Leo Lewis
speaker
33 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 10 Sep
Leo Lewis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Since that time, there's been a lot of interest in Japan, and that interest has involved a lot of activist shareholders, initially led by foreign activist shareholders, but then picking up and turning into quite the domestic scene as well.
So we are
Halfway into 2026 and the Japanese stock market is on an absolute tear.
The Nikkei has broken through successive records and a lot of that is driven by foreign investment in Japanese companies.
So one of the kind of moves that we've been seeing has been the government putting together a working group on shareholder activism and is looking at tougher thresholds for shareholder proposals and disclosure requirements by shareholders.
And, you know, some of the suggestions of some of the proposals have been made and that have made their way out into the kind of domestic media have been a little bit chilling.
I think one of the things that shareholder activists and engagement shareholders have done in Japan is to reveal just how strongly pro-shareholder a lot of the regulation and the rules are in Japan.
And there is a concern about
that a lot of the ground that has been gained over the last 10 years, in some cases, it has gone a little bit over some of the red lines that Japan has when it thinks about where is acceptable in terms of shareholders pushing companies around.
So there's a growing concern among foreign investors that pushback is now probably a little bit overdue, that you've got quite a nationalistic prime minister in charge and an idea that perhaps there is a bit of a sort of groundswell in corporate Japan that says, look, let's not let people take too much advantage of all this locked up value and all the other benefits that investors have seen here over the years.
So the officials, I have to say, have been playing those concerns down.
They are at great pains to reiterate the fact that they are very keen for this consolidation to take place.
But I think the realization that it can end up being quite a messy process is filtering into the conversation to some extent as well.
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