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His dictatorial ways come back to haunt him, sources say.
Prosecutors skipped past the minions and went straight to the top, arresting former Kokudo Chairman Yoshiaki Tsutsumi on Thursday over scandals in the Seibu group that he ran with autocratic control.
It was Tsutsumi's reputed tyrannical way of running his companies that led prosecutors to believe he was the one who gave the orders to falsify a financial report on shareholdings in Seibu Railway Co., sources close to the investigation said.
Although former executives in the Seibu group have also been questioned in the case, prosecutors went after their boss because they were likely just obeying his instructions, the sources said.
Tsutsumi, 70, is suspected of falsifying financial statements and insider trading.
He has admitted a role in the alleged wrongdoings, but prosecutors also found some discrepancies in his statements after he agreed to answer questions, the sources said....the rest...
The call probably went something like this:Captain Japan wrote: I wonder if the investigators called ahead to make sure he wasn't busy.
Former Seibu Railway Co. President Terumasa Koyanagi who committed suicide late last month had earlier told investigators that the had no choice but to lie in the firm's stock ownership report because he could not defy Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, the disgraced former boss of the corporate group, prosecutors said.
"I wanted to file a correct report, but couldn't defy the former (Kokudo) chairman," he was quoted as telling prosecutors.
The revelations show that Tsutsumi, 70, who was arrested over the Seibu stock scandal, played a leading role in submitting a false report on the stakes owned by its shareholders.
Koyanagi was elevated to president of the railway company in April last year to replace his predecessor who had stepped down to take responsibility over the company's illegal payoffs to corporate racketeers.
Upon his appointment, Koyanagi learned that a massive number of shares owned by Kokudo, the key company in the Seibu group, had been disguised as those owned by individuals, according to investigators....the rest...
As the public fixes its attention on the arrest of Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, the former boss of the Seibu Railway group and at one time the richest man in the world, light is also being shed on Tsutsumi's lifestyle before his arrest, including the luxury "company housing" he and others used.
In a quiet residential district in Tokyo's Suginami district, a fence 3 meters high surrounds a large residence known among locals as the "Seibu Mansion." Inside the 5,490-square-meter premises are three two-story concrete homes.
The owner of the land is the Seibu Railway Co.'s subsidiary Seibu Golf. A woman in her 50s who was familiar with Tsutsumi moved into the mansion with her children about 20 years ago. Sometimes she was seen leaving the residence in a chauffer-driven Jaguar, sometimes walking her pampered dog. A local housewife heard that the canine was fed "expensive beef fillets, cabbage and rice."
In the past, a sign reading "Seibu Golf Development Co. dormitory" stood in front of the two-story homes, and about four or five men in their 30s were living in them.
"The mansion had its own cook, and a refrigerator truck used to transport food inside," a resident living in the area said. Tsutsumi, who also drove a Jaguar, would also sometimes visit the residence....the rest...
Captain Japan wrote:I always sort of figured this is the case with all hot shots so I'm not sure how this is news. But there's some history here and I thought the "concrete homes" part was funny.
Fallen Seibu boss live like a king at company expense
Mulboyne wrote:There was an earlier rumour that Goldman Sachs was going to bid but the company denied the report.
Morgan Stanley, the world's biggest securities firm by market value, denied a Japanese news report it will arrange a bid of as much as 2 trillion yen ($19 billion) in cash and assumed debt for Japan's Seibu Railway Co. "Morgan Stanley is not working on such a bid," said Sumiko Iwadate, a spokeswoman for the bank in Tokyo... Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the third-biggest securities firm by capital, on March 25 denied a media report that it had made a bid to acquire the railway company. Nikkei reported today that Goldman Sachs may increase its offer for the company. The bank, which unofficially bid 900 billion yen, might offer to buy all of Seibu Railway for as much as 1,600 yen per share and repay all of parent Kokudo Corp.'s 480 billion yen in debt, the newspaper said. This would increase Goldman's offer to between 1.4 trillion yen and 1.5 trillion yen, Nikkei reported. Other U.S. investment banks and equity firms have made bids for Seibu Railway and its debt, Nikkei said.
