July 21, 2007 (LPAC) - Japanese courts have now jailed the two leading Japanese advocates of "shareholder activism," which refers to the hedge fund practice of buying shares of a company and using money and influence to steal the company blind. Yoshiaki Murakami was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison (harsh by Japanese standards), and fined. Murakami's MAC Asset Management was convicted of conniving with the other famous Japanese locust, Takafumi Horie's Livedor, (Horie was sentenced to 2 1/2 years earlier this year) in an illegal effort to take over Nippon Broadcasting.

The harsh sentences "reflect a crackdown in Japan on the more free-wheeling, Western style of capitalism pioneered by brash financiers such as Murakami," notes AFP. Japan Times reports that these cases are also aimed at the foreign hedge funds that have invaded Japan, such as Warren Lichtenstein's Steel Partners, which have been facing a revolt by traditional Japanese business leaders to stop the extraction of value from their companies and to stop further takeovers. When Steel Partners brought suit, demanding they be allowed to loot at will on the "free market," the courts defended the measures used by Japanese businesses to defend themselves and to stop the locusts.