In anticipation of the scheduled government
deregulation of brokerage commissions later this year, Japanese securities
firms are increasingly looking to the Internet as a means of decreasing
stock trading costs and increasing revenues.
Last week saw reports that two major securities firms and electronics giant
Sony will each launch a joint-venture Internet brokerage, joining the 22
brokerage services already online.
Nikko Securities,
Japan’s No. 2 securities firm, intends to set up a
separate unit, tentatively named Nikko Online Securities, that will
specialize in Internet stock trading.
Nikko has not officially announced details of the planned venture, but
according to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan’s leading financial daily, the
firm will team up with a systems-development company founded by former
Charles Schwab & Co. president Timothy McCarthy.
The new company will be established in May, with the Nikko Securities group
taking at least a 50 percent share. Operations will start on October 1, when
commission fees on stock transactions are to be fully liberalized.
While fees on stock transactions of more than 50 million yen (US$424
thousand) were deregulated last year, securities firms must currently charge
mandated commissions on trades of less than that amount.
Sony Corp. apparently plans to
leverage its electronics expertise and
household name status to launch a 50:50 Internet brokerage joint venture
with Oki Matsumoto, an advisor at Goldman, Sachs & Co., who will also serve
as the firm’s president.
This venture, too, is set to start operations on October 1.
Meanwhile, Japan’s third-largest securities firm, Daiwa Securities,
reportedly intends to join seven other firms, including major US online
brokerage DLJdirect Inc. and four Sumitomo group companies, in a joint
venture online brokerage.
Tokyo-based DLJdirect SFG Securities
Inc., may begin operations as early as
June.
Nomura Securities, Japan’s largest
brokerage, operates an online system
called HomeTrade
for individual investors. Nomura reports that the number of
active HomeTrade accounts has grown by over 230 percent in the past two
years.
But it is second-tier player Matsui
Securities that some analysts see as the
dark horse in the online trading sweepstakes. Matsui currently has just
3,500 accounts on its 10-month-old Netstock online trading system, but aims
to eventually eliminate its branches and marketing staff and specialize in
discount online brokerage services.
In mid-March, Matsui expanded server capacity and added new hardware to more
than triple Netstock’s order-processing capacity. When commission fees are
deregulated on October 1, the company may cut its transaction fees by up to
70 percent in an attempt to lure individual investors to Netstock.
The total number of online stock trading accounts in Japan is very small,
probably less than 45,000. But there are optimistic predictions that the
market could grow ten-fold within a year.
“I’d agree with estimates that put the total number of online accounts at
around 400,000 by the end of this year,” said Sadakazu Ohsaki, a senior
economist with Nomura Research Institute.
To reach this level, however, Internet-based brokerages will have to
overcome some hurdles. Although Japan’s population has been characterized
technology-savvy and investment-hungry, few individuals are making use of
online financial services.
A Dentsu survey released in
February found that while 65 percent of frequent
Internet were knew about the online services offered by securities houses
and investment trust companies, only 3 percent had utilized such a service.
With the cost of a daytime local phone call running 200 yen (US$1.70) per
hour, furthermore, it seems unlikely that individual online “day trading” of
stocks will catch on in Japan as it has in the US.
