Rejecting the Aeon–Mori Trust demand for control, at the cost of president Hirano Shuichi (2011)

What was handed over

Read as a case of independence defended against activist shareholders, the character of this fight is misjudged. What Parco handed over was neither capital nor a business but the office of president. Hirano Shuichi traded his own resignation to block a wholesale replacement of the board and subsidiarisation, holding the shape of the company for the time being. The proposal was withdrawn before the meeting because Mori Trust accepted the line that changing one man would be enough. The settlement shows that a chief executive's head can serve as an item of exchange.

What was preserved, though, was not agreed on by the parties. Mori Akira, responding to the resignation press conference, said Parco had in effect sold its own company and was nonetheless claiming to have defended its independence. In fact the independence secured in May 2011 was over in little more than a year: in August 2012 J. Front Retailing became the parent. It cannot be said that the decision to see Aeon off was itself an error, but what the fight won looks less like independence than room to choose a partner.