West Japan Railway

JR-West was incorporated as a business corporation on April 1, 1987 as part of the breakup of the state-owned Japanese National Railways . Initially, it was a wholly owned subsidiary of the JNR Settlement Corporation , a special company created to hold the assets of the former JNR while they were shuffled among the new JR companies.

For the first four years of its existence, JR-West leased its highest-revenue line, the Sany? Shinkansen, from the separate Shinkansen Holding Corporation. JR-West purchased the line in October 1991 at a cost of 974.1 billion JPY in long-term debt.JNRSC sold 68.3% of JR-West in an initial public offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in October 1996. After JNRSC was dissolved in October 1998, its shares of JR-West were transferred to the government-owned Japan Railway Construction Public Corporation , which merged into the Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency as part of a bureaucratic reform package in October 2003. JRTT offered all of its shares in JR-West to the public in an international IPO in 2004, ending the era of government ownership of JR-West. JR-West is now listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Nagoya Stock Exchange, Osaka Securities Exchange and Fukuoka Stock Exchange.