Seibu Holdings, Inc.

Seibu Holdings Inc.

Type	Kabushiki kaisha
Traded as	:
Genre	Holding Company
Predecessor	Kokudo Corp.
Founded	February 3, 2006
Headquarters	1-16-15 Minami-Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Key people	Takashi Gotō
Net income	¥16.3 billion (FY 2013)
Number of employees	317 (As of March 2014)
Subsidiaries	Seibu Railway, Prince Hotels
Website	http://www.seibuholdings.co.jp/

Seibu Holdings, Inc. (株式会社西武ホールディングス, Kabushiki-gaisha Seibu Hōrudingusu) is a Japanese holding company which primarily owns Seibu Railway, Prince Hotels, Seibu Bus and its subsidiaries, which are collectively known as the Seibu Group. In total, fifty-three companies across the world are affiliated with the Seibu Group. The company was formed in 2006 to restructure the group after it had come to light in 2004 that the predecessor to Seibu Holdings, Kokudo, had falsified the ownership of its shares in Seibu Railway for over forty years.

As of January 2015, Seibu Holdings' share prices exceed ¥2900 and the company has the highest market capitalization of any Japanese company which owns a private rail network.

In 2004, the Seibu Group collapsed due to the revelation that the head of Kokudo (the predecessor of Seibu Holdings), Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, had falsified financial statements for over forty years. The scandal, which involved falsifying the ownership of Kokudo's share holdings in Seibu Railway, was compounded by the increased competition faced by Prince Hotels in the hotel and leisure market as well as an additional pay-off scandal involving a corporate racketeer. Seibu Railway was consequently delisted from the in December 2004 after shares fell to ¥400 from a peak of ¥8000. As a response to this, Seibu Holdings was founded on February 3, 2006 with the aim of restructuring the group following an investment of ¥100 billion from the American private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. Tsutsumi, having pleaded guilty to the fraud charges in 2005, retained a 5% stake in Seibu Holdings having previously owned a 36% stake in Kokudo.

The company has been directed by Takashi Gotō since its creation in 2006. He is also a company board member for Prince Hotels (since 2006) and Seibu Railway (since 2010).

Despite paying out ¥5.2 billion in compensation as a result of lawsuits concerning the scandals of 2004, the company made a net profit of ¥16.3 billion in fiscal 2013, an increase of 5% when compared to the previous year. In April 2014, Seibu Holdings was listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange where shares had originally been evaluated at ¥2300. After Cerberus abandoned plans to sell a 15.5% stake of the business, however, shares began at the lower offering price of ¥1600 when they were relisted in April 23, 2014. The company ended the day at ¥1770 per share. In total, 27.8 million shares (about 8% of Seibu Holding's ) were relisted. It was later revealed that Cerberus had an agreement with their managing underwriter prohibiting them from selling their share in Seibu Holdings until October 2014. The company exceeded its original ¥2300 per share evaluation in June 2014, with its share prices rising to ¥2945 on January 21, 2015.