Sumitomo Corp. shares posted their biggest fall in almost two decades Tuesday after the trading house said it lost $2.2 billion on investments, including Texas shale oil and Australian coal mining.
The 13 percent drop is the biggest intraday fall since June 1996, the month Sumitomo announced that its chief copper trader, Yasuo Hamanaka, had lost about $2.6 billion in illicit trades of the metal in one of the largest ever commodities trading scandals.
Sumitomo's writedown could see it slash its second-half dividend to a fifth of the payout it forecast earlier this year as one of Japan's oldest trading houses hunkers down after another miscue in its resources investments. Chief Executive Officer Kuniharu Nakamura had said in May that the company planned more forays into commodity assets.