Secondary listing in Singapore, dual-listed with Tokyo (2013)

Exposing Tokyo buildings to pricing set outside Tokyo

Being quoted on two exchanges does not, in itself, lift a share price. The money raised in this listing was modest set against revenue in the same period. The practical value of the decision appears to have lain less in funding than in aligning the shareholder and disclosure machinery with a business whose main customers were foreign institutional investors. Adopting IFRS and disclosing in Japanese and English simultaneously were not clerical consequences of listing; they were the work of putting customers and shareholders in a position to read the same company in the same language. A firm handling small and mid-sized buildings in greater Tokyo had moved to the side that explains what those buildings are worth in the measure used by Asian investors.

In a 2024 interview Yamaguchi Seiichiro said that Japan’s yield gap is now the widest in the world, and that the unspent portion of Asia-Pacific fund budgets once destined for China is flowing into Japan instead. As the vessel for that money, Tosei’s assets under management stood at $16.2B (¥2.45tn) at the end of August 2024, with just under 70% of it accounted for by overseas investors. The four-character ticker S2D, taken in 2013, is still printed alongside 8923 on the cover of the earnings materials thirteen years later.