National, Tokyo governments seeking ¥700 billion valuation for Tokyo Metro IPO

This is a pure sell-off of Japan’s asset to large foreign investors. Raising funds to repay the government bonds? Nonsense. Old bonds can be refinanced just by issuing new bonds. That’s what other countries do.

Totally agree. This is greed by the ultra wealthy at the expense of the Japanese people who paid for it and are still paying for it.

who funded the tokyo underground railway company?

Expect ticket price increases!

The Tokyo government holds the remaining 46.6% of the subway operator.

Hopefully the money will go somewhere useful!

The plutocracy at work in this country yet again. Privatisation has been a failure everywhere else it's been done. What could possibly go wrong!

Excellent news indeed. New ownership is always good. It freshens things up.

JR was privatised 37 years ago.

I haven't noticed a fare spike or decrease in service since.

Agreed. This is responsible attitude. Paying the bills instead of asking for new bonds to cover the old ones as some governments do (I'm thinking of France for example), pushing the problem to next people or even generations...

I haven't noticed a fare spike or decrease in service since.

Are you even in Japan? The issue of decreased service and its implications has been discussed by more than a few Japanese academics in the past few years. JR needs to be re nationalised. Especially since entire communities reply on having trains come at regular intervals. Remove the service and basically the community dies.

06:58 pm JST

The plutocracy at work in this country yet again. Privatisation has been a failure everywhere else it's been done. What could possibly go wrong!

Do you think the privatization of JR was a failure? Everyone recognizes that the Japanese train system is probably the best in the world.

On the other hand, take a public company like SNCF in France. It is a disaster, with 20% of trains being late and very frequent strikes, especially during school holidays when people want to travel!

that’s more from a vastly different work ethic and culture and less about the financial structure.

Commuters can look forward to tasty 50% annual ticket price increase thanks to their new investor overlords.

RakurakuAug. 19  07:54 pm JST

06:58 pm JST

The plutocracy at work in this country yet again. Privatisation has been a failure everywhere else it's been done. What could possibly go wrong!

Do you think the privatization of JR was a failure? Everyone recognizes that the Japanese train system is probably the best in the world.

Rakuraku, do you know why it worked? All the debt due to track construction is held by the government. They essentially got free tracks to start collecting profit.

Meiyouwenti

I guarantee no assets will leave their assigned locations. Stocks are a way to raise money for the company and it does not matter who buys, the best they will get is a dividend for their loans to the entity.

factchecker

Name one company that was privatized that has not done better for it. ONE will do.