I still think that it can. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun recently announced that Nomura and Daiwa have 80,000 and 70,000 online accounts, respectively. But those numbers include accounts opened by individuals simply to obtain research information, statistics, or market quotes-they don't reflect actual assets under management. This indicates we have a large number of quality customers. With our zero commission rate campaign running from December until February, we're looking to see explosive growth.
Online trading imposes significant system development and advertisement expenses.
I believe that the number of online brokers will fall to one-third of the current level. The increased cap is required to be able to serve as lead manager for underwriting IPOs-and as such to obtain a larger allocation of potentially hot IPO stocks. In Japan, it has been almost impossible for individual investors to participate in IPOs, as these stocks were offered exclusively to favored institutional investors, quid pro quo for high brokerage commission fees. In the second stage, convertible bonds, U.S. equities, and U.S. mutual funds will be offered, and European equities in the third phase. It will take a year for the system development work to be able to offer all of these.