- ARAB NEWS
- 01 May 2025
Since 1975
TOKYO: The acrimonious battle between Fujitec’s old guard executives and Hong Kong-based investor Oasis continues in Japan as the former try to re-establish their influence on the board.
An election will be held on June 21 at the company’s 76th Annual Meeting of Shareholders and Uchiyama International Co., Ltd., representing the founding family and holding 10 percent of the shares, will put up candidates against majority shareholder Oasis, which has a 17 percent stake in the company.
Uchiyama has put forth a shareholder proposal recommending eight independent outside director candidates as well as other proposals that, it says, will benefit Fujitec’s stakeholders.
Three of five incumbent outside directors were dumped in February in a move initiated by Oasis. The three rejected incumbents in the vote, taken at an extraordinary general shareholders’ meeting, included the chairman of the board. Investors also elected four out of six new directors nominated by Oasis Management.
Oasis was hoping to effect a clean coup and replace all the external directors on the eight-strong Fujitec board as it sought to negate the influence of the founding Uchiyama family.
At a press conference in Tokyo on Friday, former Chairman UCHIYAMA Takakazu said he wanted to “normalize the management of the company” and apologized for any mistakes he had made.
He severely criticized the current board’s outlook, saying it was short-sighted and only intent on reaping short-term gains. He also accused Oasis of defaming him with untrue accusations regarding use of company resources, for which he has filed a lawsuit.
He pointed out that Oasis has been punished overseas for “short-selling and other practices” and said the management group was intent on selling Fujitec.
He denied that his group’s proposals would mean re-establishing his family’s control of the company but would merely help to stabilize the company.
“The current board is being controlled by Oasis,” board candidate OKAMOTO Hiroki said. “And they are giving the board orders in a very impolite manner and the current board members are just going along with these orders. This is a big problem.”
Okamoto criticized the lack of transparency in the company and its plans to sell the company to an unknown entity, which, he says, could present security and stability issues.
It is still quite rare for a well-established Japanese company to be “hijacked” in such a way, but with Japan’s economic power declining and other countries expanding, it probably won’t be the last.
