Jamie Halse (Senjin Capital) 🇳🇿🇦🇺🇯🇵

Japanese stocks are rallying to heights not seen since the 1990s. Back then it was the aftermath of bubble valuations. Now, there is a solid foundation of earnings growth, corporate governance improvements, and increasing cash returns to shareholders! 1/n

@art_vandellay @InvestInJapan It’s both, but Japanese companies typically don’t have CFO’s or anyone on the board who has studied corporate finance.

@JamieHalse @InvestInJapan Really? Maybe it’s incentives more than education? Passive insto’s and shareholders, complacent with low returns, as long as they view companies as safe/conservative

This is just going to separate which companies are actually good capital allocators and those that are doing buybacks for the sake of it.

@JapanDeepValue1 @nomurasyo We should keep the criticism focused on the true culprits here.

@JapanDeepValue1 @nomurasyo I’d call that a white knight deal rather than greenmail. See also my earlier post. The value destruction here isn’t the activist’s fault. The stock was only up because of the activist’s involvement. The issue is the approach of management I running the business.

"スチュワードシップ・コードに書かれている趣旨を踏まえていないにもかかわらず、署名して外見を装うのは、機関投資家に資金を出している人たちにとっては本当にいいのか" 金融庁審議官､｢安易な株主還元｣に警鐘－企業に中長期の成長投資促す bloomberg.com/jp/news/articl…

The activist would likely prefer management did what they asked. Faced with a long drawn out resistance and costly campaign vs an easy exit at a nice premium to the entry point though, they have fiduciary duties to their investors (unlike Japanese directors vis a vis shareholders)

@JamieHalse @nomurasyo well its not explicit greenmail, but as Justice Potter Stewart famously said "I know it when I see it". Activists were buying stock "low" and looking for quick exits via buybacks in stocks where they knew mgmt would want them out of their hair.

@nomurasyo Douitashimashite

@JamieHalse ありがとうございます！

Kioxia's ESOP value per participant is WILD thanks to the AI boom! There has been a lot of posts about SK Hynix and Samsung paying ~US400k bonuses to each employee. Kioxia's potential ESOP windfall for participating employees could dwarf those amounts. Kioxia was bought by Bain capital, which instituted an ESOP. The NAND memory maker's share price is up almost 40-fold since IPO 18 months ago on the AI-driven boom in demand. Thanks to the ESOP, the top few layers of people at Kioxia may now be US$ millionaires. Many will almost certainly be multi-millionaires. Many of these people would likely never have earned over $100k in a year previously - at least prior to the current AI boom. It is difficult to find accurate data around the number of participants in the ESOP. I have heard rumours of 1,000 or fewer people of the 15,218 employees. Even if every employee participated (which is very unlikely), the average paper profit on the options granted is $310,494 per employee. If, say, 1,000 people were in the plan, the average profit per employee is almost $5 million! The plan is almost certain to be top heavy - greater potential rewards to those with the most ability to impact the outcome is the private equity way. Needless to say, Kioxia's executive pool are now, on paper, rich beyond their wildest dreams. This type of windfall could, and should, spark a discussion about the use of stock incentives in Japan. It is still uncommon amongst smaller companies for there to be any equity-based compensation. With governance reforms and activist pressure spreading across the market, managers and other employees should start asking the question: - Why should only shareholders benefit from our improved capital allocation and operations - why not employees too? - Why should private equity-owned companies provide generous stock participation to employees, but not publicly listed companies? Asking such questions could lead to major change across Japan's equity market. For wholesale investors wanting to learn more about the opportunity in shareholder activism in Japan: - visit Senjin Capital's website - sign up to our newsletter, or - DM me

Greenmail is not possible in Japan. Shareholders can only be bought out at market price, not at special prices above market as happened in the US in the 1970s/1980s when the term was coined. Companies have needed to be forced to do buy backs, but you’re right, at the large cap end of the market we are probably moving past the simple balance sheet restructuring as a major source of shareholder value improvement.

seems to me like they are trying to say "no more foreign/activist greenmail". Its not that interesting of a thing to say as the low hanging fruit is probably mostly gone already on that front... we can even see Elliot's Daikin campaign, etc as precedent on where Japan activism may be going. Companies don't need to be forced to do buybacks, but they may need some handholding in achieving growth strategies. I think the right type of activist partner's can be good in that sense. Many of the lower market cap companies that should not be listed in the first place will be tougher nuts to crack. Likely some foreign capital trapped in those situations now... but nobody can say they were unaware of that type of trap.

