Financial Services Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa will seek U.S. and British cooperation on a survey of securities analysts being planned by Japanese financial regulators, during a visit to the two countries, a Japanese official said Sunday.
In early September, the Financial Services Agency plans to examine the practices of securities analysts to determine whether they are analyzing corporations in a fair and objective manner, a senior FSA official said.
"We have no intention of blocking free and open analyses," the official said on condition of anonymity. "This is a step intended to help promote fair and objective analyses."
FSA Commissioner Shoji Mori has said the survey will focus on any practices that violate the self-governing rules set by the Security Analysts Association of Japan. Mori also said the FSA will ask the association to review the existing rules to see if they are sufficient.
The FSA last month ordered ING Barings' Tokyo branch to improve its operations after one of its analysts published a report on Daiwa Bank based on incorrect financial data. The report encouraged investors to sell shares of Daiwa, and the branch reportedly profited on its own trading of the shares before the report was issued.
The results of the survey will be presented to the International Organization of Securities Commissions at an IOSCO meeting in Istanbul next May so that they can be used to map out international rules of conduct for securities analysts, according to Mori.