Dai-ichi Life Insurance Co. had to find a venue big enough for rock concerts by acts like the Smashing Pumpkins for its first investor meeting Monday since holding the biggest initial public offering in two years.

About 3,100 of the 1.37 million shareholders attended the meeting at the Makuhari Messe convention center in the city of Chiba, spokesman Makoto Atarashi said. The company had been prepared for about 13,000.

"Given the potential size of the crowd, we had to look for a rock concert-size venue," Atarashi said.

The insurer held its first shareholders' meeting after listing in April when it switched from mutual to stock-based ownership. The company won investor approval to spend ¥10 billion for dividend payments and tap ¥10 billion in retained earnings to boost reserves.

The company declined comment on the cost of holding the meeting. Sending out invitations alone would have been at least ¥110 million, based on the ¥80 stamp cost, according to Bloomberg calculations.

Events hosted at Makuhari Messe include the Summer Sonic music festival and the Tokyo Game Show.

Some of the 19 investors who spoke at Monday's meeting complained about the declining stock price since listing. The shares closed at ¥120,200 Monday on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. That compares with the ¥140,000 IPO price.

The insurer raised ¥1.01 trillion in the world's largest IPO since San Francisco-based Visa Inc. sold $19.7 billion in stock in March 2008.

The offering was the biggest in Japan since NTT DoCoMo Inc. went public in 1998.

Dai-ichi made the move to expand fundraising options for acquisitions as economic growth in Japan compounds the problem of an aging society and low birthrate. The nation's second-largest life insurer, it replaced NTT Corp. as Japan's most widely held stock after it listed on the TSE.