Japanese Government Sells Nintendo Shares

The price of Nintendo shares have fallen by 2.7 percent following the Japanese government’s sale of its entire stake in the company – apparently at the request of Nintendo executives. The Japanese government’s 1.4 percent stake in Nintendo is valued at ¥67.2 billion ($577.4m), with the 1.987 million shares due to be priced between March 5th and March 8th. The subsequent drop in stock price has been the most severe in three weeks. According to a Bloomberg report, government controlled body The Bank’s Shareholdings Purchase Corp. began a process of buying shares in Japanese firms from banks in 2002, in order to prevent large amounts of stock being released at once. Nintendo officials asked that the company’s shares be released in order to increase the number of individual shareholders and to increase liquidity. The success of the Nintendo DS, and more recently the Wii, has seen the company’s stock rise by 43 percent in the last six months, compared to a 14 percent average in the benchmark Topix index. "The news suggest a worsening of share supply and demand, and comes at the time of concern that the stock's price is high," Yoku Ihara, Retela Crea Securities Co. head of equity research, told Bloomberg.