As Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings seeks an alliance to reorganize JERA through equal investment with Chubu Electric Power, the names of foreign funds have emerged, putting Japan's restrictions on foreign investment in the electricity industry and the current financial burden in focus. The funds' intentions to invest and the limitations of the current legal framework are under scrutiny.
TEPCO Holdings' Fifth Comprehensive Special Business Plan, announced in January 2026, reconfirmed the company's aim of strengthening its financial base and accelerating business restructuring. Although progress has been made toward restarting the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, total compensation, decommissioning and decontamination costs are expected to reach ¥23.4 trillion, with TEPCO Holdings' share amounting to approximately ¥17 trillion.
Customer outflows to new electricity providers have continued even after retail liberalization, and TEPCO Energy Partner's revenue declined year on year through the first quarter of fiscal 2031. Free cash flow has remained negative since fiscal 2018, and the Fifth Comprehensive Special Business Plan calls for approximately ¥3.1 trillion in cost reductions and the sale of approximately ¥200 billion of assets within 3 years to raise funds.
In addition to SoftBank and Japan Industrial Partners, potential alliance partners include the US funds KKR, BlackRock and Blackstone. The focus is on the situation in which foreign investment is considered difficult because of restrictions under the Foreign Exchange Law, and how those restrictions would actually be applied.
The plan assumes that TEPCO Holdings will bear the full ¥4 trillion cost of decontamination, while proceeds from the sale of shares held by the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation are envisioned as a funding source. Given the corporation's actual 54.75% ownership stake, the scale of the company's market capitalization is a key issue.