Shinzo Abe might want to give some serious thought on bringing home some activist investors on his next visit to New York, according to this interesting opinion piece from Bloomberg.
Beginning with the effects of Dan Loeb’s unprecedented success with the Japanese robot maker Fanuc, the author goes on to say that that agitation – the one that opened up a notoriously insular company and launched a thousand foreign investors onto the Nikkei stock exchange – is exactly what Abe needs to recharge his reform program.
Much like what Loeb wanted with Fanuc, but on a much larger scale, Abe wants his nation’s corporations to bring themselves into the 21st century, becoming more open to the outside world and ditching the old Zaibatsu/Keiretsu dynamic in favor of a more competitive, more investor-friendly environment. And he has seen some of that happen, in the form of higher dividends, but as the author – Willie Pesek – points out, that has been stymied by Abe’s own progress in making reforms.
It’s an interesting piece for sure, and knowing how long Japanese corporations have to go in that measure makes you wish Icahn or some other takeover savant would stroll up there and shake things up.
Looking at corporate Japan’s history with people who want to shake things up however, doesn’t really instill a lot of confidence in Abe’s plan.
Photo credit: DILLEmma Photography via Flickr