Ousting Toshiba Chairman, Foreign Investors Score Breakthrough in Japan

While Japan’s corporations have long resisted the entreaties of activist shareholders, Toshiba had come under intense pressure after a series of scandals.

TOKYO — Shareholders of the scandal-plagued industrial giant Toshiba threw out the company’s board chairman on Friday, a breakthrough for foreign investors who have been pushing to make Japan’s insular corporations more transparent and accountable. The ouster of the chairman, Osamu Nagayama, 74, followed an investigation that revealed that top Toshiba executives had worked with the Japanese government to inappropriately pressure investors who sought to shake up the company’s management. The resulting scandal led to the resignation of the company’s chief executive and four board members. But Mr. Nagayama, who was not implicated in the investigation, had stayed on, arguing that he had a responsibility to clean up Toshiba’s governance.