Tepco Falls in Tokyo as Investors May Help Compensation
Tokyo Electric Power Co. fell the most in seven weeks after a bill before parliament said stakeholders in the company will be asked to “cooperate” in compensating those affected by the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant disaster.
While the language in the bill is vague, the wording raises concern shareholders may lose their capital and lenders may have to waive some loans, Daiwa Securities Capital Markets Co. analyst Toshiyasu Ohashi said yesterday when a draft of the bill was released.
The shares dropped as much as 12.7 percent to 447, on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the biggest decline since June 6. It traded at 454 yen at 1:09 p.m. The stock is down 79 percent since the day before the disaster.
The company is due to report earnings at the end of this month and may post an extraordinary loss of 126 billion yen ($1.6 billion), brokerage MF Global FXA Securities Ltd. said.
“There is no one reason why the shares are falling today, as it’s probably a combination of the approaching bad earnings results and government deliberations” about the future of the company, said Tomohiro Jikihara, a Tokyo-based analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.