A rare family feud erupted in a Japanese shareholders meeting on Friday, when the chief executive of Otsuka Kagu Ltd defeated her father's attempt to oust her, vowing to push ahead with her plan to take the furniture retailer more mass-market. "I am sorry that things have come to this," Kumiko Otsuka, 47, coolly told shareholders in the meeting, in which she instructed her father, company founder and chairman Katsuhisa Otsuka, and her mother to identify themselves by name and shareholder number. The daughter overcame the chairman's challenge by an undisclosed majority vote. "I had five children," the father said from the audience as he pleaded with shareholders to back his return as CEO. "Kumiko was the first and she was a difficult birth." Kumiko's mother also gave a rambling speech criticising the CEO, until another shareholder yelled at her to stop. The Otsuka family showdown - virtually unheard of in Japan's highly scripted shareholders' meetings - is Japan's first major proxy battle since the country adopted corporate governance guidelines in time for this year's annual general meetings. They require institutional investors to reveal how they vote.
