Nomura Holdings was fined ¥21.8 million ($143,000) by the financial regulator for manipulating the government bond futures market, in a setback to the nation’s biggest brokerage during a debt trading revival.
The Financial Services Agency issued the fine in accordance with a recommendation made last month by the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission (SESC), the agency’s investigative arm.
Nomura said it paid the penalty on Thursday and apologized to clients and concerned parties.
"We take this matter very seriously,” the company said in a statement. "We will continue to further enhance our compliance framework and internal controls to prevent similar incidents occurring in the future and to regain trust.”
The fine, while small, may hurt Nomura’s reputation at a time when it is refocusing on Japan as a key growth area for its trading and investment banking operations. The nation’s bond market has come back to life after the Bank of Japan raised interest rates and scrapped a policy of controlling bond yields earlier this year.
An employee at Nomura Securities is suspected of fraudulently moving Japanese government bond futures prices in 2021, the SESC has said. The trader profited by placing large orders without intending to buy or sell all of them, in a practice called layering, the watchdog said.
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