@puppyeh1 I put some accurate numbers around it

@yota1967 Agree entirely!

日本の機関投資家（の多く）は、余りにも自らの議決権行使基準を墨守し過ぎで、基準は何のためにあるのかや、基準はあくまで「基準」でしかなく個別判断が必要な場合には企業価値向上のために個別判断をすることがスチュワードシップ責任である、ということを等閑視してしまっていると思います。。。

@yota1967 @nomurasyo This article made no sense, confused the various concepts, and provided no examples of the type of behaviour that is supposed to be of concern. It was very odd.

よくまとまった良記事🤗 予告TOBについて、仮に法規制まで時間がかかるとしても、問題事例を示すといった措置を講じるべき

@act_of_death I am not aware of a single instance of this occurring.

太田先生に質問させていただきます。予告TOBの問題点について、アクティビストファンドが支配するSPCを公開買付者と仮定した場合、SPCの親会社であるファンドや関係法人・関係者が、予告TOB公表後からTOB撤回公表前の間に対象会社株を売却・空売りしたとき、ファンド等はインサイダー取引規制の「公開買付者等関係者」に該当し、「TOB撤回に関する事実」すなわち重要事実の公表前の「売付け等」として規制の対象行為になり得るでしょうか。 風説の流布や相場操縦は故意の立証が困難である一方、TOB撤回公表前の売り抜け・空売りは外形的に事実確認できるため、こちらを焦点にした規制の方が実効性が高いように思います。先生のご見解を伺えれば幸いです。 ＞企業法務に詳しい専門家は「保有株を高値で売り抜ける実質的な相場操縦の手段として予告TOBが乱用されている」と警鐘を鳴らす。M&Aに詳しい田原一樹弁護士も「風説の流布や相場操縦の摘発ハードルは高く、悪質な予告TOBを許す土壌がある」と語る。

@nomurasyo I am not aware of such a case.

そんな例あったっけ？ 誰か教えてください

@ethanrkho amazon.com.au/You-Want-Start…

Seems there isn’t enough content around start up hedge fund capital raising

@anishmoonka Samsung does not account for 22% of GDP. Its sales may be 22% of GDP, but that’s comparing apples and oranges. One measures value added, the other is final output.

Samsung is paying 78,000 chip workers a $340,000 bonus each. Not their salary. The bonus. The total bill is $26.6 billion, which equals 1.4% of South Korea's entire economy, going to less than 0.3% of the country's workforce. The average Korean earns roughly $32,000 a year. So each Samsung chip worker is pocketing about a decade of normal pay in one go. Memory-division employees may collect closer to $396,000. The cash comes straight out of Samsung's chip profits, which are projected to hit 330 trillion won (around $218 billion) this year. It's seven times higher than just a few years ago, driven by the AI boom. The deal gives workers 12% of those profits: 10.5% as company stock, the other 1.5% in cash. And not just this year. The setup repeats every year for the next decade, as long as profit targets get hit. KDI, South Korea's main economic think tank, just raised its 2026 growth forecast from 1.9% to 2.5%, thanks entirely to the chip boom. The extra growth works out to about $48 billion in new GDP. More than half of that is now landing in the bank accounts of 78,000 workers at one company. Real estate noticed early. In the first three months of 2026, before the contract was even signed, apartment sales in Dongtan, the suburb next to Samsung's main Hwaseong campus, more than doubled compared to a year earlier. Up 128.9%. Pyeongtaek climbed 36.8%. Yeongtong, where Samsung's headquarters sits, rose 28.7%. Local agents told the Seoul Economic Daily the buying began the moment bonus talks leaked. The tax bill is even bigger than the bonus. The Korean government expects to collect roughly 100 trillion won, around $67 billion, in extra tax revenue from the chip sector this year alone. The presidential office has openly floated a "national dividend," a direct cash payment to every Korean citizen, to redistribute the gains. Other industries are paying attention. SK Hynix locked in a similar 10% profit-share deal last September. Hyundai's union has reportedly asked for the same arrangement. Trouble is, cars and batteries don't run chip-level margins, and Korea's main business lobby has warned that copying this deal across the country's big family-owned conglomerates (the chaebol world) could blow up wage talks everywhere. Samsung's group of companies already account for around 22% of South Korean GDP. Whether 2026 ends up a good or a great year for Korea now mostly depends on a single number: how many memory chips Samsung and SK Hynix can ship to AI data centers from California to the Middle East. Forty trillion won, going to 78,000 people clustered in three cities south of Seoul. Korea's wealth map is being redrawn around the chip belt.

