Over 20% of investors in Toshiba are against activist fund executives and dissident directors.
Tokyo (Reuters) – Final voting results showed on Thursday that more than 20% of Toshiba (OTC:TOSYY) Corp shareholders voted against a dissident external director and two board directors from activist hedge fund investors.
In Japan, it is still rare for company-backed candidates to face this much opposition, but rejections are on the rise as shareholder activism starts to take hold. Last year, shareholders of Toshiba voted out the board chairman as a slap in the face to the company after it was found that the company had worked with the government to suppress the interests of foreign investors.
A share of shareholders voted against Mariko Watahiki, an external director who opposed the election of directors from Elliott Management and Farallon Capital Management. She had the least support (64%) of the 13 nominees for director.
Watahiki gave her resignation right after the vote at Tuesday’s annual meeting of shareholders. The former high court judge had said that putting these two people on the board could give activist investors too much power.
A senior portfolio manager at Elliott, Nabeel Bhanji, and a managing director at Farallon, Eijiro Imai, both had about 22% of people who were against them, while about 78% of those who were for them.
CEO Taro Shimada got 86 percent of the votes, and more than 12 percent didn’t vote at all.
On Tuesday, seven new board members were chosen, and six others, including Watahiki, were given their jobs back.
