OSAKA (Kyodo) Hanshin Electric Railway Co. and an investment fund led by Yoshiaki Murakami held a top-level meeting Tuesday, apparently to discuss the fund's equity stake in the railway, sources said Wednesday.
Murakami and Hanshin Electric Railway President Kyoji Nishikawa met at Tokyo's Roppongi Hills complex, where the Murakami Fund has its offices, the sources said. Both the fund and the Osaka-based railway declined comment on the reported meeting.
Hanshin hopes to reduce the Murakami Fund's stake toward the end of March, when a list of shareholders will be fixed before a general shareholders meeting in June, the sources said.
The Murakami Fund is Hanshin Electric Railway's biggest shareholder. As a result of rounds of purchases of shares in the railway, the fund held a 45.73 percent stake in as of Feb. 22, according to a report it filed with the Finance Ministry.
If the fund raises its stake across the 50 percent line, it would gain strong say over the railway's management on the basis of its voting rights at shareholders meetings.
The Murakami Fund and Hanshin Electric have been in a tussle over the railway's management policies since it became known in September that the fund had acquired a major stake in the carrier.
The fund has since proposed that the railway list its professional baseball club, the Hanshin Tigers, on a stock exchange, saying the step would help raise the Hanshin group's corporate value.
Hanshin management has rejected the listing demand.