In five days, Oasis Management raised its stake from 8.86% to 10%. The activist hedge fund is tightening its grip on KADOKAWA, the Japanese entertainment empire behind FromSoftware and Elden Ring. Meanwhile Oasis is pushing for board seats at Nidec, and US fund ValueAct has boosted its MoneyForward stake to 14.39%. Activist investing in Japan is entering a new phase.

This article is a follow-up to our previous coverage of Oasis's initial 8.86% stake in KADOKAWA.

Oasis Raises KADOKAWA Stake to 10%

On March 24, 2026, a regulatory filing with Japan's Kanto Local Finance Bureau revealed that Hong Kong-based hedge fund Oasis Management has increased its stake in KADOKAWA Corporation (TSE: 9468) to 10%. The fund now holds approximately 14.89 million shares worth roughly $300 million, up from 8.86% reported just five days earlier on March 19.

The stated investment purpose remains "portfolio investment and important proposal activities", the same language that signals an activist is preparing to push for corporate changes.

The market reacted swiftly. Even as Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 plunged 1,857 points on March 23 amid Middle East tensions and rising interest rate fears, KADOKAWA bucked the trend with an 8.06% gain to ¥3,389 ($22.60). The stock continued rising for a third consecutive day as investors anticipated that activist pressure could force meaningful reform at the media conglomerate.

Two 10% Shareholders, Two Very Different Agendas

Oasis's increased stake brings it to parity with Sony Group, which acquired its roughly 10% stake in KADOKAWA through a strategic capital alliance in late 2024, investing approximately $335 million.

But the two shareholders could hardly be more different in their objectives. Sony is a strategic partner seeking to leverage KADOKAWA's vast IP portfolio, including FromSoftware's games, anime studios, and light novel publishing, through its global distribution infrastructure like Crunchyroll and PlayStation. Oasis, as an activist investor with a well-documented track record of aggressive campaigns at Japanese companies, is likely focused on improving capital efficiency, shareholder returns, and corporate governance.

KADOKAWA management now faces the delicate task of satisfying a strategic partner focused on long-term content growth and an activist focused on near-term financial performance, simultaneously.

Why KADOKAWA Is Vulnerable

Oasis's interest in KADOKAWA is no mystery. The company is projecting a 34% decline in net profit for the fiscal year ending March 2026, down to approximately ¥4.9 billion ($33 million), marking four consecutive years of declining earnings. Weak domestic print book sales have dragged down the publishing division, and the company is reviewing its title lineup and pricing strategy.

Yet underneath the struggling financials sits an enormously valuable IP empire. FromSoftware's Elden Ring has sold over 25 million copies worldwide. KADOKAWA operates multiple anime studios, publishes some of Japan's most popular light novels and manga, and runs educational technology businesses. For an activist investor, the gap between poor financial execution and rich underlying assets is exactly the kind of opportunity that justifies a multi-hundred-million-dollar bet.

Oasis's Other Target: Nidec

KADOKAWA is just one front in Oasis's Japan campaign. On March 11, it emerged that Oasis holds 6.74% of Nidec Corporation (formerly Nippon Densan, known globally for its electric motors and precision components). It had been buying on and off market since the start of the year through March 4, spending roughly ¥178.3 billion (about $1.19 billion), the largest single investment in Oasis's history.

In a statement, Oasis said Nidec's technological edge, broad customer base and global footprint mean the current share price is deeply undervalued relative to intrinsic value.

Two days later, Oasis CIO Seth Fischer publicly announced that the fund had nominated a board director candidate at Nidec, declaring that "truly independent outside directors are needed" at a company rocked by an accounting fraud scandal. Fischer emphasized that the proposed candidate has strong accounting expertise, a pointed message to a company under investigation by a third-party committee over financial irregularities.

According to reporting by Toyo Keizai, analysts have raised the possibility that other activist funds may follow Oasis into Nidec, potentially creating a multi-front activist pressure campaign similar to what preceded Toshiba's eventual delisting and privatization.

ValueAct Expands MoneyForward Position to 14.39%

The activist surge in Japan isn't limited to Oasis. On March 24, 2026, filings revealed that U.S.-based ValueAct Capital raised its stake in MoneyForward Inc. (TSE: 3994) from 9.53% to 14.39%. MoneyForward is Japan's leading cloud accounting and fintech SaaS provider, serving small and medium businesses, accounting firms, and financial institutions.

ValueAct first disclosed a 5.62% position in MoneyForward in July 2025, and has steadily increased its holdings since. Unlike Oasis's confrontational style, ValueAct is known as a "collaborative activist" that works with management teams from the inside. The fund's track record includes successful engagements at Microsoft (where it helped catalyze the CEO transition from Steve Ballmer to Satya Nadella), Olympus, and Salesforce.

