TOKYO - Four months ago, few people had even heard of Unizo Holdings Co, an obscure Japanese developer whose shares had slumped for three straight years.
If a deal goes through, other"boards will sit up and pay attention now, and can't be lazy with their balance sheets," said Jin Rui Oh, a Singapore-based director at United First Partners, an investment and advisory group that specializes in special situations. That's especially true for"companies with a wide register that lacks an individual shareholder holding a chunky stake," he said.
BIDDING WAR Then the bidding war began. In August, SoftBank Group unit Fortress came in with a rival tender offer for 4,000 yen a share, significantly higher than the 3,100 yen offered by HIS. It wanted to buy the entire company, it said. It was clear that Unizo's management was getting cold feet about an outright sale. The company published a new policy for handling takeover offers, which had some strong conditions.
Elliott was also dissatisfied, and decided to turn activist. In an open letter to the company's board in October, it questioned management's flip-flops in handling the takeover bids and indicated suspicions about the intentions of the employee stock ownership company.