TOKYO (Reuters) – Toshiba Corp wants to decide how to respond to its top shareholder’s call for an extraordinary general shareholders meeting (EGM) “as soon as possible,” Chief Executive Officer Nobuaki Kurumatani said on Friday.
The board is yet to discuss what kind of options it has, Kurumatani told Reuters in an interview a day after Effissimo Capital Management asked the firm for an EGM to investigate whether the July 31 annual meeting was conducted in a fair manner.
Singapore-based Effissimo, which owns around 10% of Toshiba, claims that the voting rights of some shareholders were compromised at the July meeting.
If Toshiba does not open an EGM within eight weeks of receiving the request, the shareholder may call a meeting by itself with court approval.
Kurumatani said that Toshiba was making “utmost efforts” to communicate with shareholders. “If shareholders are dissatisfied, we’ll try to improve.”
Separately on Friday, Toshiba corrected the voting results after finding over 1,000 postal voting forms went uncounted due to inappropriate vote-counting practices by its shareholder registry administrator Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank.
Toshiba also said 44.21% of its shareholders backed an activist fund’s proposal to elect its co-founder as board director, up from the original 43.43%.
(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki and Noriyuki Hirata; Editing by Chris Reese and Jacqueline Wong)
