Anonymous ID: 495bf6 Nov. 9, 2023, 9:39 a.m. No.19887694   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>7754 >>8055 >>8207 >>8257

Fired Softbank workers accused of defrauding investors

 

Tokyo police arrested two former Softbank Corp. employees and another man on suspicion of amassing 1.2 billion yen ($7.9 million) through a fraudulent investment scheme using the telecom giant’s name. The Metropolitan Police Department apprehended Ryo Shimizu, 47, Kengo Masuda, 42, and Shingo Morita, 41, on Nov. 8. “We regard this as an extremely malicious act and a serious matter,” Softbank said in a statement. “We have been fully cooperating with the investigation and will continue to do so.”

The three suspects are accused of inviting around 20 investors to Softbank’s Tokyo headquarters between January and March 2022 to solicit short-term loans for a 9.6-billion-yen project purportedly to update computer systems at the company’s domestic outlets. One of the investors, a company owner in his 30s, made seven payments totaling 1.2 billion yen for the project that promised a 20-percent yield. The suspects are also believed to have bilked 100 million yen from other participants. The project, according to investigators, was fake. Police have not disclosed whether the three have admitted to or denied the allegations. SoftBank dismissed Shimizu and Masuda in October 2022 after the allegations came to light.

Shimizu, from Tokyo’s Itabashi Ward, was in charge of the company’s digital transformation team, while Masuda, from Hyogo Prefecture, led a smaller team under Shimizu.

Morita, from Tokyo’s Minato Ward, is a former apparel company president who currently works in the sex industry.

https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/15052477

Anonymous ID: 495bf6 Nov. 9, 2023, 10:26 a.m. No.19887897   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>8055 >>8207 >>8257

Japanese Funds Buy Most US Debt in Half Year, Pressuring Yen

 

(Lather,rinse, repeat….take a look at long term chart to show where it’s heading and what levels we are passing over multiple decades)

 

Funds based in Japan purchased a net ¥3.31 trillion ($22 billion) of Treasuries in September while they sold debt in most other sovereign markets tracked by the Ministry of Finance, according to data released Thursday.

Yields on US 10-year Treasuries climbed 46 basis points during the month to finish at 4.57%, compared with an increase of 12.5 basis points to 0.765% for the Japanese equivalent. US yields have fallen sharply in recent sessions to leave them lower than end-September while Japanese rates have risen, but there’s still a gap of more than 3.5 percentage points. “The US yield rose significantly during the month to a level attractive for Japanese investors and accelerated their purchases,” said Tsuyoshi Ueno, senior economist at NLI Research Institute in Tokyo. “It was a month of funds shifting to the US as speculation grew that the US will keep borrowing costs higher for longer. There’s the risk that the yen may appreciate, but the US yield offers quite a lot of buffer against it.”

Global investors are closely watching whether Japanese funds will bring back their cash to the home market, unloading securities from Treasuries to European and Australian debt in the process, as speculation grows that the central bank is poised to end its super-easy monetary policy soon. The latest data indicate though that the wide yield gap with the US is still luring Japanese investors into American debt: they’ve been net buyers of sovereign bonds from the world’s biggest economy every month in 2023 except April and July.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-09/japanese-funds-buy-most-us-debt-in-half-year-pressuring-yen#xj4y7vzkg

https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/currency