Late last October, while everyone was watching Rakuten Inc. make a surprise bid to integrate with Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc., Yoshiaki Murakami launched a new investment plan.

His target was Dream Technologies Corp., a picture software development company in a capital tieup with Heisei Denden Co., a telecommunications venture that had applied for court protection under the Civil Rehabilitation Law earlier in the month.

Due to its credit insecurity from its Heisei connection, Dream's stock price had gone limit-down for more than 10 days at the end of October, bottoming out at 11,200 yen.