1. Accounting (Source: “Keiei Zaimu Magazine”)
The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSO) relaxed the criteria for the examination of listing on the first section and the second section of the TSO, mainly for the purpose of jump-starting the number of initial public offerings of middle-sized companies. A part of the regulations for the listing of securities was revised for this purpose on March 6th, 2012 and took effect on March 9th, 2012. This adjustment was made to lower the listing criteria so as to have them better meet recent market conditions. The prior criteria were formulated based on the soaring growth that existed during the period of Japanese high economic growth in the mid 1950’s to the early 1970’s and as such had become excessively stringent. A concrete example of the relaxing of the regulations can be seen in the criteria for profit, which was altered to “JPY 500 million or more of the ordinary profit for the accumulation of the last two years”, whereas it had previously been “JPY 100 million or more for the first year and JPY 400 million or more for the second year of the last two years”.
For further information, please refer to the TSO’s website as follows.
http://www.tse.or.jp/rules/listing/stlisting.html（Japanese）
http://www.tse.or.jp/english/rules/listcriteria/index.html（English）.
2. Taxation (Source: “Zeimu Tsushin Magazine”)
Under the foreign tax credit system, companies can adapt the “method of inclusion in expense” or the “method of tax credit” at their discretion. So far, once they applied the “method of inclusion in expense” to the expense of withholding taxes, it has not been possible to alter one method to the other after filing of the final return. However from the filings whose due date is on and after December 2nd, 2011, they can switch the expense of withholding taxes, to which the “method of inclusion in expense” is applied, to the object of the “method of foreign tax credit” retroactively even though the final return has already been filed.
3. This Week’s Words of Wisdom
Leadership is similar to swimming; it can’t be learned by reading books.
(Mintzberg, Canadian scholar of business administration)
Leadership can’t be learned just by reading books; however I think it is also true that it takes you more time to learn it without reading books.