Softbank Succeeds Where Shirakawa Struggled as M&A Hurts Yen

Japan’s biggest corporations are weakening the yen through record takeovers of everything from a U.S. phone company to a Swiss drugmaker, after central bank Governor Masaaki Shirakawa’s attempts to halt the currency’s rise proved fleeting.

The yen has depreciated 5.5 percent this year, the most among peers in Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Currency Indexes, as companies from Softbank Corp. to Marubeni Corp. exchanged the currency for the equivalent of $103 billion to pay for overseas mergers and acquisitions. That’s the most in data going back to 1987 and 13 percent above the $91.3 billion in all of 2011. Options show traders see further weakness, paying record premiums for contracts that profit if the yen weakens.