Shares of major Japanese banks and brokerages jumped yesterday as investors cheered a global shopping spree by Tokyo’s financial giants in the wake of a historic Wall Street shake-up.
Nomura Holdings Inc, Japan’s biggest brokerage, said late on Tuesday it would buy Lehman Brothers’ operations in Europe and the Middle East, adding to the Asian operations it bought a day earlier from Lehman, which filed for bankruptcy last week.
Nomura’s shares jumped 5.2 percent to ¥1,505 (US$14.02), following a nearly 10 percent rise in the stock on Monday. Japanese markets were closed on Tuesday for a holiday.
Top Japanese bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc advanced 4.2 percent to ¥936 after it announced late on Monday that it had agreed to buy up to a 20 percent stake in US investment bank Morgan Stanley.
And Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc, Japan’s third-largest bank, added 1.2 percent to ¥684,000 on media reports yesterday that it was considering investing several hundred billion yen in Goldman Sachs.
Sumitomo Mitsui said no decision had been reached at this time and declined to elaborate.
The gains came as the overall Tokyo market edged higher; the benchmark Nikkei 225 index rose 0.2 percent.
Compared with their US counterparts, Japanese financial institutions have emerged from the subprime crisis relatively unscathed. Conservative lending strategies, as well as lessons learned from Japan’s financial crash of the 1990s, are now beginning to pay dividends, analysts say.
“The Japanese have recovered from their own debacle in the 1990s and early 2000s and now have reasonable amounts of capital but not domestic growth,” said David Threadgold, banking analyst at Fox-Pitt Kelton in Tokyo.
“The Americans have squandered unimaginable amounts of money and are now looking around the world at who can help fill the hole,” he said.
Nomura did not disclose a price tag for Lehman’s European assets, but its purchase of the investment bank’s Asian operations was valued at around US$225 million, one person familiar with the matter said on Monday.
Nomura CEO Kenichi Watanabe called the Asian purchase “a once in a generation opportunity” and said the two transactions would help Nomura realize its vision to be a world-class investment bank.
“Our ability to capitalize on this opportunity in spite of such volatile markets reflects our financial strength and demonstrates how well we have managed the credit crisis,” Watanabe said in a statement. “This deal is validation for our strategy.”
Taiwan aims to open 18 representative offices and seven Taiwan Tourism Information Centers worldwide by next year to attract international visitors, the Tourism Administration said on Saturday. The agency has so far opened three representative offices abroad this year and would open two more before the end of the year, it said. It has also already opened information centers in Jakarta, Mumbai and Paris, and is to open one in Vancouver next month and in Manila in December, it said. Next year, it would also open offices in Amsterdam, Dubai and Sydney, it added. While the Cabinet did not mention international tourists in its
EYES AT SEA: Many marine enthusiasts have expressed interest in volunteering for coastal patrols, which would help identify stowaways and illegal fishing, the CGA said Six thousand coastal patrol volunteers are to be recruited for 159 inspection offices to enhance the nation’s response to “gray zone” conflicts, Coast Guard Administration (CGA) sources said yesterday. Volunteer teams would be established to increase the resilience of coastal defense systems in the wake of two unlawful entries attempted by Chinese over the past three months, Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said. A former Chinese navy captain drove a motorboat into the Tamsui River (淡水河) in Taipei on the eve of the Dragon Boat Festival in June, while another Chinese man sailed in a rubber boat into the Houkeng
NEXT LEVEL: The defense ministry confirmed that a video released last month featured personnel piloting new FPV drone systems being developed by the Armaments Bureau Taipei and Washington are pushing for their drone companies to work together to establish a China-free supply chain, the Financial Times reported on Friday. A delegation of high-level executives and US government officials were yesterday to arrive in Taipei to discuss with their Taiwanese counterparts collaboration on drone technology procurement and development, the report said. The executives represent 26 US manufacturers of drone and counter-drone systems, while the officials are from the US Department of Commerce and the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit, along with Dev Shenoy, principal director for microelectronics in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense
‘ANONYMOUS 64’: A national security official said that it is an attempt by China to increase domestic anti-Taiwanese sentiment and inflame cross-strait tensions The Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM) yesterday denied accusations by China that it had undermined regional security by carrying out cyberattacks against targets in China, adding instead that Beijing was responsible for raising tensions and undermining regional peace. The Chinese Ministry of State Security on WeChat accused a hacker group called “Anonymous 64” of targeting China, Hong Kong and Macau starting earlier this year through frequent cyberattacks. The group carried out cyberattacks to seize control of Web sites, outdoor electronic billboards and video-on-demand platforms in China, Hong Kong and Macau, it said, adding the hackers’