STOCKBROKER Regina Capital Development Corp. has forged a partnership with a Japanese firm to bring in investors from Japan to place their money in Philippine stocks.
The company this week has signed a deal with Seven Seas Properties Corp. and is expecting an influx of Japanese clients who will be investing in the local bourse via online trading on the expectation of realizing more gains from the country’s relatively under-penetrated equities market, said Fernando Martinez, head of sales of Regina Online Investing.
Martinez said the Japanese firm is expected to bring in some 50,000 online Philippine stock-market investors from Japan.
“This agreement with our Japanese partners will make them our introducing brokers in Japan. This is a first of its kind in the county since, ordinarily, it is the Filipino investors who are the ones who go out to gain access to the capital markets of other countries. This time, it is the foreign investors who are coming in to us through Regina Online,” Martinez said.
Luis Limlingan, managing director at Regina Capital, said the country’s capital markets remains untapped, and he sees more growth in this investment sector.
“Only a million people are actively trading in the country’s stock market, despite having at least 100 million people. When I say actively, that means they are trading at least once a year. So of that, about a million [who are actively trading], significantly less are trading online. This [online] is where we want to get a bigger share,” Limlingan said.
Yusuke Uejima, chief marketing officer of Seven Seas, told reporters they decided to offer the country’s equities market to their Japanese clients as most of them are looking at other investment opportunities in the country. Japan’s stock market has become too mature, making their gains thinner.
“We are primarily catering to Japanese investors who want to invest in the property sector in the Philippines. We cater to them. However, since they [Japanese clients] can only purchase condominium units because of the prohibition against foreigners owning other real-estate properties in the Philippines, they want to broaden their interest in your country,” Uejima said.
“Japanese investors are looking for further investment since our [Japan] market and economy have become mature that the yield it promises has become very low,” he said.
Seven Seas claims it has at least 50,000 Japanese clients, who are at least 30 years old and are eager to invest in the Philippines’ publicly listed companies.
“We are expecting an initial average stock market investment of P1 million to P2 million per client. All these 50,000 clients of ours have expressed serious interest in plunging into the Philippine stock market,” he said.