Kokudo Corp. is willing to void stock transaction deals worth 62 billion yen with about 70 firms that bought Seibu Railway Co. shares without knowing that Seibu had underreported shareholder ratio figures, company sources said Wednesday.
Forty of the firms have demanded that the deals be nullified, and Kokudo is prepared to return the money, the sources said. The remaining companies will be able to cancel their contracts if they want, they said.
Negotiations with all 70 companies will begin after Seibu Railway is delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Friday, they said.
Kokudo, the core Seibu Railway group company, admitted in October it had sold Seibu Railway shares to help the railway firm meet a listing requirement prohibiting major shareholders from owning more than an 80 percent stake in a firm, after having Seibu Railway underreport the ratio of shareholdings for decades.
But it did not tell the buyers the background of the share sales, an action that could constitute insider trading.
After the information was revealed, the price of Seibu Railway shares plunged, prompting many buyers to demand the nullification of their stock transactions.