FEW investors come in more belligerent form than Daniel Loeb, an American activist shareholder known for attacking lacklustre chief executives in the most personal of terms. Yet Mr Loeb has lately found a second home in Japan, a country where shareholders with opinions have hitherto been about as welcome as skunks at a garden party.
Late last year Mr Loeb’s fund, Third Point, took a stake in Fanuc, a secretive and highly profitable robotics firm which until recently seldom made direct contact with its investors, choosing instead to hoard a vast and expanding pile of cash. No one expected Mr Loeb’s gambit to succeed. In the past, successive waves of investors have tried to encourage Fanuc to change its ways, only to throw in the towel, usually at a loss. So the firm’s surprise news in March, that it would start talking to shareholders and return some of its cash to them, reverberated far and wide.
Mr Loeb has since taken tea with Fanuc’s president, Yoshiharu Inaba, at its headquarters in the foothills of Mount Fuji. He is receiving further encouragement from the very top of government. He has had private meetings with Shinzo Abe, the...
from The Economist: Business http://ift.tt/1IlcZoa
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