Category: Law

Japan’s “Asset Owner Principles”: A Step Forward, But More is Needed

2024-09-06 posted by

(Translation-) I support Japan’s new Asset Owner Principles, but am a little disappointed that they are weak. It seems clear that one of the major purposes is to urge asset owners to sign the Stewardship Code (SC), which they should be doing already. But even that request is weak: “When fulfilling stewardship responsibilities, asset owners should consider accepting Japan’s Stewardship Code and then take actions in accordance with the Code, based on the size of their AUM and capabilities.” I would have hoped for stronger language, at least for pension funds. (Something have been suggesting since 2016. See below.)

And even though the Principles are not binding and do not more strongly ask asset owners to sign the Stewardship Code, they do not mention or clarify that overseeing their fund managers’ voting activities is one of their responsibilities, included in their fiduciary duties.

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What Needs to be Added to the “Action Program for Accelerating Corporate Governance Reform: From Form to Substance”

2024-08-23 posted by

Nicholas Benes
Representative Director, The Board Director Training Institute of Japan (BDTI)
(The following is my personal opinion and not that of any organization. This is a translation of the original article.)

As sent to prospective candidates to be the next Prime Minister, in no particular order:
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, Minister for Foreign Affairs Yoko Kamikawa, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Ken Saito, Minister for Digital Transformation Taro Kono, Minister in Charge of Economic Security Sanae Takaichi, Secretary-General of the Liberal Democratic Party Toshimitsu Motegi, House of Representatives Member Shigeru Ishiba, House of Representatives Member Shinjiro Koizumi, House of Representatives Member Takayuki Kobayashi, House of Representatives Member Seiko Noda, House of Representatives Member Katsunobu Kato.

CC: Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Deputy Chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party’s Political Research Committee Masahiko Shibayama, Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare of the Liberal Democratic Party Akihisa Shiozaki, Deputy Secretary-General of the Liberal Democratic Party Seiji Kihara, House of Representatives Member Kenji Nakanishi.

Japan’s Corporate Governance Code (CGC) and the investor Stewardship Code need to function as “two wheels” of a cart. I had advocated this since 2013, and when I had the opportunity to formally propose the establishment of the CGC to the Liberal Democratic Party in 2014[1], I insisted that the most important thing was to “promote the disclosure of information that enables one to verify governance structure and substance” at firms.

“Governance and oversight are more likely to function effectively on a board that has a majority of truly independent and qualified independent directors.” As of 2014, this dynamic had been recognized in many countries around the world. At the time, I thought that if companies disclosed their actual governance practices and stewardship by investors started functioning well, Japan, as a developed country, would naturally adopt a similar stance within the next five years or so.

Ten years later, however, there is still no serious discussion of these two issues in Japan. Now that global investors are paying more attention to the Japanese stock market, I believe it is time for us to confront these core issues and take the following steps to speed up Japan’s governance transformation.

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Foreign Direct Investment Law Amendments

2020-09-10 posted by

“Earlier this summer, the Corporate Counselor covered amendments to Japan’s foreign direct investment laws that lowered the government approval threshold from 10% to a mere 1% for share acquisitions of publicly-traded companies that engage in a wide range of business activities deemed critical to Japan’s national security, unless an exemption applies. Attached for ease of reference is our June newsletter, which has been updated.
Our June newsletter specifically left for another day a discussion of the shareholder rights ramifications arising from the amendments to Japan’s foreign direct investment laws. This edition of the Corporate Counselor bridges this important gap.
The impact on shareholder rights arising from the amendments to Japan’s foreign direct investment laws is a game change for investments into Japan. The Japanese government now has veto rights over fundamental corporate governance rights throughout the investment cycle. The amendments apply retroactively, so overseas investors may no longer be able to effectively control their existing investments in Japan.”

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Redesigning Corporations: Incentives Matter

2020-06-18 posted by

By Nicholas Benes
(also published in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance) 

The Birth of the Corporation: Public Interest Organizations

The evolution of the modern corporation is the fascinating story of a series of self-serving legal and societal mutations over hundreds of years, which have morphed the original concept and endowed corporations with freedom of activity, rights, and limitations on liability that would shock their original “inventors”.

As we all know, for many years most corporations were established by way of an exceptional “charter” by a sovereign, granted only in specific cases where: (a) large amounts of capital were needed (b) to conduct investments and activities that served public or national interests and had good profit potential, but (c) where the risks were so large that few parties would invest if their risk were not shared with many others and/or limited to the amount of money they invested.

