Japanese annual meetings are usually docile affairs unless the company has failed to pay protection money to the Sokkaiya, the gangsters who attend annual meetings and silence any dissident shareholders if they’ve been paid off, or disrupt the meeting if the company has tried to brazen it out, but last week all that changed: the power of the gangsters was effectively curbed by 1,500 companies agreeing to hold their annual meetings on the same day, and at one high-profile meeting, that of Nippon Telephone & Telegraph Corp, over 4,500 shareholders turned up, the majority to complain about the sagging share price – Japanese investors buy for capital gains and not the derisory dividends paid by most companies – and to ask searching questions about the company’s involvement in the Recruit Co corruption scandal; the board could offer little comfort on the share price front but as a mark of sympathy with holders, executives are taking salary cuts of between 10% and 20% for the next six months.
