Shinsei Bank Ltd. has dropped its poison pill defense against SBI Holdings Inc.’s planned offer for the mid-sized Japanese lender, marking the latest twist in the takeover saga.
Tokyo-based Shinsei canceled a planned shareholder vote on the defense measures that was scheduled for Thursday and changed its stance on SBI’s offer to neutral, it said in a statement on Wednesday.
A takeover fight erupted for Shinsei in September when Japan’s biggest online brokerage, led by a maverick financier named Yoshitaka Kitao, launched a rare unsolicited tender offer to increase its stake in Shinsei to about 48%, a level that would give it effective control of the lender without having to go through additional regulatory hurdles.