For MoneyForward, ValueAct's deep experience with U.S. SaaS companies could prove practically valuable as the Japanese fintech scales its operations and pursues margin improvements.

Why Japan, Why Now

The surge in activist investing in Japan is no accident. It's the product of structural reforms that have fundamentally changed the rules of engagement between shareholders and corporations.

In March 2023, the Tokyo Stock Exchange took the unprecedented step of publicly pressuring listed companies trading below a price-to-book ratio (PBR) of 1.0, meaning the market valued them at less than their net asset value, to disclose concrete plans for improvement. At the time, roughly half of all listed Japanese companies fell below this threshold, compared to just 5% in the United States.

By January 2026, the TSE escalated further, publicly releasing the details of each company's PBR improvement plans in a searchable spreadsheet format, enabling direct peer comparison. A Nomura Research Institute report quoted one activist fund describing the TSE as "Japan's most powerful activist, functioning as the primary catalyst for reform."

The numbers tell the story: shareholder proposals at Japanese annual general meetings hit a record 113 companies in 2024, with activist-led proposals accounting for 59. Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has also signaled support for unsolicited acquisitions, and a major revision to Japan's tender offer and large shareholding disclosure rules is set to take effect in May 2026.

What Makes Japanese Stocks Attractive to Activists

For foreign investors, Japan represents a unique combination of undervalued assets and improving governance infrastructure.

Japanese companies have historically held excess cash reserves, a rational strategy during three decades of deflation, but one that depresses return on equity (ROE) well below global standards. The average ROE for Japanese companies still lags behind the U.S. and Europe, and roughly 40% of listed companies have ROE below the international benchmark of 8%.

The post-TSE-reform era has changed the calculus. Companies are now actively announcing dividend increases, share buybacks, and sales of cross-shareholdings. For activists, this means Japanese companies are finally becoming responsive to the same capital efficiency arguments that have driven shareholder value in Western markets for decades, but the transformation is still in its early innings, creating ample room for further improvement.

Whether the approach is Oasis-style confrontation or ValueAct-style collaboration, the thesis is the same: Japanese companies hold enormous latent value that better governance and capital allocation can unlock.

What Happened Next: 10% Was a Waypoint

The 10% this article reported turned out to be a staging post.

The buying did not stop. A filing on March 26 put the stake at 11.85% (17,655,800 shares, ¥53.6 billion), and on March 27 KADOKAWA announced that Oasis had become its largest shareholder with 11.89% of voting rights. The "two 10% shareholders standing side by side" framing lasted a few days.

A March 30 filing took it to 13.76% (20,500,400 shares). A June 23 filing took it to 15.25% (22,715,600 shares). Three months after the first report at 8.86%, Oasis was at 15.25%.

The wording changed too. The stated purpose moved from "portfolio investment and material proposal actions" to "improving medium- to long-term corporate value, improving the effectiveness of the board, and maintaining and improving corporate governance." The filing spelled out that Oasis may make proposals on appointing and dismissing directors, changing the composition of the board, business transfers, dividend policy, and capital policy. It also said it may raise its stake by a further 5% or more depending on market conditions.

And at KADOKAWA's annual general meeting on June 24, 2026, Oasis filed a shareholder proposal to remove the company's president. What this article described as an intent to make proposals arrived, three months later, in the most direct form available.

What Comes Next

The convergence of Oasis's escalating KADOKAWA stake, its Nidec governance campaign, and ValueAct's deepening MoneyForward investment within a single two-week period signals that activist investing in Japan has entered a new phase.

For KADOKAWA specifically, the question is whether Oasis will push for changes that improve financial performance without undermining the creative independence that makes FromSoftware, KADOKAWA's anime studios, and its light novel publishing empire so valuable. The lesson of Nintendo, which famously ignored Oasis's 2013 advice and went on to launch the wildly successful Switch, is that shareholder pressure and creative excellence don't always point in the same direction.

For Japan's corporate landscape more broadly, the question is whether this wave of activism will accelerate the ongoing governance revolution or provoke a backlash from companies seeking to protect long-term strategies from short-term demands.

In Japan, opinions on activist investors are deeply divided. Some see them as essential agents of change in a corporate culture that has too long prioritized stability over shareholder value. Others worry that short-term profit pressure will erode the long-term creative investments that make Japanese companies, from game studios to anime producers to precision manufacturers, globally distinctive. What's the view in your country? Are activist investors a force for good, or a threat to long-term value creation? We'd love to hear your take.

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