The Tokyo Stock Exchange plans to ask Odakyu Electric Railway Co. and its three group companies to disclose more information after the four companies announced Wednesday that they falsified their financial statements.
The TSE will decide whether to delist the four First Section companies after they report details of their internal investigations, TSE officials said Thursday.
The Kanto region private railway operator and its three group companies announced Wednesday they will correct financial statements in which some of their shares had been registered under the names of individuals.
The three other companies are Odakyu Real Estate Co., Odakyu Construction Co. and Kanagawa Chuo Kotsu Co.
The shares of the four companies had been held under the names of directors and employees of the Odakyu group. Through that practice, the companies underreported their own shareholdings....more...
But the case of Tsutsumi shows they can't avoid the spotlight entirely.
Yasujiro Tsutsumi, son of a poor rice farmer, founded what would become the Seibu group in the 1920s, buying land and railways by leveraging his political power as a national legislator. After Yasujiro dropped dead of a stroke while walking through Tokyo Station in 1964, Yoshiaki, his father's third son by a mistress, inherited the family's corporate dynasty -- including a private holding company named Kokudo Corp. and the publicly listed Seibu Railways Co.
Yoshiaki Tsutsumi demanded military-like reverence from employees. He built a sprawling mausoleum for his father with a ceremonial hall and imperial lion statue on one of the highest peaks in the picturesque Japanese town of Kamakura. Until last year, when the Seibu scandal began to unravel, rotating pairs of business-suited Seibu employees were forced to keep vigil at the grave site every night -- chasing away black crows from Yasujiro's granite gravestone and chiming a massive Buddhist bell at 6 a.m. The drill: 10 rings in 30-second intervals. Those who made errors, employees say, would be scolded, demoted or fired....more...
A bit faster now...L S wrote:The cults of keiretsu's slowly falling apart...
Japan's Pension Fund Association said it filed a lawsuit against Seibu Railway Co. and its parent Kokudo Corp., seeking compensation for investment losses resulting from the railway operator's false reporting of its shareholders' ownership record. The government-run retirement system for corporate employees is asking for 4.3 billion yen ($38.5 million) from the railway operator and the closely held developer, Tomomi Yano, executive managing director of the association said at a press conference in Tokyo.
L S wrote:The cults of keiretsu's slowly falling apart...but now the people know not where to go...
Cubed wrote:Mitsubishi, Sony/Panasonic (or is it Sony/Matsushita?), Toyota and Hitachi
Cubed wrote:Look at the once-darling-of-the-Japanese-retail-industry - Sogo. Their 80's style interiors and gaudy marble entrances look vulgar and tired, much like their owners.
" wrote:Cubed wrote:L S wrote:Mitsubishi, Sony/Panasonic (or is it Sony/Matsushita?), Toyota and Hitachi
Sony and Matsushita (which owns the Panasonic brand) are not related.Cubed wrote:Look at the once-darling-of-the-Japanese-retail-industry - Sogo. Their 80's style interiors and gaudy marble entrances look vulgar and tired, much like their owners.
Something tells me you haven't seen Sogo's new Shinsaibashi store...
dingosatemybaby wrote:FG Lurker wrote:Cubed wrote:Mitsubishi, Sony/Panasonic (or is it Sony/Matsushita?), Toyota and Hitachi
Sony and Matsushita (which owns the Panasonic brand) are not related.Cubed wrote:Look at the once-darling-of-the-Japanese-retail-industry - Sogo. Their 80's style interiors and gaudy marble entrances look vulgar and tired, much like their owners.
Something tells me you haven't seen Sogo's new Shinsaibashi store...
Methinks the Shinsaibashi Sogo is the exception, not the rule. The Chiba and Yokohama, Sogo's "prestige" stores of the early 90's, are looking very, er, shopworn indeed. Fortunately, though, marble doesn't deteriorate as quickly as other building materials, so the bathrooms still look spiffy.
