Mizuho Securities Co.

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Mizuho Securities Co., Ltd. (みずほ証券株式会社, Mizuho Shōken Kabushiki-gaisha^?) is the brokerage arm of Mizuho Financial Group.

On 8 December 2005 an order from Mizuho Securitites Co. to sell 1 share of J-Com Co at 610,000 yen was mistakenly entered as a sale of 610,000 shares at 1 yen. Problems at the Tokyo Stock Exchange meant that Mizuho securities were unable to cancel the order for 10 minutes and in the meantime traders from domestic and international investment banks bought large amounts of the wrongly priced shares. Mizuho Securities lost about $347 million on the mistake.

The error, and particularly the Tokyo Stock Exchange's perceived poor handling of it, raised some questions about Japan's readiness to deal with the increasingly complex financial markets.

Although they were not forced to do so, around 50 firms agreed to hand back their profits, but apparently there are still almost the same amount of firms again who are holding out. To date, around $171m in profits have been donated to the TSE fund, and although some of the shortfall went in tax, transaction and other fees, it is thought that a number of Japanese brokerage firms and individual investors have refused to play the game. Some are thought, however, to have donated their profits to charity.

According to the Financial Times, German giant Deutsche Bank is among the hold-outs, having apparently still not decided what to do.

[edit] See also

• Mizuho Financial Group
• Primary dealers

[edit] External link

• Mizuho Securities