Activist hedge fund firm Elliott Management wants Japan’s biggest property group, Mitsui Fudosan, to launch a JPY1tn ($6.8bn) share buyback scheme in a bid to improve the company’s market valuation, according to a report by the Financial Times.
The report cites people close to both the fund and Mitsui Fudosan as revealing that Elliott’s demands, which were presented to the property company’s top management within the past month, also includes a request that Mitsui Fudosan sells its $3.6bn stake in Oriental Land, the company that runs Tokyo Disneyland.
Elliott’s Mitsui Fudosan campaign, which comes after a year-long stake-building process which has made the US hedge fund one of the company’s top five shareholders, is its fourth major public foray into the Japanese stock market following previous moves at Toshiba, SoftBank and Dai Nippon Printing.
Mitsui Fudosan, which owns the Tokyo Dome stadium as well as property assets across the world, is the largest Japanese property group by value, but at 6.91%, has the lowest return on equity among peers such as Mitsubishi Estate and Sumitomo Realty.
