Feb 24, 2012
--- Japan's financial regulator halted operations of a
Tokyo money-management company after finding it allegedly lost billions of
dollars in client money. ---
In
one of the biggest cases of its kind in Japan, the regulator said,
investigators found that AIJ Investment Advisors Co. cannot account for
"most of" the Y183 billion, or about $2.3 billion, in pension-fund
assets under management, Dow Jones Newswires reports. The money belongs
to a mostly still unidentified range of Japanese companies. Microchip testing
equipment maker Advantest Corp. (6857.TO) and industrial robot maker Yaskawa
Electric Corp. (6506.TO) confirmed they placed pension money with AIJ, the news
report said.
Financial
Services Minister Shozaburo Jimi said at a news conference in the capital that
the regulator, the Financial Services Agency (FSA), will now scrutinize
operations at all 263 investment management firms in business in Japan as a
direct result of the AIJ investigation.
According
to Dow Jones Newswires, the FSA said securities investigators have been
probing 120 cases involving AIJ clients since January, but with the
investigation still taking place, they couldn't comment on details, including
why the money was missing, nor the exact amount of losses found. The agency
ordered the firm to suspend operations for a month.
Phone
calls to AIJ's office in central Tokyo were automatically routed to an
answering machine asking callers to try again later. Sei Takahashi, a lawyer
and representative for AIJ, declined to comment on the missing
funds.
"We
are not in a position to provide a detailed explanation since the SESC probe is
ongoing. We are cooperating with the authorities," he said.
FSA officials
separately confirmed they are in contact with executives from the company as
investigators continue their inquiry.
A Yaskawa Electric spokesman described
the company's investments with AIJ as "very minor," accounting for
less than 2% of all its pension fund investments. In a statement, Advantest
said it has about Y1.7 billion in outstanding investments deposited with AIJ,
equal to about 8% of its total pension fund investments.
Rebecca Moore