Listing on the TSE after a century — the advertising giant that went public without needing the money (2001)

The author’s view

Two stories lived side by side in this listing. One is the view held at the time that it was “not for Dentsu but for its parent shareholder,” a reading the net proceeds of about ¥8.9 billion support. The other is the story President Narita Yutaka told, of disclosure discipline and global strategy. The first explains the trigger for the listing, the second explains its meaning, and neither alone accounts for why a giant with little need for capital pushed through a public offering in bad market conditions.

Ironically, the takeover risk the listing opened up was resolved by Dentsu itself moving to the buying side overseas. Shares as a currency, and the discipline of disclosure, can be said to have been the capital-side precondition that made the later Aegis acquisition possible. Yet given how that same Aegis eventually led to enormous impairment, whether the road to overseas M&A that the public listing opened bore fruit is a judgement that has still not settled.