In January, after long ignoring complaints from shareholders, Fuji TV unveiled a plan to streamline its two-way shareholding arrangement with NBS by paying up to ¥171 billion ($1.6 billion) for control of NBS, which also has a 22.5% stake in Fuji TV.
To kickstart talks about this, it arranged to "borrow", for up to five years, a 13.9% stake that NBS holds in Fuji TV.Livedoor started this takeover drama by quickly buying up a huge stake in NBS, which tried to thwart him by issuing equity warrants and diluting his shares.
In 2006 a book published by the OECD argued emphatically that China's national accounts are inevitably "wrong", in that they are forced to plump for one of a range of plausible figures, but that they are not politically manipulated.But the NBS does not make it easy for independent outsiders to cross-check their work.
By gobbling up shares in after-hours trading, Mr Horie was able quickly to bypass reporting rules and amass a big stake in Fuji TV's subsidiary, Nippon Broadcasting System (NBS), acquiring more than half of the voting rights.
Minority investors in Fuji TV had complained for years about its cross-shareholding arrangement with NBS, and yet were rudely ignored.
As NBS owns 22.5% of Fuji TV, this has raised the spectre of Livedoor using its NBS beachhead to mount an assault on Fuji TV itself.
In fact, according to the NBS, it was 9.5%, a significant upturn from the third quarter's 9.1%.The bureau put a brave face on the figures, attributing the quickened pace of growth at the end of last year to stronger than expected performances in agriculture and services the parts of the economy China still wants to boost.
In 1995, in light of findings from the first service-sector census, China (in a break from tradition) revised its GDP growth figure for the previous year from 11.8% to 12.6%.According to the latest NBS figures, service industries last year accounted for nearly 32% of GDP, only about the same as ten years ago.
Although streets are festooned with billboards and red banners calling on citizens to comply with the census, Mr Li admits that some businesses, particularly smaller ones, are unwilling to reveal data for fear they might be leaked to the tax authorities (regulations supposedly prohibit the NBS from doing this).
That ratio has now fallen to 3.03, according to today's NBS figures (see chart).The migrants who cross from the countryside to the city are also enjoying healthy gains in wages.
Judging by the NBS figures, it increased by about 3.45m in 2011.
