The first outside capital in thirty-seven years — and a listing cancelled by one word from the chairman (2000)

What lay between principle and capital

Idemitsu Akira used to explain the founding-era idea that “capital is ideally zero” by saying that capital is really people: if the staff are developed, the money that is needed will follow. The principle bought a real freedom — the ability to commit to long-horizon capital spending without owing an explanation to shareholders. Its inseparable other face was the absence of any route to raise equity from the market in a crisis. In 1998 it was the second face that mattered. Once the banks lost the capacity to expand lending, funding that rested on borrowing alone hit a wall. The preferred-share compromise was a way of splitting the difference between two demands: admitting the weakness while giving up none of the control.