Ken Kiyohara was quoted in Nikkei article on legal issues, entitled “Beneficial Shareholders Excluded from Tokyo Damages Lawsuits, Overseas Investors Rebuff Ruling” (April 29, 2024), which reported on the Tokyo District Court’s 21 December 2023 Ruling. According to Nikkei, the Court ordered Toshiba to pay JPY100M damages for local institutional investor plaintiffs, while rejecting claims (approximately JPY57.2B in total) from overseas investors who had acquired shares through nominees in Japan but filed lawsuits in their names. In the article, Ken expressed a grave concern about the impact, should the Tokyo District Court’s ruling become a settled precedent, since it would create a substantial hurdle for overseas investors. The court allowed only nominee shareholders registered in the shareholder registry to bring damages claim against issuers as “persons who acquired securities” under Article 21-2 of the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act of Japan, but held that those investors which had acquired securities through sub-custodians, nominees in Japan lacked standing to bring such lawsuits in their names.