From two parents to a public listing (2000)

Choosing twenty-five years to be priced by the market

The effect of the listing cannot be measured by the ¥120bn target that was held up. Revenue was flat for several years, with loss-making periods in between. Even so, by going onto the public market this company came to hold shares usable both as consideration in acquisitions and as employee compensation, and became a company asked about its results every quarter. That a flotation once shelved in the early 1990s went ahead was because a single thing moved — the shareholders’ consent — rather than because the momentum of the business pushed it. Removing the constraint that had existed since founding, the wait for two parents to agree, can be seen as the real substance of this decision.

Twenty-six years on, the way that constraint was removed is being questioned in the opposite direction. According to reports in July 2026, the Dentsu Group is considering a plan to keep 61.8% while placing the remaining shares with Fujitsu or a trading company. It amounts to a design in which the parent’s judgement, supposedly diluted by the listing, once again covers the whole of the capital. A company that began in 1975 with Dentsu at 66% and GE at 34% settled, by way of the market, at Dentsu 61.8% — and a plan to leave the market is now under consideration. The worth of a decision to go public shows also in how the price is set when you come off.