Yamaichi Securities Co., Ltd. (山一證券株式会社) was a Japanese securities trading firm. The company announced it would cease operations on November 24, 1997 and was declared bankrupt by the Tokyo District Court on June 2, 1999.
History
Yamaichi, formed in 1897, was at one time one of the four major Japanese brokerages. Its clients were major Japanese corporations.[1]
In the boom of the 1980s it was given specified sums of money by 10 of its clients to invest as it saw fit. A sharp downturn in the early 1990s and poor dealings by Yamaichi generated losses of more than 200 billion yen. Fearing the demise of the firm through loss of reputation that would result if the scale of losses became known, the brokerage shouldered the loss of its clients, and moved it off balance sheet.[1]
Yamaichi sold in a private placement Touchwood Pacific Partners limited partnership to about 50 Japanese institutional or private investors in the amount of $191 million in 1990 for The Walt Disney Company film production.[2]