Japan's Nomura to cut CEO pay over leaks

TOKYO: Top Japanese brokerage Nomura will cut its chief executive's pay as a penalty for an embarrassing string of insider trading scandals, reports said Friday, as regulators ramp up a probe.

The firm plans to temporarily chop compensation for Kenichi Watanabe and possibly other executives in the wake of a series of leaks of non-public information allegedly by Nomura staff, Kyodo News reported.

The firm was holding an emergency board meeting Friday over the probe of its operations, with company officials expected to disclose the findings later in the day, according to the Nikkei business daily's online edition.

Watanabe will reportedly hold a press briefing later Friday, with Nomura also looking at cutting the pay of other top executives and issuing a week-long suspension of some of its business units amid the spiralling crisis.

A Nomura spokeswoman told AFP on Friday that nothing official had been decided concerning internal penalties or a temporary operations shutdown.

Japan's market regulators and Nomura are separately probing allegations that the brokerage's salespeople leaked information in at least three insider trading cases under investigation, Dow Jones Newswires said.

The Kyodo report said staff found to have been involved in leaking material information ahead of share sales would likely be demoted or sacked.

On Thursday, Japan's top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said Tokyo's stock exchange would search the offices of dozens of brokerage houses as part of a wider insider trading investigation.

Although it usually draws huge fines and jail time in the West, insider trading is largely tolerated in Japan with recent fines coming in at around just US$1,500, while criminal convictions are few and far between.

But there has been renewed pressure to crack down on lax regulations and legal loopholes, which have dented Japan's corporate governance image.

- AFP/ck

Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific_business/view/1210645/1/.html

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