Toshiba Corp’s second-biggest shareholder on Sunday requested the board chairman and three directors promptly resign after an inquiry discovered the company had conspired with the Japanese government to pressure foreign investors.
The letter came from 3D Investment Partners, which owns a 7.2% stake in Toshiba. It was delivered to the four on Sunday, as revealed by individuals familiar with the matter.
It is probably going to heighten investigation into governance at Toshiba, a famous industrial conglomerate in-crisis generated by Thursday’s report. The shareholder initiated report denoted a touchy turn in a long fight between the Japanese company’s administration and foreign investors.
Notwithstanding 3D, these investors include activist investors and Harvard University’s endowment fund.
The disclosures in the report “are profoundly alarming and address perhaps the most unmistakable and stunning corporate governance disappointments among huge public organizations anywhere in the world in the last decade,” the 3D letter says.
The letter, addressed to board chair Osamu Nagayama and three current audit committee members, depicts Nagayama as “eventually answerable for Toshiba’s governance failures, including the defective internal investigation and the board’s determination to go against an outside, independent examination.”
“It is likewise upsetting that you have been quiet about the analytical report and have neglected to acknowledge obligation regarding the offense that took place under your oversight as chair of the board,” the letter says.
Toshiba declined to remark on the letter, saying in a release it was “cautiously checking on the substance of the examination report and plans to declare its remarks towards this examination result after the review.”
The company was holding a crisis meeting on Sunday to talk about reassigning the three board committee members ahead of a June 25 shareholders meeting. Major shareholder advisory firms warned against some of the candidates, including the four mentioned in the 3D letter.
Four independent directors, all non-Japanese, have said in an indication of protest that they were not in support of the full directors named by Toshiba.
