Three September 23s — the founding of Nintendo as a Kyoto playing-card shop in 1889, BlackBerry's US$9-a-share sale that never closed in 2013, and Thomas Cook's collapse in 2019 — each decided by what the company still had to sell.
Three September 23s, spread across 130 years, each putting the same question to a different company: what can you still sell? In 1889 the seller was a shop in Kyoto making flower cards, and over the following century the thing it sold turned into games and then into characters. In 2013 it was all of BlackBerry, offered at US$9 a share in a deal the buyer called certain. In 2019 it was a £200 million gap in the rescue of a travel company that had been selling holidays for 178 years.
A card shop that kept changing what it sold
Nintendo's own company profile dates its founding to September 1889, while the day most often given for it in reference works is September 23 12. Fusajiro Yamauchi began manufacturing hanafuda, the Japanese flower cards, in Kyoto, and the business stayed in cards for seventy years 3.
Every generation of that card business was a new version of the same product. The company began making western-style playing cards in 1902, at first for export, and after the Second World War it became the first in Japan to mass-produce playing cards in plastic 3. In 1959 it started selling cards printed with Walt Disney characters, which opened children's playing cards as a market and set off a boom in the card department 3. In 1963 the company took the name Nintendo Co., Ltd. and began manufacturing games alongside the cards 3. Donkey Kong followed in 1981, designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, and the Family Computer in 1983 23.
What came out of that is measured in units. In the year to March 31, 2026, Nintendo's net sales were ¥2,313.0 billion, up 98.6 per cent, and its net profit was ¥424.0 billion, up 52.1 per cent 4. The Switch 2, in its first fiscal year, sold 19.86 million units with 48.71 million units of software, of which Mario Kart World accounted for 14.70 million 4.
Decision mirror: IP-related income — films, smart-device content, royalties — came to ¥73.5 billion in that year, against ¥2,239.5 billion from the company's game platforms 4. Nintendo's forecast for the year to March 2027 is a fall in net sales to ¥2,050.0 billion, with about ¥100 billion of that attributed to rising component prices, particularly memory, and it has raised the price of the Switch 2: to ¥59,980 in Japan on May 25, 2026 and to US$499.99 in the United States on September 1, 2026 4. In April 2026, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, made with Illumination and Universal, opened to US$131.7 million over three days in North America and US$372.5 million worldwide, the biggest opening of the year 5. The company profile that opens with playing cards in 1889 now describes Nintendo's business as the manufacture and sale of home entertainment products 1.
The offer that was certain, and the money that came instead
On September 23, 2013, BlackBerry Limited announced it had signed a letter of intent: a consortium led by Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited would pay US$9.00 in cash for each share it did not already hold, in a transaction valued at approximately US$4.7 billion. Fairfax, which owned about 10 per cent of the common shares, intended to contribute the shares it held into the deal. The consortium was allowed six weeks of due diligence, ending at 5:00 p.m. EST on November 4, 2013, and BlackBerry was free to shop itself to other buyers during that period, owing Fairfax US$0.30 a share if it signed an alternative deal 6.
The proposal promised certainty. In the letter itself, Fairfax told the chair of BlackBerry's special committee that the consortium was "highly confident" it could fund the full amount of the consideration and all related fees, that the financing was being sought from BofA Merrill Lynch and BMO Capital Markets, and that after due diligence the agreement would carry no financing condition 7.
The sale never closed. On November 4, 2013, BlackBerry concluded the review of strategic alternatives it had opened in August: the letter of intent with Fairfax was terminated and each side released the other, and the company instead sold US$1 billion of 6 per cent unsecured subordinated convertible debentures, convertible into common shares at US$10.00 — a 28.7 per cent premium to the closing price on November 1, 2013 — with Fairfax taking US$250 million of them. Had all of the debentures converted, they would have represented about 16 per cent of the common shares. Thorsten Heins stepped down as chief executive, John Chen was appointed executive chair and interim chief executive, and Prem Watsa, Fairfax's chairman and chief executive, became lead director 8.
