Shareholders’ rejection of another term for Eiji Sato as Taiyo Holdings CEO over the weekend was a rare event highlighting the growing clout of activists in Japan’s stock market.
The Tokyo-based chemicals maker said Monday that as a result of the vote, Executive Vice President Hitoshi Saito replaced Sato as top executive.
Voting out a company’s CEO candidate, something that doesn’t happen often in Japan, is another sign of how activists are pushing to change company policies that they claim are weighing down shareholder returns. In 2019, shareholders of Lixil turned down candidates proposed by the housing material maker in a similar vein, choosing instead former CEO Kinya Seto.
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