Fuji Media Admits Exceeding Foreign Investor Limit


Fuji Media admits exceeding foreign investor limit

Fuji Media Holdings, one of Japan's major media firms, has acknowledged that the ratio of its foreign investors with voting rights exceeded a legal limit from 2012 to 2014.

Fuji Media is the parent company of broadcaster Fuji Television Network. As a licensed broadcaster, the company is required to keep its foreign voting rights below 20 percent under Japan's broadcasting law.

Fuji Media said on Thursday that due to a mistake made in calculations, its foreign voting rights stood slightly above 20 percent during the 18-month period from September 2012 through March 2014. The ratio exceeded the legal limit by less than 0.001 percentage points.

The company said that since September 2014, the ratio has been steadily kept below 20 percent.

Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, Fuji Media President Kanemitsu Osamu acknowledged that his company had breached the law in the past, no matter how small the margin might have been. He apologized for causing trouble to shareholders, investors and many other parties.

Kanemitsu added that he reported the mistake himself to the communications ministry in December 2014 when he was a managing director in charge of the matter.

He said that officials reprimanded him during their meeting, and told him to ensure that the company would not make the same mistake again.