Living on the Edge

Below is my comment on your article of " Living on the Edge" Page 22　 TIME, January 30, 2006

Fortunately the Livedoor case would not lead to a major setback in the Japanese economy in the short run because it is a matter of just one IT related company and its group ballooned by its stock price and its charismatic CEO and could be replaced by other giant IT enterprise such as Softbank soon.

What is at stake universally for this issue in the long run is that once a charismatic and smart top like Takafumi Horie runs the company, no one in the company including auditors and directors could stop his runaways even though he seems to go to the extremes in the market. Sound market mechanism could be established by sound corporate governance in the first place and powerful market watchdogs like SEC in the U.S. correcting the wrongdoings by such companies.