Pickens Blasts Japan’s ‘Robber Barons’
Linking his confrontation with a Japanese auto parts firm to a campaign to open up corporate Japan, American investor T. Boone Pickens on Tuesday stepped up his attacks on Japan’s business giants by calling them anti-competitive “modern-day robber barons.”
During a news conference in Los Angeles, Pickens said Toyota Motor Co. and Koito Manufacturing Co., which supplies auto parts to Toyota, have been conspiring to deny him representation on Koito’s board of directors. Pickens also spoke Tuesday to the Japan America Society of Southern California.
Pickens owns 26% of Koito’s stock, the largest block. Toyota’s 19% is the second-largest stake. Koito has rejected Pickens’ request to place representatives on its board, most recently at a June 28 shareholders meeting in Tokyo.
“They don’t want you to see corporate Japan from the inside,” Pickens said. “I think they’re absolutely petrified at what we would see--that they’re competing (by using) a system that is in violation of antitrust laws in the United States.”
Pickens raised questions about Koito’s pricing policies, suggesting prices are dictated by Toyota.
Pickens said Koito is a member of Toyota’s keiretsu, a tightly knit group of parts suppliers that form around each auto maker and other major companies in Japan. Traditionally, keiretsu members have worked almost exclusively at the behest of one auto company and thus gained an inside track for future business. American negotiators have contended that keiretsu block U.S. firms from competing more effectively in Japan.
Koito has said it has not given Pickens board representation because the American is engaged in a “greenmail” scheme, an effort to get Koito or a party friendly to Koito to buy Pickens’ stock at a premium.
“Mr. Pickens’ latest distortions of the facts surrounding his raid on Koito are merely another example of his blatant attempts to encourage anti-Japanese sentiment in order to advance his own personal financial agenda,” Koito said in a statement Tuesday.
Pickens, head of Mesa oil company of Amarillo, Tex., denied the allegations. “How can I get greenmail if they don’t want to pay it to me?” he asked.
Koito also said Pickens had a “checkered history,” citing a Mesa decision in September to pay $4.9 million to settle a 6-year-old suit that Phillips Petroleum Co. shareholders brought against Mesa and Phillips. Mesa admitted no wrongdoing, but there were allegations that Mesa obtained greenmail profits from Phillips.
