Morita equivalences of Ariki-Koike algebras

We prove that every Ariki-Koike algebra is Morita equivalent to a direct sum of tensor products of smaller Ariki-Koike algebras which have q-connected parameter sets. A similar result is proved for the cyclotomic q-Schur algebras. Combining our results with work of Ariki and Uglov, the decomposition numbers for the Ariki-Koike algebras defined over fields of characteristic zero are now known in principle.