Decision mirror: On the day the sale died, the money that replaced it was priced above the abandoned offer — US$10.00 a share for a convertible claim on about 16 per cent of the equity, against US$9.00 a share in cash for all of it. Thirteen years on, that money is in software. In the quarter ended May 31, 2026, BlackBerry reported revenue of US$152.9 million, up 26 per cent, with QNX at US$72.3 million and Secure Communications at US$73.6 million; GAAP net income was US$8.5 million, its fifth consecutive quarter of profit, and the company held US$422.9 million of cash and investments against full-year guidance of US$594 million to US$621 million 9. QNX supplies the foundational software under vehicle systems, and Leapmotor, the Chinese electric-vehicle maker, has chosen it as the software platform for a forthcoming model 9.
The rescue that needed £200 million more
On September 23, 2019, Thomas Cook UK confirmed that 26 of its companies had stopped trading, including Thomas Cook Airlines, and filed for compulsory liquidation, with the Official Receiver appointed as liquidator 10. About 150,000 customers were abroad in 18 countries, 22,000 jobs were at risk worldwide, 9,000 of them in the United Kingdom, and around 9,000 UK employees were made redundant after the liquidation began 1011.
The company was 178 years old. Thomas Cook, a cabinet maker, founded it in 1841 in Market Harborough in Leicestershire, organising railway outings for the temperance movement, and by 2019 it had annual sales of about £9 billion, 19 million customers a year, 22,000 staff in 16 countries, more than 500 shops and an airline with 94 aircraft 12. John Strickland, an aviation analyst who gave evidence to the government inquiry into the 2017 collapse of Monarch Airlines, told the BBC that a move into the package holiday market by the low-cost carriers easyJet and Jet2 piled on the pressure, and Tim Jeans, a former managing director of Monarch, described the company as "an analogue business model in a digital world" 12.
A rescue had been agreed in August: £900 million led by Fosun, the Chinese conglomerate that was Thomas Cook's largest shareholder. It came apart on the additional £200 million of contingency funding the banks demanded, and the company spent Sunday, September 22, in talks with lenders that ended without an agreement 11. The government was asked for a £250 million bailout and turned it down; the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, said a bailout "would have kept them afloat for a very short period of time and then we would have been back in the position of needing to repatriate people in any case" 11.
What replaced the company's own operations was a state operation. The Civil Aviation Authority repatriated more than 140,000 customers between September 23 and October 7, 2019, from 54 airports in 18 countries, on 746 flights, at an estimated cost of £152 million, of which the Department for Transport is paying £83 million. At least £73 million more fell to other public bodies, including at least £58 million of redundancy and related payments out of the National Insurance Fund and £15 million to £23 million of costs for the Official Receiver 10.
Decision mirror: The holiday demand outlived the company. Jet2 plc carried 20.83 million passengers in the year to March 31, 2026, including 6.62 million package holiday customers, on record revenue of £7,482.1 million and profit before tax of £551.0 million 13. Thomas Cook counted 19 million customers a year and about £9 billion of sales at its end; the package holiday market it left behind is now measured through carriers such as Jet2, which reported record revenue and record passenger numbers in that year.
The diligence test
- What is the part of the business you could still sell on its own? Nintendo's card shop began making games in 1963, and in the year to March 2026 its game platforms produced ¥2,239.5 billion of sales while characters, films and royalties produced ¥73.5 billion.
- When a buyer promises certainty, what does the promise cover? Fairfax's letter of September 23, 2013 said the consortium was "highly confident" it could fund US$4.7 billion and that the agreement would carry no financing condition. The letter of intent was terminated on November 4, 2013, and the financing that closed that day was US$1 billion of convertible debentures priced at US$10.00 a share.
- Who ends up paying? Thomas Cook's £900 million rescue failed over a £200 million demand from its banks and a refused £250 million government request. The repatriation the government then ran cost it £83 million of an estimated £152 million.
- What does the demand look like once the operator is gone? Jet2 flew 20.83 million passengers, 6.62 million of them on package holidays, in the year to March 31, 2026, on record revenue of £7,482.1 million.
References
- 1Nintendo: Company Profile
nintendo.co.jp
- 2Wikipedia: History of Nintendo
en.wikipedia.org
- 3Nintendo: Nintendo History
nintendo.com
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