Listing directly on the TSE First Section (2012)

What the listing bought was not money

The first benefit the company itself cited for listing was neither the proceeds nor the publicity, but how lenders would assess their assets. Once listed and paying a stable dividend, deals carrying its guarantee could be classified as high-quality guarantees, and partner institutions could carry lighter provisions. It was guaranteeing ¥7 trillion and, while private, had few means of demonstrating to a counterparty how sound that guarantee was. The $101.3M (¥8bn) raised is small as consideration for issuing 7.35 million new shares. What this listing bought looks less like capital than like a rank it could quote when selling a guarantee.

That rank was not free. If the condition for being treated as a high-quality guarantee is “listed and paying a stable dividend,” then squeezing the dividend damages the commercial terms themselves. The prospect of a shrinking housing market was acknowledged in the listing application documents; within that, the company chose for itself the position of having to keep growing balance and profit. The investment partnership and life insurer that took shares at ¥53,000 each in 2009 reduced their holdings after the listing, and by the end of March 2014 foreign corporations held 25.77%. It was the price of turning a quiet private company into one asked for its numbers every quarter.