MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.02 percent in early trade in Asia. Australian shares were 0.5 percent higher, while Seoul's Kospi <.HS11> was down 0.5 percent after hitting three-month highs on Thursday. Japan's Nikkei stock index gained 1.1 percent, putting it within sight of a 2018 high of 24,129.34 points on Jan. 23. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.21 percent to 26,439.93 on Thursday, the S&P 500 gained 0.28 percent to 2,914 and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.65 percent to 8,041.97.
TOKYO: Japanese regulators are starting to look into underwriting practices in the nation’s corporate bond market, where banks routinely say deals are successful even in cases when they are under-subscribed.
The move suggests that the potential damage to some investors in Japan’s 76 trillion yen (US$669bil) company note market is getting too big for the government to ignore. Bloomberg reported last month that underwriters in Japan failed to fully sell at least 29% of corporate debt offerings in September, twice the average over six months, based on interviews with investors, underwriters and issuers.
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