TOKYO (Reuters) -Farallon Capital Management on Tuesday urged Toshiba Corp to secure the legally required support of two-thirds of its shareholders before the Japanese industrial conglomerate continues with a controversial plan to split in three.
U.S. hedge fund Farallon, Toshiba’s third-largest shareholder with a stake of more than 6%, joined the second-largest investor 3D Investment Partners in demanding a higher threshold for the break-up plan.
Since Toshiba is now nearly 30% owned by foreign funds, many of which appear to oppose the split, setting the 66.6% bar now could force the conglomerate to ditch its plan.
“The separation plan without shareholder trust would achieve nothing but the creation of three discrete companies, with each inheriting the same issues as Toshiba,” Farallon said in a statement.
Toshiba is preparing to hold an extraordinary shareholder meeting in March to gauge shareholder support for the break-up plan, set to be completed by March 2024. But details of the meeting are unclear, including the level of shareholder support it will require to continue with the plan.
With its demand, Farallon is effectively forcing Toshiba to bring forward by more than a year a legally mandated vote requiring backing from two-thirds of shareholders. Officially, the vote is not slated to be held until the annual shareholders’ meeting in 2023.
The break-up plan was announced last November after a five-month strategic review following years of accounting scandals and governance issues that undermined investor confidence and saw Toshiba’s market value more than halve, to around $18 billion, from an early 2000s peak.
(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Susan Fenton)
