Japan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has said that the way Canon purchased Japanese industrial conglomerate Toshiba's Medical Systems division may have violated the law -- but the deal can go ahead anyway, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
Canon paid the more than $6 billion purchase price upfront, but it didn't immediately receive shares in the unit, instead receiving warrants that entitled it to the shares once the transaction was approved by regulators, the WSJ said.
The Japanese FTC said this arrangement dodged the law by completing the transaction first and notifying regulators after the fact.
The commission's mergers-and-acquisitions director, Takeshi Shinagawa, said this is the first time this technique has been used in Japan, and there is no clear rule against it. But he warned that the practice is unacceptable and that any similar future transactions could be subject to criminal complaint, according to the WSJ.
The WSJ article can be found here.
