In Japan, especially with traditional manufacturing or retail companies with decades of history, the management almost never listened to the activist shareholders.
Why would they? The CEO who is typically over age 70s has a success memory from the period prior to the bubble economy collapse. Shareholder proposal, much less an unsolicited tender bid, has long been recognized as a legal right yet unanimously considered invasive and socially unacceptable. (Anyone remember Steel Partners over Bulldog Sauce?)
And in many traditional Japanese corporations, CEOs never really cede power to their successor after retirement. They remain as a soudan-yaku, or a Counselor, and are typically allotted a private office - sometimes including chauffer benefits. What happens then is often a mess.
The newly appointed CEO might want to do a reform but is careful not to make it look like un-doing the work of his predecessor, whom the CEO still sees on the floor. When the Counselor mumbles something about a strategy that in any way contradicts with the CEO's policy, some factions within the company might weaponize it to advance their internal political cause.
Since 2020 when the COVID hit, that's all changed. "Counselors stopped showing up in the office due to COVID, giving the younger executives free reign over management, including opening up to the activist voices on corporate best practice", says Monex founder Oki Matsumoto.
In Japan, where the Chinese confucius values of respect and loyalty still underlie, the old are respected for their experiences and wisdom. "But being old can also mean lapse in self-control and judgment", says the former Yoshinoya CEO Shuji Abe, known fondly in Japan as "Mr Gyudon" (Mr. Beef Bowl). Abe cites the 16th century shogun Hideyoshi Toyotomi and the HONDA founder Soichiro Honda as examples of such lapse in their final years.
Abe, on his part, never engaged in a business conversation with his people ever since relinquishing his power at Yoshinoya in 2014.
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