Change is afoot at Japan Inc

Shares in Fanuc, a Japanese industrial robotics firm, have soared after it announced a more shareholder friendly policy.

Andrew Van Sickle
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published
in News

Shares in Fanuc, a Japanese industrial robotics firm, have jumped sharply to new record highs in recent days. This follows an announcement that the notoriously secretive and investor-unfriendly company, Japan's tenth-biggest by market value, is to establish a shareholder-relations department and start meeting stockholders. It is also considering returning cash to shareholders by raising its dividend and buying back stock.

These concessions to shareholderscome after pressure from billionaire American investor Daniel Loeb, whose hedge fund Third Point owns a stakein Fanuc. Loeb has been agitating forthe firm to make its money work harder for shareholders. His breakthrough is a rare victory for activist investors in Japan.

What the commentators said

The good news for Loeb, noted Eric Pfanner in The Wall Street Journal, is that he is pushing at an open door. Previous attempts to extract more value from Japan's notoriously shareholder-hostile companies went nowhere, but revamping corporate governance is now a flagship government policy.

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There is a new stewardship code for institutional investors, while the government pension fund, which is increasing its equity investments, will concentrate on a new index, the JPX-400, which was set up to highlight firms with better-than-average governance.

Not only should investing in stocks become more appealing, but the money from corporate cash piles should flow into the economy. About time, concluded William Pesek on bloombergview.com. Japan Inc. is finally making "important progress".

Andrew Van Sickle
Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.

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