Over-the-counter registration and listing on JASDAQ (2003)

A yardstick taken up forty-six years late

A company that had made a market of its own and run debt-free on thin capital finally came onto an exchange in its forty-sixth year. That it did not hurry to go public expresses well the character of a business that does not need money. What the trade press recorded of the fate of the founder’s elder brother’s company had shown him a live example of the fact that going public does not necessarily make a company stronger. The distinguishing feature of this decision is that listing was chosen not when growth needed funding, but rather when the core business was slowing and the shape of the group was being tidied up.

The twenty years since have been a climb up the market sections and back down again. Eight years after the promotion to the First Section came the move to the Standard market, and the mid-term plan puts the promise of shareholder returns, rather than a story of growth, at the front. Meanwhile the largest shareholder’s stake exceeds one-third and the founding family still runs the company. How to hold together those two things — submitting to an outside yardstick and keeping decision-making within the family — appears to be a question still open twenty years after the listing.