Shareholders as Stakeholders: A Future Paradigm for Institutional Activism in Japan

Over the last quarter century, the landscape of Japanese corporate governance has been overhauled by a combination of domestic reform, financial collapse, and foreign influence. Amidst these changes, institutional investors have claimed a growing role within Japanese listed companies, not only as monitors of management but as crucial agents for corporate governance reform. In this new role, institutional investors have adopted a diverse array of strategies and tactics for their dealings with management. This paper explores the future contours of Japanese shareholder activism against the backdrop of Japan’s twenty-first century corporate evolution. In particular, it analyzes how Japan’s modern corporate governance regime alters the behavior of institutional investors, and in turn the nature of their engagements with management of Japanese companies. Due to recent changes in Japanese law, Japan’s current governance standards limit the effectiveness of “aggressive” institutional activists. Rather than encourage contentious, highly public battles between adversarial activists and target companies, Japan’s current regime limits the opportunities for investment available to aggressive institutional investors by encouraging constructive engagement between investors and management. Although the quest for profits will continue to influence the behavior of investors and managers, Japan’s current regime invites institutions to act not only as profit-seeking shareholders, but also as stakeholders invested in the long-term financial stability of listed companies

Incorporation of Genetic Pathway Information into Analysis of Multivariate Gene Expression Data

Abstract: Multivariate microarray gene expression data are commonly collected to study the genomic responses under ordered conditions such as over increasing/decreasing dose levels or over time during biological processes. One important question from such multivariate gene expression experiments is to identify genes that show different expression patterns over treatment dosages or over time and pathways that are perturbed during a given biological process. In this paper, we develop a hidden Markov random field model for multivariate expression data in order to identify genes and subnetworks that are related to biological processes, where the dependency of the differential expression patterns of genes on the networks are modeled by a Markov random field. Simulation studies indicated that the method is quite effective in identifying genes and the modified subnetworks and has higher sensitivity than the commonly used procedures that do not use the pathway information, with similar observed false discovery rates. We applied the proposed methods for analysis of a microarray time course gene expression study of TrkA- and TrkB-transfected neuroblastoma cell lines and identified genes and subnetworks on MAPK, focal adhesion and prion disease pathways that may explain cell differentiation in TrkA-transfected cell lines

PCNA levels in neuroblastoma are increased in tumors with an amplified N- myc gene and in metastatic stage tumors

N- myc oncogene amplification in neuroblastoma has been found to be significantly associated with advanced stage disease and tumor progression. However, there is a lack of data on tumors, regarding the relationship between N- myc gene amplification and proliferation activity. Proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) is a proliferation-induced 36 kD nuclear protein that is the auxiliary component of DNA polymerase δ. PCNA levels in tissues have been found to correlate with proliferative activity. We have examined PCNA levels in neuroblastomas in relation to N- myc gene amplification and tumor stage. Statistically, significantly higher levels of PCNA were observed in tumors with an amplified N- myc gene relative to tumors with a single gene copy. The highest levels of PCNA were observed in advanced stage tumors with an amplified N- myc gene. Treatment of neuroblastoma cells in culture with retinoic acid, which induces differentiation, resulted in a substantial decrease in PCNA. Our results suggest that PCNA levels may reflect differences in proliferative activity between neuroblastomas, related to stage of the disease and to N- myc gene copy number.[/p ]Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/42581/1/10585_2004_Article_BF00880069.pd