The envisioned relisting of Seibu Holdings Inc. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange will likely be delayed until next spring or after partly due to uncertainty over the nation's economy, sources said Thursday.
President Takashi Goto, who assumed the helm of Seibu Holdings in 2006 after Seibu Railway Co. was delisted from the Tokyo bourse in 2004 amid a financial scandal, has expressed a desire to relist at an early date, with the firm seeking to do so by year's end.
But talks with the major shareholders and brokerages picked to lead-manage the relisting appear to have been prolonged also because of the slump in the stock market earlier this year, they said.
The TSE delisted Seibu Railway after the company admitted it falsified its financial statements by underreporting an equity stake in Kokudo Corp., its top shareholder, in the railway. Kokudo was a privately held firm that effectively controlled the Seibu Railway group at the time.
The fabrication was designed to enable the railway to bypass a TSE rule that a firm be delisted if the combined stake of its top 10 shareholders tops 80 percent for more than one year.