(Provisional Translation)
January 16, 2006
Financial Services Agency, Japan

Signing of the amendment to the Information Sharing Arrangement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and US Commodity Futures Trading Commission

On January 16, Mr. Hirofumi Gomi, Commissioner of Financial Services Agency (''FSA''), met Reuben Jeffery III, Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission of the United States of America (''CFTC'') who visited the FSA. During the meeting, they signed a document to amend a Statement of Intent (''SOI'') concerning Cooperation, Consultation and the Exchange of Information concluded among the FSA, the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States of America (''SEC''), in order that the SOI covers financial derivatives transaction.

With the internationalization of securities markets, as shown by the increased number of cross-border securities transactions, there are growing needs for major securities regulators to share information on unfair cross-border securities activities, in order to appropriately oversee securities markets.

For this purpose, we already established the information exchange arrangement with the SEC and CFTC. However, with regards to derivatives, the existing arrangement covered only securities derivatives, not financial derivatives.　In this regard, we decided to make the aforementioned amendment of the arrangement.

Under the framework, the FSA and the SEC/CFTC will exchange information regarding financial deriatives markets such as information on financial futures transactions upon request by respective authority.