戦後日本における生命保険会社の相互会社化

-コーポレート・ガバナンス構造の視点から-

抄録

In 1947, immediately after World War II, twelve Japanese life insurance companies reorganized themselves from stock concerns into mutual concerns. For example, in 1945 there were sixteen life insurance companies, of which thirteen were stock concerns and only three mutual concerns. Japanese life insurance companies converted their organizational structures into mutual concerns simultaneously after the war.
Why did major life insurance companies reorganize themselves into mutual concerns? One reason is the democratic influence of GHQ, which caused the reorganization. It is the purpose of this article to seek a more critical and fundamental reason.
The conclusions of this article can be summarized as follows : the corporate governance structure in Japan of the times caused them to reorganize. That is, in the chaos of the Japanese economy, (1) the power of the stockholders became weaker, (2) there was growing anxiety of strong labor movement, and (3) the new managements wanted to strengthen their positions. The life insurance companies tried to adapt themselves to such situations within the corporate governance structure of Japanese companies, and consequently they chose to reorganize as mutual concern. Moreover the Japanese government set a deadline (March, 1948) for reorganization under the Financial Institutions Reconstruction and Reorganization Law. That is why all the companies reorganized simultaneously in 1947.
This article finds that the democratic influence of GHQ accelerated the Japanese life insurance companies' decision to reorganize as mutual concerns, and they had already started their reorganization under the new corporate governance structure.