Word: ripplewood
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...history is any guide, the news will probably be yet another multimillion-dollar acquisition that will throw the spotlight once again on the 45-year-old Kentuckian and the company he named after his grandma's tobacco farm. Ripplewood Holdings may be little known in the U.S., but the private-equity firm, based in New York City, is virtually a household name in Japan, thanks to a $2.5 billion shopping spree in which it has grabbed national jewels, including a bank, a golf resort and a record label. The current deal may or may not involve KDDI, the Japanese phone...
...firm inspires public outrage like $4 billion Ripplewood, thanks largely to its taste for companies that evoke Japanese national pride. Ripplewood in 1999 became the first foreign firm to buy out a Japanese bank--Long-Term Credit Bank, the fifth largest. Last year it snapped up the largest share in--and effective control of--Nippon Columbia, the 92-year-old record label whose name is synonymous with enka (Japanese folk ballads). Then Ripplewood bought out Seagaia, a sprawling golf and beach resort on the southern island of Kyushu that plays host to Japan's best-known golf tournament. Ripplewood also...
...What could help is a flood of foreign investment. Japan has been notoriously resistant to outsiders and their bucks, but recently it has even allowed American vulture capital firms like Ripplewood to swoop in and pick apart its failed institutions. The next step, say investors, is legislation that insists local companies hew to greater accounting transparency. In Japan, corporations don't have to air all their dirty financial laundry to shareholders, as they do in the U.S.; a money-losing division can be hidden away as a "subsidiary" and assets can be listed at inflated values. A hint of change...