Potential SBI TOB of Shinsei

[mighty58]

SBI seems to be making a move for Shinsei. This could get interesting to watch (especially as a Shinsei customer myself).

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Busine ... nder-offer

[RetireJapan]

One hopes they might improve customer service/products.

We'll see!

[fools_gold]

One hopes they might improve customer service/products.

You beat me to it! I gave up on them years ago, though my wife still uses her account to fund her iDeCo.

edit: This article in the FT gives a bit more detail https://www.ft.com/content/1a863d9d-b08 ... cd828aab75

[adamu]

More likely they'll just completely give up on English support

[JapaneseMike]

SBI seems to be making a move for Shinsei. This could get interesting to watch (especially as a Shinsei customer myself).

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Busine ... nder-offer

Honestly, with the interest rates where they are, and the client base that Shinsei has, I have to imagine they are selling at a discount to exit this market. They've been scaling back for years (English support I hear you say), so not entirely surprising.

Might be forced to do a google and pull up their company accounts to see what their balance sheet looks like

[Teflon]

More likely they'll just completely give up on English support

Yes! I was thinking the same. They're also going to take Shinsei's beautiful modern online banking site and turn it into a steaming pile of clunky 90s Netscape friendly crap. But hey, at least maybe I'll finally be able to link my Shinsei bank account with my SBI account. I can dream, right?

[Roger Van Zant]

SBI seems to be making a move for Shinsei. This could get interesting to watch (especially as a Shinsei customer myself).

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Busine ... nder-offer

Honestly, with the interest rates where they are, and the client base that Shinsei has, I have to imagine they are selling at a discount to exit this market. They've been scaling back for years (English support I hear you say), so not entirely surprising.

Might be forced to do a google and pull up their company accounts to see what their balance sheet looks like

You can't trust a Japanese company's balance sheet any more than you can trust its P & L statement. See : Olympus.

[beanhead]

You can't trust a Japanese company's balance sheet any more than you can trust its P & L statement. See : Olympus.

Bit of a general statement, isn't it? No financial scandals at British, companies, or US companies, ever...?

[Roger Van Zant]

You can't trust a Japanese company's balance sheet any more than you can trust its P & L statement. See : Olympus.

Bit of a general statement, isn't it? No financial scandals at British, companies, or US companies, ever...?

Of course, yes, there have been. But after huge accounting scandals in the US/UK (cases like Enron, World Com etc.), swathing new laws and regulations were brought in. Also, many of those involved received tough prison sentences. Nobody involved in the Olympus fraud received prison sentences (only slap-on-the-wrist suspended sentences, or fines amounting to me being fined 10,000 yen).

I believe structural reform of the above type is basically impossible in Japan, regardless of how many new laws are introduced. You would need to overhaul the way Japanese are raised to a fundamental degree, which will never happen. The bottom line is, in 99.9% of cases, a junior person in Japan will never blow the whistle on, or raise issues about, fraud or any breaches of fiduciary responsibility carried out by someone senior to them.

If the previous Olympus president had not been a "gaijin", we would never know to this day about the fraud that occurred.

[zeroshiki]

With that logic, why invest in the market at all? They might all be cooking the books like Olympus. Lets keep all our money under our mattresses.