Acquiring Murachiku with paper, not cash (2004)

What paying in shares brought with it

Buying with shares rather than cash protects the balance sheet but rearranges the buyer’s own register. The 6,075,185 shares S Foods issued amounted to roughly 19% of the enlarged share count, and from the day of the exchange Murachiku’s shareholders held S Foods’ performance as their own asset. In a year when imported beef had been stopped at the border, the company took in a domestic sourcing route and sales network as a going concern — and took in the manager who ran it. Filling a gap in the product line and securing a successor were folded into a single transaction.

Where the shares handed over ended up is visible in the list of major shareholders. In the securities report for the year to February 2016, Murakami Shinnosuke appears as the largest shareholder with 7,990,000 shares, 24.76%, ranked above the 15.0% held by Marubeni, the joint-venture partner of 1989. Eleven years after the merger, the president’s chair and the top line of the shareholder register both carried the name of the founder of the company that had been bought.