【悲報】フクダ電子、ドンパチ中の株主から「高級車と寿司で私物化してる会長ヤバすぎだろｗ」とガチギレ突っ込み連発でワンマン帝国の闇が暴かれそうになってる件ｗｗｗ フクダ電子（6846）宛てのカナメ・キャピタルによる激アツ抗議レターを要約すると、 ・株主代表訴訟で540億円の損害賠償を請求中、「ガチで金額の桁が違って草」状態 ・業務との関連性が疑わしい交際費として現状23,225,873円を認定、「2300万円超えのゴチ飯とかお前は何を言っているんだ」 ・本郷事業所の地下駐車場（最大30台）は社長や秘書しか入れず、「社員は誰も見たことがない」秘密基地化 ・100万円超えのワインを会社の経費で開けて業務無関係の身内に振る舞う、確信歩きの公私混同ムーブ ・会社の1フロアにプライベートな寿司カウンターやバーカウンターを設置、「本郷事業所は自分の城」発言がリアルすぎてお察し案件 ・監査役3名のうち2名がメインバンク出身、1名が会長の昔からの友人、「身内で固めて身内を調査するとかそれってあなたの感想ですよね？」状態 【小まとめ】 会長の「自分の城」と化した本社で、1本数百万円のワインを会社経費でガブ飲みする圧倒的ワンマン企業 【つづき】 ・会食費の精算は、会長のクレカで立て替えてから会社が「現金」で還流する怪しいスキーム、「資金移動が捕捉しにくくて香ばしい」やつ ・過去10年間で「40万円超えの社外飲食費は十数件だけ」と会社は主張するが、総額2300万円の認定額と数字が矛盾しててフルボッコ ・現役社員や関係者から「本社へのゴマすりや接待が横行している」と匿名のタレコミが多数寄せられ、現場からは以上です状態 ・60年前の国税局査察で「多額の追徴金を支払ったが学んだことは大きかった」という50年史の記述を突きつけられる、特大の伏線回収 ・現在81歳の会長には後継者が不在、「いつまでも依存できないから膿を出し切れ」と株主からオーバーキル気味の正論パンチ ・2026年5月29日までに第三者委員会の設置を回答するよう要求され、未読スルーや拒否なら6月の株主総会で役員再任反対を呼びかけると予告 【総まとめ】 ・40年以上にわたる福田会長のワンマン体制により、人事や設備投資、果ては地下駐車場まで完全に私物化されているとガチ勢（アクティビスト）に激怒されている状態 ・会社側は身内の監査役で「問題なし」と事態を揉み消そうとしたが、1本数百万円のワインや寿司カウンターの存在を暴露され、詰んだ感が漂う 【結論】 「医療機器でガッツリ稼いだ裏で、本社の1フロアを寿司屋にしてイキり散らかしていたら、怒れる投資家に過去の闇まで全部ほじくり返されて震えて眠れ状態の会社」です。

@ChairliftCap So, uh, you guided $100 for capex this year. Now we’re in the third quarter, and in the first half you spent $45. Should we be thinking about capex as back-end loaded this year, or more like the first half is the appropriate run rate for the year for us to be modelling?

You don't want to be the 35 year old pod guy at the sell side conference asking about quarterly seasonality You want to be LO guy who has been at the same firm for 20 years asking 'what is your moat?'

NEW AUSTRALIAN NDIS DISABILITY FRAUD INVESTIGATION with @PeteZogoulas. This is Minnesota-style fraud on a national scale. We found a voodoo style witch doctor who continues to operate Australian taxpayer funded disability services despite the fact that she remains under investigation for the death of a participant in suspicious circumstances. We also discovered a massive PRISONER HARVESTING SCHEME where a West Sydney businessman named Jamal Sabsabi charged the Australian taxpayer $340,000 for PHANTOM DISABILITY SERVICES to PRISONERS sitting in JAIL CELLS. Shockingly, we found Jamal Sabsabi simply started a new company right after being exposed for this prisoner scam. When we barged into his new business to confront him, we found a new West Sydney businessman sitting in his place with a gigantic golden leopard statue on his desk worth thousands of dollars. Josef Yousif at first denied that Jamal worked at the new office, before admitting he had “hired” him for his great “experience.” Upon investigating Josef, we discovered he operated under at least six different legal names with a combined criminal rap sheet that features over 50 court appearances. This is seriously one of the worst run government programs anywhere in the world. We are talking about tens of billions of dollars in fraud and absolutely vile organised crime abuse of extremely disabled Australians.