September 11, 2004 LAWFUEL – Best for law news, law, legal news, banking law news The Firm recently represented The Bank of Yokohama and The Resolution and Collection Corporation of Japan (RCC), a subsidiary of The Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan and a government agency, in its sale of 138,225,000 shares of common stock of The Bank of Yokohama. The offering included a public offering in Japan and offerings to institutional investors in Europe and the United States under Regulation S and Rule 144A. The RCC received gross proceeds of ¥81 billion, or $740 million, in the offering.
Like many financial institutions in Japan, The Bank of Yokohama encountered difficulties in the late 1990s and received an injection of ¥200 billion from the RCC in 1999, part of which took the form of an investment in convertible preferred stock of the Bank. In connection with the offering, the RCC converted a portion of its remaining preferred stock into common stock which it sold. Through these and related transactions, The Bank of Yokohama will return the last of the public funds it received in the late 1990s, marking an important milestone in the Bank’s revitalization. The transaction was significant because it was the first time that the RCC has obtained a repayment of its investment in a Japanese financial institution through a conversion of preferred securities into common stock and disposal of that common stock in a secondary offering to the public.
The Simpson Thacher attorneys who worked on the transaction include David Sneider, Alan Cannon, Lou Rabinowitz and Aaron Eddington in Tokyo and Rob Holo and Adam Rosenzweig in New York.
