TOKYO -- Mizuho Securities expects to post an extraordinary profit of 12.8 billion yen ($105 million) for the July-September quarter, thanks to a recent court victory over the owner of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The Mizuho Financial Group unit made the announcement Friday after the long-running case was finally resolved. The company had sued the TSE for failing to promptly cancel a huge, erroneously placed sell order nearly a decade ago.
TSE operator Japan Exchange Group foresees only a minor impact from the court judgment, since the bourse already booked 13.2 billion yen in litigation-related losses for the year ended March 2010. The losses consisted of 10.7 billion yen in damages and 2.5 billion yen in late charges, but the charges were later cut by 400 million yen.
In the 2005 mix-up, Mizuho Securities mistakenly sold massive amounts of stock at the market debut of what is now telecommunications and staffing company J-Com Holdings. Problems with the TSE computer system led to transactions being carried out for more than three times the number of outstanding shares.
The bourse has since upgraded its trading system so that it does not accept orders for more than 30% of a company's outstanding shares.
(Nikkei)