The world has changed dramatically these past six months. In Japan, bold new financial policies have helped the economy emerge from a long period of deflation, invigorating the stock markets. The US economy is beginning to show sure signs of recovery, creating an upward pressure on interest rates. And although there has been political and economic uncertainty in emerging economies, developed economies have seen stability and growth of their financial markets. For securities companies, this has meant a strong tailwind.

More specifically for our Group, this marked improvement in our operating environment has resulted in a significant increase in profits as well as progress and reevaluation of our Global Vision. In March, we internally developed the middle and back systems of our US FX operations. Consolidating our FX liquid pools in the US has enabled us to increase profitability. In May, we began offering our Japanese clients an investment information service developed in-house. In addition, we have made concrete plans to implement MT4, the global standard among FX active traders, and TradeStation’s multi-award-winning US stock trading platform.

Although we made steady advances in fulfilling goals outlined in our Global Vision, we also met with a number of different challenges, namely:  

－the need to continuously implement new technologies;
－based on a better understanding of our clients, the desire to create higher quality products and services of our US-Japan development projects, presenting additional development issues;
－with an improving operating environment in both the US and Japan, the emergence of new short-term obstacles we must overcome before we can reach for our long-term goals.

We adopted International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for the fiscal year ended March 2013, explained our Global Vision to global investors and analysts in easier-to-understand language and strived to get opinions and feedback. At our shareholders’ meeting in June, we transitioned to a committee-based corporate governance system (company with committees) for a more modern, global management structure. In the same month, we also created the new position of Chief Project Officer within the Global Management Committee, which is responsible for the management of the Group’s operations, to reinforce our ability to control group development projects. 

"We are a global financial group focused on offering retail investors worldwide access to institutional level of services"

 

The Global Management Committee discussed and reevaluated our Road Map, our multi-year action plan under our Global Vision, to help the company better adapt to this new operating environment, in other words, to tackle the short-term challenges of an improved market environment while incorporating new technologies and developing better products and services. As a result of that reevaluation, we have extended our four-year plan to a five-year plan and reduced by about 10% our initial target to cut global fixed costs. We felt these changes would better benefit our diverse range of stakeholders, namely, our customers, our shareholders and our employees who are dedicated to carrying out the Road Map.

 

The fulfillment of our Global Vision is not only our Group’s dream, it is also the mission of both management and employees. Our Global Vision is centered on individual investors around the world for the benefit of all our shareholders. We want customers worldwide to be able to freely trade financial products using technically superior services and products backed by the best human resources.

 

We are MONEX, always a step ahead of the "Y" of "Money." The Monex Group continues to move ahead for the future of finance.