The story
In 2004, the Seibu Group collapsed due to the revelation that the head of Kokudo (the predecessor of Seibu Holdings), Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, had falsified financial statements for over forty years. The scandal, which involved falsifying the ownership of Kokudo's share holdings in Seibu Railway, was compounded by the increased competition faced by Prince Hotels in the hotel and leisure market as well as an additional pay-off scandal involving a corporate racketeer. Seibu Railway was consequently delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange in December 2004 after shares fell to ¥400 from a peak of ¥8000. As a response to this, Seibu Holdings was founded on February 3, 2006, with the aim of restructuring the group following an investment of ¥100 billion from the American private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. Tsutsumi, having pleaded guilty to the fraud charges in 2005, retained a 5% stake in Seibu Holdings having previously owned a 36% stake in Kokudo.
The company has been directed by Takashi Gotō since its creation in 2006. He is also a company board member for Prince Hotels (since 2006) and Seibu Railway (since 2010).
Despite paying out ¥5.2 billion in compensation as a result of lawsuits concerning the scandals of 2004, the company made a net profit of ¥16.3 billion in fiscal 2013, an increase of 5% when compared to the previous year. In April 2014, Seibu Holdings was listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange where shares had originally been evaluated at ¥2300. After Cerberus abandoned plans to sell a 15.5% stake of the business, however, shares began at the lower offering price of ¥1600 when they were relisted on April 23, 2014. The company ended the day at ¥1770 per share. In total, 27.8 million shares (about 8% of Seibu Holding's outstanding stock) were relisted. It was later revealed that Cerberus had an agreement with their managing underwriter prohibiting them from selling their share in Seibu Holdings until October 2014. The company exceeded its original ¥2300 per share evaluation in June 2014, with its share prices rising to ¥2945 on January 21, 2015.
On January 19, 2015, Seibu Holdings' market capitalization of ¥975 billion overtook that of the Tokyu Corporation. Consequently, Seibu Holdings attained the highest market capitalization of any Japanese company which owns a private rail network.
From Wikipedia’s article on Seibu Holdings, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5
