No Comment. No Clue.

There was a moment six months ago when Urban Dirt had quite high hopes for Atsushi Saito - the president of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and former honcho of the Industrial Revitalisation Corporation of Japan.

What he was doing looked good -  joint ventures with London, a hand of friendship to bourses across Asia and, perhaps most critically, a mildly tougher line on the sort of nonsense that corporate Japan gets up to on a daily basis.

But alas, when the chips are down, Saito-san has come up miserably short.

Last week, when Alistair Darling was in town he visited the TSE and was shown around the floor by Saito. All those lovely dot matrix screens...ooh ....ahhh...etc. When the chancellor nipped off to do his press conference, Saito sidled off stage left, but not before Urban Dirt had the chance to ask him a quick question about the madman Kitabata. [Kitabata, you might recall, is the most senior bureaucrat at the Ministry of Trade and Industry. He is also the man who told an audience two weeks ago that shareholders were "fools", "corrupt" and "greedy"]

"Do you agree, Mr Saito, with Mr Kitabata that shareholders are corrupt and greedy?"

Seemed like a fair question. A good chance for Mr Saito to declare that he is on the side of shareholders (without whom, incidentally, he would not have an exchange at all). A perfect opportunity for the newer, more robust TSE to lay its cards on the table and show that, as an exchange, it rather likes the concept of shareholder capitalism and will defend its ethos to the death.

"No comment," came the unhappy reply.

Bravo. No really. Bravo.

Comments

[Oliver Mauss]

And this surprises you why, after his wishy washy replies to your questions at the FCCJ? Sign me up for the 2nd class citizen shares...

[Lobu]

The blame for Japan's corporate governance is as much the TSE's as anyone's. All they have to do is stand up for one share one vote and ban non-preemptive righs issues, and wham bam kablooie it would be a proper country. It's not even difficult, they just don't care.