Few Seats Remaining for December 2, 2020 Boot Camp!

The next Boot Camp this year will be on Wednesday, December 2, 2020. Course will be on ZOOM, so anyone in the world can join. Few seats remaining, so make sure to sign up now!
This one-day intensive program teaches participants key legal and corporate governance knowledge they need to responsibly serve on, report to, or analyze boards of Japanese companies, both public and private. The course consists of short lectures interspersed with time for interactive discussion and Q&A about real-life situations that occur on boards, and how to handle them. The course is usually good fun for everybody, since we learn from each others’ experiences, as well as from BDTI. The course covers topics such as:

  • Intro to corporate governance; the role of directors and the board
  • What is legally required of directors under the Company Law?
  • Important corporate law and securities law topics
  • Legal and liability issues, and how to handle them
  • Director duties and conflict-of-interest situations
  • Statutory auditors, internal control, and the audit process
  • The role of the board in strategy and risk management
  • Best practices, committees, and succession planning
  • Japan’s new corporate governance code
  • Changing “corporate governance culture” in organizations
  • The global wave of ESG investing

METRICAL: September CG Stock Performance

September stocks edged slightly higher after surged in the previous month. CG Top 20 stocks gained with solid outperformed against TOPIX and JPX400.

Stock prices kept positive return in September, followed by the rally in the previous few months.TOPIX and JPX400 closed slightly higher +0.52% and +0.11% respectively for the month. CG Top 20 stocks average climbed 2.28% for the month, increasing the outperformance against the both market indices.

METRICAL:Stock Prices of Family Companies and Investment Strategies

In the previous article, based on the study classified the 3 groups of the universe companies by the ownership of major shareholders: (a) Companies with major shareholders that hold >=50% of shares, (b) Companies with major shareholders that hold >=20% and <50% of shares and (c) Companies without major shareholders that hold >=20% of shares. A subsidiary and an affiliate company owned by a parent company or founder’s family company show superior performance in the key performance measures such as ROA and ROE and Tobin’s Q. In this point, it would be an effective way for a listed parent company to raise the return measures such as ROA and ROE of the parent company by consolidating the subsidiary or the affiliate company with relatively higher return. Such a case is increasingly occurred. We introduced investment strategies to buy listed subsidiaries (and affiliated companies) in anticipation of the acquisition of listed subsidiaries with high profit margins of the parent company.
At this time, on the contrary, we focused on family companies whose stock prices have remained lower. There are several purposes for going public, but if one of the purposes is the diversification of funding measures, the purpose wouldn’t’ be achieved in this situation where the stock price is low. There would be an option to reconsider listing on the stock market. From the management side, going private would be an alternative through MBO etc. The table below shows the family companies in our universe with Tobin’s Q less than 0.8, divided into 2 groups of family’s ownerships more than 50% or more than 20% and less than 50%. For a company that suffered low ROA and ROE, the low performance would be a reason for the low share price. However, some companies that have high ROA and ROE are traded at low. For a company in which there is no problem with return performance, but the share price remains low, it may be an option to consider “going private.” Aside from whether or not an investor actually acts such an effort in the engagement, this is an investment strategy to focus on such a viewpoint.