Japanese regulators are starting to look into underwriting practices in the nation’s corporate bond market, where banks routinely say deals are successful even in cases when they are under-subscribed.
The move suggests that the potential damage to some investors in Japan’s 76 trillion yen ($669 billion) company note market is getting too big for the government to ignore. Bloomberg reported last month that underwriters in Japan failed to fully sell at least 29 percent of corporate debt offerings in September, twice the average over six months, based on interviews with investors, underwriters and issuers.
