The caretaker administrator of Nova Corp. announced Tuesday that they had started negotiations with three firms–one based in Tokyo and two in Osaka–to become corporate sponsors as part of efforts to rehabilitate the failed English conversation school chain operator.
The administrator said he hoped to be able to choose a corporate sponsor next week.
One of the firms showed serious interest in taking over Nova’s operations in their entirety, he said.
The firm reportedly has agreed to hire Nova employees and foreign instructors, as well as accept students.
The three firms, however, did not include leading conversation school chain Aeon Co. or IT firm Rakuten Inc., both of which had initially been regarded as firms likely to support Nova’s rehabilitation.
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Sahashi, firm see drop in shares
Recently fired Nova Corp. President Nozomu Sahashi and a company with close ties to him, formerly the two largest shareholders in the English conversation school chain operator that filed for court protection on Friday, saw sharp declines in their shares of the Osaka-based school operator, Nova announced Tuesday.
Nova Kikaku, the Osaka-based company with ties to Sahashi, who was dismissed Thursday, had fallen from its place as the firm’s largest shareholder to its third-largest shareholder as of Sept. 30. The company owned 36.58 percent of outstanding voting shares of Nova as of March 31. But the shares declined to 3.75 percent as of Sept. 30.
Meanwhile, Sahashi’s stake in Nova dropped from 36.11 percent to 16.27 percent.
