Takeshi Natsuno, the CEO of FromSoftware’s majority shareholder, Kadokawa Corporation, has survived a proposed bid to oust him from the company by the activist shareholder group Oasis Management.
Although Oasis Management is Kadokawa’s largest shareholder, owning a 15.25 percent stake in the Elden Ring developer’s majority shareholder, Kadokawa announced earlier today that the activist shareholders had failed to secure a majority vote for their proposal.
As spotted by Reuters on June 23, Oasis Management had proposed that Kadokawa CEO Takeshi Natsuno be dismissed from the company on June 1. Oasis Management’s shareholders stated in their proposal that Natsuno was “markedly unsuitable to serve as a Director of the Company.”
Oasis Management justified its proposal by stating that Kadokawa’s “earnings per share [have] fallen to less than half” of what they previously were in the five years since Natsuno was elected as CEO. Oasis also criticized what it called Kadokawa’s “quantity over quality strategy,” stating that Kadokawa’s numerous manga, anime, and video game releases in the past five years had “weakened” the company’s intellectual properties.
Likewise, Oasis Management’s proposal also directly mentioned FromSoftware: “Despite owning the global asset FromSoftware, [Kadokawa] has not been able to achieve global publishing on its own, and this has not been sufficiently linked to overall Group growth or IP monetization.”
The activist investor group had previously made the case for FromSoftware self-publishing its games instead of relying on Bandai Namco. “Under a simplified scenario analysis, if FromSoftware were to produce another hit title comparable to Elden Ring, with sales exceeding 30 million units, the absence of self-publishing will once again result in substantial economic value being left with external publishing partners rather than Kadokawa shareholders,” Oasis wrote in one of its earlier presentations.
Today, Kadokawa released a notice titled “Regarding Changes in Members of the Board,” following the conclusion of the shareholders’ vote on June 24. As detailed in the notice, the majority of Kadokawa’s shareholders voted in favor of CEO Takeshi Natsuno’s proposal and against Oasis Management’s proposal.
Under Natsuno’s proposal, Kadokawa has appointed Koji Okura, former Director of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, to its board of directors. At this time, it’s unclear exactly what percentage of Kadokawa’s shareholders voted in favor of Natsuno’s proposal.
However, Oasis Management has been steadily increasing its stake in Kadokawa over the past year. Oasis increased its stake in Kadokawa to 11.85 percent in March, overtaking Sony’s Group’s 11.01 percent stake, and then increased it from 13.76 percent to 15.25 percent on June 23. While Oasis Management was unsuccessful in ousting Natsuno this time, the rate at which they’ve continued to invest in Kadokawa will likely lead to an even tighter vote at the next general shareholders’ meeting in 2027.