Accepting a 20% stake from Marubeni through a third-party allotment (2024)

Setting two shareholders at the same height

Read only as a strengthening of capital, the decision to welcome Marubeni after Mizuho loses the essential point. What was handed over twice in five years was in both cases voting rights in the 20-plus per cent range — a ratio that falls short of making the company a subsidiary. The two holdings, 23.03% and 4.4% at the end of March 2024, stood at 23.09% and 20.0% a year later. To draw deals from both a bank and a trading house without being absorbed into either group’s orbit, there was evidently no way but to set the two shareholders at the same height.

That said, this equilibrium cannot be described purely as a choice made from strength. A plan calling for ¥150 billion of cumulative inorganic investment needed a counterparty who would thicken its equity, and Marubeni’s roughly ¥50 billion was money answering that need. Nineteen people came across from Marubeni, building on a board presence that already included a Marubeni director since 2020 and an executive vice-president since 2024. A company born in 1969 from the joint investment of sixteen companies has settled, fifty-six years on, into a shape supported by two large shareholders.