It has been two years since the launch of our Global Vision. In these two years, we have seen many changes around the world - elections which have lead to change of powers, a revolutionary wave of democracy on a grass-roots level created by SNS, the Eurozone Crisis, and easing of monetary policies worldwide. In these line of events, it feels like the world has connected organically, and the days in which we could just be worried about our own country has receded even more. The same is happening in the financial sphere, and the interest and demand to be able to have access to global financial information, markets, stocks, bonds, and funds in various currencies has grown even bigger. 

 

Under these circumstances, we have propelled with our mid/long-term strategy, the Global Vision, in which we have placed brokerage firms in major countries under our Group, universalized our systems, and provided global information, products, and services worldwide. 

 

I am more and more confident that our Global Vision accurately grasps the demand of our times.

 

On our journey in realizing the Global Vision, we have reached an important milestone. In November 2012, we released a new trading system jointly developed by our U.S. subsidiary TradeStation Group and Monex, Inc. This service allows our clients in Japan to trade U.S. stocks directly from the U.S. market on a real-time basis (which also supports pre and post markets) at an outstandingly low fee, and it is Japan' s only - moreover, Asia' s only - full-fledged U.S. stock trading service. The success in delivering this service that no other U.S. financial firm has been able to do has really accelerated our confidence group-wide in going forward to realizing the Global Vision.

 

With the achievement of this milestone, we have decided to disclose a portion our Road Map to our stakeholders. The Road Map is a mid/long-term plan based on the Global Vision we share among the entire Monex Group in order to have a mutual understanding of the progress of system/service development and cost/revenue conditions. The success of our U.S. trading system we developed in-house has increased the accuracy of our vision and plan, and thus we have decided to disclose our Road Map.

 

The Global Vision is a mid/long-term strategy that leverages the technology of TradeStation, our U.S. online brokerage subsidiary (acquired June 2011), to globalize and develop the online brokerage system in-house for our Japanese clients. It also aspires to provide individual investors worldwide with a global financial platform with which they have access to products and services from various markets around the world. At the same time, the Global Vision allows us to stabilize our systems and keep costs low by developing systems in-house. Last but not least, we can offer these in-house developed platforms to other business partners worldwide, which will contribute to diversifying and stabilizing our business revenue source.

 

Currently, two-thirds of our Group' s revenue is generated in Japan, one-third from the U.S. and other regions, while two-thirds of our employees are in the U.S., and 40% of our employee population group-wide is engineers. This is a very unique business structure for a financial group originated in Japan. Japan, our main engine in terms of revenue and profit, will continue to see more activity in both the stock and FX markets due to the shift in power last December from the Lower House general election. The risk tolerance of the individual investors has increased significantly, and there is a tail wind for our business in Japan. We believe that the business environment for 2013 will be bright. On the other hand, although we are seeing a rise in the stock market in the U.S., the risk tolerance for individual investors in the U.S. is still quite low, and we are continuing to see low activity in both the stock and FX markets. However, U.S. economic indexes are showing steady progress, and we believe that the risk tolerance will start to increase and that the possibility of business environment to recover is high.

 

Under these circumstances, the Monex Group will continue to implement short-term cost cuts while propelling mid/long-term system development plans on our Road Map. Our experienced and extensive engineers are also working solidly to improve our existing systems in the U.S. and Hong Kong. Enhancement of our products and services on a global scale will be important in expanding to the BtoB business. The Global Vision is a comprehensive business strategy that coincides offense and defense, secures business advantage and cost reduction simultaneously across diverse business regions.

 

In China/Hong Kong, as we continue to see progress and change of the rules and regulations of the capital market, we have not stopped pursuing our goal to provide online financial trading services to Chinese individual investors. We are also working to acquire individual investors and BtoB business clients worldwide through our U.K. office.

 

More details on the Road Map regarding system development and revenue initiatives in our global offices as well as specific cost reduction figures are on the presentation material of the financial results announcement of 3Q of FYE March 2013 (http://www.monexgroup.jp/en/ir_library/presentation/pdf/EN_20130129_3QFinancialResult.pdf). 2013 will be the year we will have our stakeholders continue to see progress and embodiment of the Global Vision.

 

Monex: A step forward the "Y" of "Money".
Our financial business revolution has just begun, but we are seeing concrete results with strong confidence.
Please look forward to the future of Monex.

 

Our ultimate resource is our people. The Monex Group currently has 850 colleagues around the globe committed to realizing our goals and meeting our stakeholders’ expectations. We will continue to update our progress on the Global Vision and take positive initiatives that will boost the financial globe. We thank you for your continuous support.