FG Lurker wrote:dingosatemybaby wrote:FG Lurker wrote:Cubed wrote:Mitsubishi, Sony/Panasonic (or is it Sony/Matsushita?), Toyota and Hitachi
Sony and Matsushita (which owns the Panasonic brand) are not related.Cubed wrote:Look at the once-darling-of-the-Japanese-retail-industry - Sogo. Their 80's style interiors and gaudy marble entrances look vulgar and tired, much like their owners.
Something tells me you haven't seen Sogo's new Shinsaibashi store...
Methinks the Shinsaibashi Sogo is the exception, not the rule. The Chiba and Yokohama, Sogo's "prestige" stores of the early 90's, are looking very, er, shopworn indeed. Fortunately, though, marble doesn't deteriorate as quickly as other building materials, so the bathrooms still look spiffy.
Actually what I meant is that Sogo has done the same thing again... They just opened a new store in Shinsaibashi just as pretentious as bubble-era stuff. I guess the Japanese don't think they look terrible...? (It looks "okay" today I suppose, but it is going to look very dated in a few years.)
Cubed wrote:Mitsubishi, Sony/Panasonic (or is it Sony/Matsushita?), Toyota and Hitachi are all keiretsu and doing (mostly) very well.
Kuramoto, who saw Japan's stock market boom in the 1980s and collapse in the 1990s as bad loans threatened banks, says Japanese companies have become more open because they can no longer rely on easy credit from lenders. As a result, they're giving Fidelity and other outside shareholders unprecedented access and working harder to generate returns... Kuramoto says the dismantling of Japan's "keiretsu" system of cross-shareholdings has spurred a shift in corporate priorities since last decade's stock-market crash. Prodded by government regulations aimed at making corporate finances more transparent, Japanese companies such as Shin-Etsu and Nissan Motor Co. are unwinding cross-shareholdings with banks and their own affiliates. The reduction of those stakes is clearing the way for outside investors. "The biggest and most significant change after the bubble burst is that companies began facing the shareholders rather than the financial institutions and group companies that used to be their major stakeholders," says Kuramoto.
cubed wrote:Mulboyne wrote:Sony has no capital relationship with Matsushita.
Quite mistaken. They're practically a husband-and-wife team! They each have competencies which balance each other so team up all the time on products and services
Mulboyne wrote:cubed wrote:Mulboyne wrote:Sony has no capital relationship with Matsushita.
Quite mistaken. They're practically a husband-and-wife team! They each have competencies which balance each other so team up all the time on products and services
Not mistaken - "no capital relationship" being the key phrase
Cubed wrote:FG Lurker, check some simpler stuff like MD players, CD players and the like, all of the internals made by Matsushita. Newer mp3 stuff is made in Taiwan.
Cubed wrote:Mulboyne wrote:Not mistaken - "no capital relationship" being the key phrase
Yes, that's true - it's not a capital relationship - I was checking you knew what you meant there
cstaylor wrote:FG Lurker wrote:When I read that I figured you were just another newbie...But you've been on here since 2003! Guess you haven't read many of Mulboyne's posts. Or are a forever-newbie. ]
Cubed ran off with his tail between his legs after I whooped him bad in a programming language throw-down we had last year.
Guess it took him about a year to heal those wounds and return to FG public life.
All in jest, Cubed!
Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, former chairman of Kokudo Corp., the core firm of the Seibu railway group, and the one-time richest man in the world, was sentenced on Thursday to 30 months in prison, suspended for four years, for insider trading and for submitting false company financial statements.
The presiding judge in the case at the Tokyo District Court criticized Tsutsumi, 71, for leading the corporate crimes.
"As the head of the group, he masterminded the crimes. He should be strongly criticized," said Judge Tsutomu Tochigi when handing down the suspended sentence to Tsutsumi and a fine of 5 million yen.
As a reason for suspending the sentence, the judge said that Tsutsumi has already become the center of social criticism and the Seibu Railway Co. was delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange....more...
Cubed wrote:I treat this forum like online gaming. I like coming here, and I can hold my own, especially against the less able or misinformed* but I don't do it too often because ultimately it is wasteful, self ingratiating and silly.
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