LEX Some Mothers do ’ave em. The Mothers segment of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the so-called “market of the high-growth and emerging stocks” set up in 1999 to encourage small companies to go public, has had its fair share of unruly charges.
The Mothers index, launched four years after the market itself, started well enough. By January 2006 investors were up 75 per cent – almost three times Topix’s return – in spite of outbreaks of accounts falsification at Seibu Railway and Kanebo. But securities law violations at Livedoor were a scandal too far. Mothers has underperformed the Topix by 30 per cent since mid-April 2006, when the internet service provider was delisted.
