Toshiba's top investors signal strident opposition to planned two-way split

Toshiba's plan to split itself into two companies has been opposed by two significant groups of investors. The Japanese conglomerate first planned to split into three entities, but that plan was poorly received, so management went back to the drawing board and came up with a new strategy to split into two companies. That plan …

[ShadowSystems]

What would happen if...

All those investors that have essentially asked Toshiba not to do it, they all get out-voted to prevent it, and decide to pull their investments as a vote of no confidence?

Sure it's only ~17%, but having all that money suddenly ripped from their coffers can not be something easily smoothed over.

So what would happen if all the no-voters decide to pull out of the company, vote with their wallets, & reinvest somewhere else?

[Pascal Monett]

Re: What would happen if...

I don't think they can pull their investment. I think the only thing they can do is sell their shares.

But I may be wrong.

[MJB7]

Re: What would happen if...

Exactly as Pascal says: they can't withdraw their money from Toshiba, they can only sell their shares. If they do that all at once, the share price will fall. That will mean:

• The board looks bad
• If the board wants to raise more money by creating some more shares and selling them, it will be harder.
• If the board wants to take over another company by issuing shares, they will have to issue more

However, from the point of view of the activist shareholders, the most important effect, and the reason it won't happen, is that they will lose a lot of money. Remember these investors don't care about truth, transparency, or justice - they just want to make money. (Tosh has a market cap of about $16B. 17% of that is ~ $3B, even a 1% fall in the share price is $30M !).

Footnote: Ye gods and little fishes but formatting a post with HTML is painful. When is El Reg going to get with the program and use markdown?

[the spectacularly refined chap]

Re: What would happen if...

Footnote: Ye gods and little fishes but formatting a post with HTML is painful. When is El Reg going to get with the program and use markdown?

ISTR it is one of those perennial requests that has been considered and ultimately dismissed. The argument is essentially the too many standards one - do you go for Markdown, BBcode, Wiki, some other flavour of the month?

HTML has the virtue that basically any technical user has at least a basic grasp. The downside is entering all those angle brackets is painful on a phone. And possibly the list of allowed tags is a little too restricted: if unordered lists are permitted why not ordered ones for example?

[nijam]

Is anyone else put in mind of a scene from a wildlife program showing a pack of hyenas circling a dying animal?