The enigma of hostile takeovers in Japan: Bidder beware

Publication Type

Book Chapter

Version

submittedVersion

Publication Date

10-2017

Abstract

For over two decades, Japan has ostensibly had all the essential elements that leading academics and sophisticated investors have assumed to be sufficient for a country to develop an active market for hostile takeovers (i.e., dispersed shareholder ownership, depressed share values, and a United Kingdom or United States inspired regulatory framework). This has not gone unnoticed. For decades, leading academics and prestigious pundits have repeatedly predicted the imminent arrival of a wave of successful hostile takeovers in Japan. Based on the same prediction, but with much higher stakes, sophisticated investors have risked billions of dollars. History has consistently proven this prediction wrong — leaving a cadre of bewildered academics, embarrassed pundits, and bitter investors in its wake. How could so many leading academics, prestigious pundits, and sophisticated investors be so wrong (for decades) about Japan’s market for hostile takeovers? This is the enigma of hostile takeovers in Japan, which we seek to explain in this Article.We argue that, in applying abstract theories derived from the Anglo-American experience, most Western observers have neglected to properly account for local, idiosyncratic, Japanese factors that have stifled the market for corporate control in Japan. First, Japan transcends and complicates the conventional dispersed/concentrated shareholding dichotomy, as shown by the presence of dispersed stable-shareholders who have consistently rallied in support of incumbent management against hostile acquirers. Second, a corporate and shareholder culture that remains dominated by lifetime employee controlled corporate boards adds to the resilience of Japanese companies against hostile takeovers. Third, contrary to the belief of many Western scholars and pundits, Japan’s law on defensive measures cannot be easily compared to the UK or US hostile takeover regimes, as it has developed important idiosyncratic features through judicial precedent and corporate practice that have a distinctively anti-takeover flavour. Ultimately, the story of the absence of hostile takeovers in Japan is a cautionary tale to comparative corporate scholars and foreign investors who underestimate the importance of context: apply Anglo-American generalizations, without adequate local knowledge, at your own peril.

Keywords

Comparative Takeover Regulation, Hostile Takeovers, Comparative Corporate Governance, Shareholder Structure, Japanese Corporate Law, Corporate Culture, Dispersed Shareholders, Lifetime Employment

Discipline

Asian Studies | Comparative and Foreign Law

Research Areas

Asian and Comparative Legal Systems

Publication

Comparative Takeover Regulation: Global and Asian Perspectives

Editor

Umakanth Varottil & Wai Yee Wan

First Page

211

Last Page

240

ISBN

9781107195271

Identifier

10.1017/9781108163965.009

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Additional URL

http://doi.org/10.1017/9781108163965.009

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