|  | | 2012 News and Press Releases | | |
HEADLINE NEWS:
Japanese Shareholders Starting To Show Their Teeth
Hiroko Tabuchi
The New York Times. June 27, 2012
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EXCERPT: To say that Yui Kimura is a distressed investor might be an understatement: She is a small shareholder in the operator of the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, Tokyo Electric Power, whose shares have lost nine-tenths of their value. Now, she would like the company to at least face up to its responsibilities to the more than 100,000 people who have been driven from their homes after the tsunami disaster. She co-sponsored four resolutions at the annual shareholders’ meeting Wednesday, including one demanding that the company decommission all of its nuclear reactors. […] Ms. Kimura is part of an emerging breed of individual Japanese investors who are starting to break the traditionally docile ranks of shareholders and hold company managers accountable, for issues like missed management targets and corporate scandals. […] Any rise in individual shareholder activism in Japan would be a sea change, as investors have long put up with low returns and the most rudimentary corporate governance setups. The benchmark Nikkei 225-stock average remains almost four-fifths below a peak it reached at the end of 1989, and companies continue to hoard cash, instead of rewarding investors. […] Fundamental changes are yet to come. At the shareholders’ meeting Wednesday for Tokyo Electric Power, motions were brought forward by Ms. Kimura and other individual investors, including providing lifelong health care for nuclear workers at Fukushima and selling off more assets to raise money for compensation. They were voted down, one after another, thanks to top institutional shareholders like Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, which is also one of the company’s main lenders.
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