Summary
Activist hedge fund Steel Partners entered Japan to take major stakes in underperforming companies and actively press for corporate changes. But seven years later its takeover attempts remain unsuccessful, thwarted by poison-pill defences and cross-shareholdings. Whether corporate governance as a strategy could work in Japan looks increasingly questionable.
Teaching objectives
The case can be used to discuss how hedge funds use corporate governance as a strategy, the state of corporate governance in Japan, the defences used by companies against takeovers, associated agency problems, and the cost to shareholders.
Keywords
- Corporate governance
- Hedge funds
- Shareholder activism
- Investment strategy
- Information asymmetries
- Poison pill
- takeover defenses
- Corporate Governance
- Investors, Stakeholders and Accountability
