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1,000 concerned stockholders
By Zach Arnold | June 28, 2006
By Zach Arnold
The first media report (Asahi Shimbun) coming out of the stockholder’s meeting for Fuji TV at the Le Meridien Hotel Grand Pacific on Thursday is that nearly 1,000 stockholders showed up for the meeting at 9 AM. The major issue on the table was how Fuji TV would restructure given the failed Livedoor takeover bid from last year, along with the involvement of the Murakami Fund (producing two scandals). This Nikkei report focused on the hard questioning that stockholders gave to Fuji TV President Hieda over the company’s predicament after Livedoor’s failed takeover attempt.
Update: Both Nikkan Sports and Daily Sports have articles about the stockholder’s meeting. At least four questions about PRIDE were asked, including a question asking whether or not Fuji TV had relations with the boryokudan (yakuza). Fuji TV denied any relationships to crime syndicates, and did not elaborate as to what the “improper event” was that led to the network canceling PRIDE.
TBS also had a stockholder’s meeting, with 371 people (a little over 1/3rd of how many stockholders appeared for the Fuji meeting) appearing to discuss the network’s future.
Topics: All Topics, Japan, Media, Zach Arnold | 2 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback | Share This
Like I said a month ago the wrong doing was selling the bushido series to fsn, the yakuza thing was a scapegoat and fuji let it spread because it made dse look bad, when in reality fuji looked bad because pride sold the series to fsn instead of airing it on fuji network.
Sorry zach as much as your yakuza conspiracy theories went on, it was the selling of the bushido series to fsn, notice the day pride announced it, fuji cancelled it.
[...] No, Fuji TV dumped PRIDE not because of allegations simply from Shukan Gendai. There was a formal police investigation from the Kanagawa police on this matter. As has been noted before, some Fuji TV employees had been questioned by the police in the past over business dealings with PRIDE. More importantly, two investigations (one from the Kanagawa police and one internal Fuji TV investigation) pointed out that chief TV producer and friend of Sakakibara, Kunio Kiyohara, had a lot more involvement than initially suspected in PRIDE. It was reported that Kiyohara had social meetings with PRIDE’s alleged backer, Mr. I (Ishizaka), and that this open admission of associating with a top underworld boss (who had rumoredly made his name in loan sharking circles in Osaka) was shocking considering how high of a profile Kiyohara had publicly. His father, Takehiko Kiyohara, became chairman of Sankei Shimbun (a major newspaper) and his name helped his son land his position in the FujiSankei conglomerate. Furthermore, Gendai wrote that Kiyohara was investigated over accusations of him transferring money from the conglomerate to fund other business projects that questionable people were involved in. By no means was the investigation into PRIDE simply based on magazine reports, although the public spotlight did provide some momentum. The red flags raised came from police questioning about Kiyohara. Fuji TV President Hieda wanted to clean the conglomerate from scandals (2005 was quite the year between Livedoor’s attempted takeover bid and the Murakami Fund scandal) before having to address 1,000 stockholders about corporate accountability. [...]