| The Director-General of Kinki Local Finance Bureau conducted the 
                inspection of Ichiyoshi Securities Co. (Ichiyoshi) based on the 
                provisions of Securities and Exchange Law (SEL) and found legal 
                violations described below.
 The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission (SESC) sent 
                recommendation to the Minister of Finance to take disciplinary 
                action against Ichiyoshi pursuant to Article 19 1) of Ministry 
                of Finance Establishment Law on April 17, 1998. (Counter bucketing and bucketing) On January 24, 1996, Ichiyoshi received a request from a financial 
                corporate customer for transactions to realize unrealized gains, 
                which were executed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (sale by customer, 
                purchase by Ichiyoshi on his own account, 700,000 shares). However, in return transactions on said stock exchange (purchase 
                by customer, sale by Ichiyoshi) on the following day, because 
                of purchase orders of others, all limit purchase orders of the 
                customer could not be executed at the previous day's executions 
                price and 10,000 shares were left undone. In this events, the vice-chief of equity division who was in 
                charge of placing orders thought it difficult for said order to 
                be executed at said price under the bull market, and then he received 
                from the customer the correction order from limit order on the 
                Tokyo Stock Exchange to market order on the Osaka Securities Exchange. 
                However, he did not place the order on the Osaka Securities Exchange 
                immediately to see how the market is going for a while, and what 
                make it worse, the price was rising more just before the closing. Thus the vice-chief directly transferred said 10,000 listed shares 
                from its own account to the customer's instead of purchasing via 
                stock exchanges. (violation of SEL Article 47 and 1291)) |