In the report submitted by the Japanese Ministry of Finance, it was shown that the Saudi Arabian government investment company Public Investment Fund (PIF) purchased about 6.5 million shares of the game company Nintendo, accounting for 5.01% of the company’s overall shares, making it the company’s fifth largest. shareholder.
The Financial Services Agency of Japan’s Ministry of Finance disclosed the shareholding status of major shareholders of large listed companies through its EDINET system, which revealed that PIF purchased 6,509,100 shares equivalent to 5.01% of Nintendo’s issued shares. According to the information in the report, the total price of the shares purchased by the PIF fund this time is about 410 billion yen (about 25.074 billion Hong Kong dollars).
▲Image source: EDINET
In addition to Nintendo, the report also noted that PIF owns 5% each of Japanese game companies Capcom, Koei Tecmo, and Tokyo-listed South Korean game company Nexon.
It is said that PIF has been buying stocks of game companies based in Japan, which is a concern for Japanese-made game content. The foreign media “Bloomberg” quoted an analyst in the game industry of Toyo Securities as saying that Saudi Arabia is promoting the game industry, and it is estimated that this series of investments is preparing to learn from Japanese companies. The weaker yen is also favorable for foreign consortia to invest in Japanese companies.
The founder and current CEO of PIF, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, loves Japanese games and animation very much. The game company EGDC, also owned by Prince Salman, announced in November 2020 that it has purchased a large number of games from Japanese game company SNK. The stock, by April 2022, the game company already owns 96.18% of SNK. In addition, he also owns the stocks of Activision Blizzard, EA, Take-Two and other game companies, with a total amount of 3.3 billion US dollars (about 25.9 billion Hong Kong dollars).
Source: Financial Times