In the 1600s and 1700s, the activities that sovereign nations felt met those requirements were the exploration of foreign lands on the other side of the globe, the creation and administration of colonies there, and conducting lucrative trade on long (and dangerous) sea routes to and from those colonies. Thus, the most well-known early corporations include organizations such as the British East India Company (the original “too-big-to-fail company), The Dutch East India Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and companies to construct the Erie Canal.

As the industrial revolution gathered steam, the need to raise large amounts of capital increased many times over. Driven by this need, the immense benefits of corporate status for raising financing became increasingly obvious and desirable to investors and managers: easy stock transferability vs. rewriting partnership agreements, separation of ownership from control, legal personhood that simplified large transactions such as loans and large investments (a single counterparty to deal with and sue), and the possibility of receiving a charter that conferred “limited liability” on shareholders. All of these made it much easier to raise funds in large amounts than any other form of business organization.

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Amendments to Japan’s Foreign Direct Investment Law—Heightened Review of Inbound Investments

2020-05-29 posted by

(Summary by Stephen Bohrer of Nishimura & Asahi)

“From June 7, 2020, overseas investors may no longer be able to purchase shares of certain Japanese companies. The Japanese government passed amendments to its foreign direct investment laws that lower the government approval threshold from 10% to a mere 1% for share acquisitions of publicly traded companies that engage in a broad range of business activities deemed critical to national security, public safety, public infrastructure, or Japan’s economy (the “FDI Amendments”). The Japanese government claimed that its foreign direct investment laws required a major overhaul because it lacked legislation to effectively screen foreign direct investment to the same recent extent as other developed countries. In particular, Japan’s Ministry of Finance noted the 2018 passage of the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act in the United States and European Union regulations adopted in 2019 establishing a framework for monitoring foreign direct investments as examples of how Japan’s foreign direct investment regime lagged behind international standards. As a result, practically every share acquisition by an overseas investor of a publicly traded company now deemed critical to Japan will require government approval, unless an exemption applies.

This edition of the Corporate Counselor outlines the broad reach of the FDI Amendments and the exemptions that curtail its application, and then proceeds to highlight issues that prospective overseas investors should consider through a question and answer format. Given the complexity of the FDI Amendments, decision tree diagrams are included in annexes to provide a visual flow of how the FDI Amendments apply to a transaction.

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Why Modern Corporate Structure Results in Large Ethical Lapses

2020-03-22 posted by

I was recently asked by the Japan Society of Greater Cincinnati to give the keynote speech at their conference event on the theme of “Why Good People Do Bad Things”. I decided to liven things up a bit by attempting to answer the self-posed question: “how might we design corporations if we were inventing them today [not in 1600 -1900]… in an age of huge capital pools, global warming, and an increasing number of other large externalized risks and informational (and other) asymmetries?”

See what you think of my “concept for discussion” on pages 16-19, and my reasons for throwing it out for consideration on the earlier pages. I realize some people will think this concept is a strange and unnecessary, as if the basic legal structure of the corporation is immutable, or hoping ESG integration by itself will solve most of the problems it is concerned with. However, I suspect that in the next few decades corporate law will be evolving much more so as to address the issues and concerns that I raise… even if it addresses them in a different manner. I do not believe that the present legal form of “the corporation” itself is sustainable. Over the past 100 years, too many agency problems, market distortions, asymmetries, and externalities have emerged.

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Allow Japanese Citizens to Sponsor Foreign Domestic Workers

2020-03-19 posted by 2 Comments

Prime Minister Abe’s requests to close schools nationwide, tele-work from home, and cancel sports events and public gatherings, have caused a great deal of strain on working mothers. More than ever before, now is the time when the Government of Japan (the GOJ) should be accelerating its stated policy to allow Japanese households to sponsor Foreign Domestic Workers (FDWs).

Women are being encouraged by the government to enter the labor force, with the expectation that they will become executives and join Boards of Directors. If the government expects to reach its own goal for women to constitute 10 percent all corporate directors during this year (2020), it will need to rapidly increase the range of “options” that women have for childcare and elderly care.

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A Guide to Understanding Carlos Ghosn’s “Not Guilty” Plea

2020-01-28 posted by

by Sachiko Ichikawa
Comment by Nicholas Benes

Carlos Ghosn held a press conference on January 8, 2020 to present his “not guilty arguments” regarding the alleged crime of making, or not preventing, misrepresentations in Nissan’s Security Reports. He had already disclosed the testimony he made at the Japanese court which was considering his bail in 2019. So this was the second time that he has defended himself in public.

Mr. Ghosn spent more than one hour for his presentation, and even showed many slides and materials, but his logic for insisting on his innocence was not easy to understand. To me, his 2019 testimony in court was better than his 2020 televised presentation.  In an attempt to connect the dots, this article will explain my own interpretation of what Mr. Ghosn really wanted to say.

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