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Seibu Holdings

Japanese comglomerate

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ11628893
Source-derived summary

Seibu Holdings Inc. (株式会社西武ホールディングス, Kabushiki-gaisha Seibu Hōrudingusu) is a Japanese multinational holding company that primarily owns Seibu Railway, Prince Hotels, and Seibu Bus and its subsidiaries, which are collectively known as the Seibu Group (西武グループ, Seibu Gurūpu). In total, fifty-three companies across the world are affiliated with the Seibu Group. The company was formed in 2006 to restructure the group after it had come to light in 2004 that the predecessor to Seibu Holdings, Kokudo, had falsified the ownership of its shares in Seibu Railway for over forty years.

As of January 2015, Seibu Holdings' share prices exceed ¥2900 and the company has the highest market capitalization of any Japanese company which owns a private rail network.

History

In 2004, the Seibu Group collapsed due to the revelation that the head of Kokudo (the predecessor of Seibu Holdings), Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, had falsified financial statements for over forty years. The scandal, which involved falsifying the ownership of Kokudo's share holdings in Seibu Railway, was compounded by the increased competition faced by Prince Hotels in the hotel and leisure market as well as an additional pay-off scandal involving a corporate racketeer. Seibu Railway was consequently delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange in December 2004 after shares fell to ¥400 from a peak of ¥8000. As a response to this, Seibu Holdings was founded on February 3, 2006, with the aim of restructuring the group following an investment of ¥100 billion from the American private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. Tsutsumi, having pleaded guilty to the fraud charges in 2005, retained a 5% stake in Seibu Holdings having previously owned a 36% stake in Kokudo.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Seibu Holdings” as japanese comglomerate. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Seibu, Holdings and Japanese.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2006, 2004, 2015, 2005—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2006-02-03. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Seibu, Holdings and Japanese providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Seibu Holdings”, the useful work is to connect “japanese comglomerate” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11628893. VIAF identifies the subject as 9156312434002081588. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2004, 2015 and 2005.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Seibu Holdings” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.