A College Dropout Turned Internet Tycoon [NYT]
By DAVID RAMPE
The American-style Internet tycoon Takafumi Horie has many of the standard credentials of an upstart. A dropout from Japan's top university who became rich young, he has been quick to criticize Japan's establishment, which he once branded a ``club of old men."
In the process, his Internet company Livedoor expanded wildly, through a campaign of takeovers and stock splits into a company with a value of $6.3 billion. Until this week.
Now that value is sinking, upsetting the entire Japanese stock market, amid investigations of possible securities law violations, which Livedoor denies.
At 33, and noted for appearing in T-shirts, yet favoring a silver-blue Ferrari, Horie has a history of upbraiding Japan's settled ways.
Horie built Livedoor by combining a portal site with online brokerage and banking and a host of other Internet services. It offers everything from news and travel tips to a popular blog written by Horie.
He gained a certain renown and notoriety two years ago, when he tried to buy a professional baseball team in Japan. He grabbed headlines again last year when he started a hostile takeover bid, still rare in Japan, for one of the country's biggest media conglomerates, and in September he ran in parliamentary elections, as a reform candidate, but lost to a prominent old-guard politician.
In his foray into the world of hostile takeovers, he went up against Fuji Television Network, the core company in one of Japan's largest media groups.
He first approached Nippon Broadcasting System, a small operation that had long been an affiliate of Fuji TV, until Livedoor surreptitiously bought up much of its equity. A contentious dispute followed with Fuji over the next two months which set off alarm bells in boardrooms throughout the country that worried about hostile takeovers gaining prominence in Japan.
In the end, Horie failed to buy Fuji TV though he was not left empty handed; Fuji TV agreed to buy a 15 percent stake in Livedoor to seal what the companies say became a friendly alliance.
Horie burst out of the business world two years ago, when he tried to buy the Kintetsu Buffaloes in Osaka, to save the financially stretched baseball team. Horie became famous overnight and a darling of Buffaloes fans.
There was one problem, though. The Buffaloes' owners said they weren't interested in selling.
One business executive explained, ``In professional baseball, each team has its traditions, and you can't buy a team so easily just because you have money."
Horie responded in kind. Asked why the team owners were refusing to talk with him, he answered, ``Pride, maybe, from old age."
``Those salarymen-chief executives don't have many personal assets compared to business owners who started their own business," he said. ``They're smug in their little world and, lacking fresh blood, they can only think about shrinking the industry."
Yet for a while many ordinary Japanese applauded Horie's efforts even if they find his aggressive style somewhat distasteful. At one time, polls showed that he has broad support for his takeover attempt among both younger and older Japanese.
``I like what's happening," said Hitashi Suzuki, a 35-year-old employee of a construction company in Tokyo, told an interviewer last year, when Horie was riding high. ``It is very modern and suits the time we live in. I wouldn't say I support Horie personally, but I think it is good that he fights for what he wants."
Now Horie is left to deal with his own troubles. And according the Nikkan Sports newspaper, he has shelved plans for his next adventure, a CDof his band singing pop songs about his philosophy. |
