US investment fund Falcon Capital Management is demanding that Hiroshi Nagao, chairman of logistics giant Yamato Holdings, resign from its board, it has emerged. At an earnings briefing on November 4, Yamato Holdings CFO Yutaka Nomura would say only that the company would refrain from commenting on individual proposals.
Falcon reported on November 2 that it holds 5.02% of Yamato Holdings, filing a large shareholding report with the Kanto Local Finance Bureau. In the filing, the fund said Nagao, a Yamato Holdings director since 2017, "must resign as representative director and director" so that bold management reform can be carried out.
The fund has also proposed to Yamato that every director other than President Toshiyuki Sakurai be made an outside director, according to the report. Nomura did not say how the company would respond to the proposals, saying it would accept proposals that contribute to raising corporate value.
Yamato Holdings is one of Japan's best-known delivery companies, and a foreign fund's call to remove its chairman puts a governance dispute at the center of a company long treated as part of the country's everyday infrastructure.