Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc.’s brokerage venture said it handled sales of Credit Suisse’s riskiest debt properly for the most part as it continues a review more than four months after the bonds turned worthless.
“We feel that we have mostly properly done our work in handling transactions in terms of whether there were any procedural issues,” Shinjiro Yamamoto, managing executive officer of Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co., said at a briefing in Tokyo. “Still, there are differences among our customers as to whether they have taken it that way or are satisfied with it.”
The firm is continuing discussions with customers, he said.
The wipeout suffered by clients of the joint venture with Morgan Stanley who bought the AT1 bonds made up the bulk of losses in Japan and amounted to 95 billion yen ($667 million). The debacle hit just as officials were trying to cajole households to invest more, prompting regulators to check whether institutions properly explained the risks associated with the debt to investors.
In April, Yamamoto said Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities was examining the way its staff sold the bonds to 1,300 individuals and 250 corporate accounts. The company began selling the debt to help customers diversify their investment portfolios, he said at the time.
Switzerland’s decision in March to write down the bonds as part of a government-led rescue of Credit Suisse left global investors with about $17 billion in losses. MUFG’s approach on the AT1 sales contrasted with several major financial firms in Asia. Nomura Holdings Inc. said it decided against selling the bonds to individual retail clients because they could become worthless under some conditions, while United Overseas Bank Ltd. in Singapore said it advised clients to get out of the Credit Suisse debt last year.
