Tokyo Kikai Seisakusho (6335) - Shareholders Approve Poison Pill

Tokyo Kikai Seisakusho (6335 JP) is Japan's largest maker of printing presses. It has a market cap of a whopping $130mm, and that is only after a significant rise in price in the past year or so.

On 20 July this year, a fund called Asia Investment Fund (along with associate Asia Development Capital Co (9318 JP) which is an affiliate of Sun Hung Kai) announced they had bought 7.91% of TKS as of 13 July (which required them to file a Large Shareholder Report). Unknown to the public at the time of the 20 July report was that they had purchased 6.81% on 14 July and 6.11% on 15 July and additional 5.35% in the next three trading days which took them to 26.50% by the time they had announced they had purchased their first 5%. The day after they filed the report which said they owned 7.91% - on 21 July - they bought another 6.19% in the market, which meant the day after they filed the first time they owned 32.72% of the company. On 29 July, TKS announced that Asia Development Capital held 11.83% as of 29 July (which was a little weird because on the 26th of July the two entities reported holding 21.16%).

Then it got fun. There was a lot of effort by TKS and ADC effectively did not respond until TKS did something which ADC thought they could call out. TKS launched a Poison Pill, and ADC tried to file injunctions rejecting both the poison pill and urging the court to require TKS to count their votes held on margin (which is a question). The Court will decide after the EGM.

A list of all the interaction and announcements thereto is at https://www.tks-net.co.jp/aif/. The most recent announcement on Friday is that Shareholders approved the Poison Pill.

More below the fold.