Finding Key Investors to Take Over from Cross-Shareholders

The global trend towards tighten regulation of financial institutions and the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) may hasten the unwinding of cross-shareholdings in Japan, and there are signs that this is already happening. Finding buyers for such shares is therefore a matter of urgency, and an effort needs to be made to induce households, pension funds, investment trusts and overseas investors to take even larger shareholdings in Japanese companies than hitherto