Japan: Largest shareholder wants management changes in Japan’s brewer Sapporo

Activist fund Steel Partners Japan Strategic Fund, the largest shareholder in Sapporo Holdings Ltd., will propose the election of new board members at Sapporo's shareholders meeting in late March, Dow Jones communicated on January, 22.

The Japanese brewer said it received a letter from the New York-based fund clarifying its intentions earlier in the day.

The list of the fund's preferred directors doesn't include six of the 10 incumbent board members, including Sapporo president Takao Murakami.

Steel Partners has been a vocal critic of Sapporo's management since taking a stake in the Japanese company. But the fund last year retreated from a two-year struggle to raise its stake in Sapporo, attributing the breakdown in talks to a lack of meaningful engagement on the part of Sapporo.

22 January, 2010