If there's ever been a better reason to begin or renew your subscription to Euromoney, this is it. We're told that the Bank of Japan only found out about Yamaichi's off-balance-sheet losses the Saturday before the securities house went into liquidation last month.
Yet back in May 1995 our then Asia editor, Tony Shale, penned an article entitled And then there were three... (Market Monitor, pages 8 and 9), in which he detailed the very problems which have since caused Yamaichi's downfall. "[The MOF's official figures] do not take into account off-balance-sheet risks, an area in which Yamaichi is thought to be long," he wrote. Ring any bells, BOJ? No? Then read on: "It is difficult to gauge the full extent of their problems," one Tokyo-based head of research is quoted as saying. "But it is here, rather than in any further market-related traumas, that Yamaichi's ultimate fate might lie." You weren't wrong, chap. And neither, if we may gloat for a while, were we.
Our subscriptions hotline number is +44 171 779 8999. Antony Currie