CSFB's Tokyo licence is revoked

CSFB's Tokyo licence is revoked

JAPANESE REGULATORS yesterday revoked the licence of Credit Suisse First Boston's derivatives arm in Tokyo for "obstructing official investigations and offering inappropriate products to clients", following a six-month investigation.

The regulators had been looking into whether CSFB firms in Tokyo had helped clients conceal losses by bouncing them from one account to another, possibly using derivatives transactions.

Analysts said the penalty was one of the harshest ever imposed and came amid a tightening of controls on foreign firms as Japan's markets open up under its Big Bang deregulation. "The move was good in terms of firing a warning shot," said Hideki Naito at Standard & Poor's MMS International.