The London and Tokyo stock exchanges this November announced a joint venture to create a new junior market in Tokyo based on the LSE’s highly successful AIM model.
The TSE already operates a junior market, the Mothers market, where ventures and smaller companies can list under looser standards but the new joint venture will be even more lightly regulated.
"This will make Tokyo the centre of a new community of Japanese and international investors and intermediaries," says Atsushi Saito, chief executive of Tokyo Stock Exchange. It is expected that the market will be established by the end of 2008, and will be operated by a joint venture company based in Tokyo. The market’s structure will reflect AIM’s principles-based regulatory model and will be designed to meet the needs of international investors, balancing appropriate safeguards with the flexibility required by growth companies, and supporting companies in raising capital throughout their life cycle.
