Company history

Matsumoto Oki joined Salomon Brothers out of the University of Tokyo law faculty in 1987, moved to Goldman Sachs in 1990, built its yen derivatives business almost single-handed and became a general partner in November 1994 at the age of thirty — the first educated outside the English-speaking world, founders aside. In 1998 he proposed that Goldman build an online brokerage for Japanese retail investors, was turned down, and left that November. The following May Goldman went public at a market value of about $25 billion, and partners who had stayed became rich.

He had already found his backer. Over dinner in November 1998 he put the idea to Sony’s president Idei Nobuyuki — “I barged in mid-meal,” as he put it — and Sony, which had just amended its articles to add financial services, agreed to fund half. In April 1999 the two each put up half of $439,213 (¥50m) in capital to form Monex, with fewer than ten employees and the systems outsourced. Trading began that October, the month commissions on stock trades were fully deregulated: Charles Schwab, E*Trade and DLJ had all entered Japan with local partners, and Nomura and the rest had followed, but Monex alone had neither branches nor an existing customer base to protect.

The plan rested on two assumptions — that Japanese households would shift savings toward securities as Americans had, and that internet users would grow from 27 million in 1999 to 78 million by 2005 — which together implied a flood of first-time investors. Monex kept costs down by having no branches and almost no advertising, letting news coverage bring customers instead: in the half-year to September 2000 it spent ¥65 million on advertising to add about 40,000 accounts, roughly ¥1,600 each against an industry average of ¥15,000–20,000. It differentiated with funds and underwriting rather than commissions alone, launching the first proprietary fund by an online-only broker in July 2000, and when it listed on the TSE Mothers market that August it sold most of the offering online at ¥45,000 a share by pure lottery — “the democratization of capitalism,” Matsumoto called it — adding some 18,000 individual shareholders.

Standing alone proved harder. Some sixty online brokers had entered by late 2000 and consolidation began at once; Monex merged with Saison Securities in 2001, and merger talks with DLJdirect SFG collapsed in 2002 when the two sides’ large shareholders could not agree. Matsumoto had refused to offer margin trading, holding that leverage disadvantages individuals who lack capital and speed of information. With the most accounts and the largest client assets in online broking but far fewer executions than rivals who did offer it, and an operating loss of ¥1.24 billion in the year to March 2002, he announced margin trading in June 2002 — three days before the annual meeting.

Matsumoto had described consolidation as inevitable in a business with heavy fixed costs where accounts can be combined in software: shareholders would demand it, though deals are hard to strike while everyone’s value is falling. In March 2004 Monex and Nikko Beans agreed to combine under a joint holding company; Monex Beans Holdings was created by share transfer that August and listed on Mothers, the two brokers merged in 2005, and the holding company moved to the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange that September. It was renamed Monex Group in 2008.

Earnings across the online brokers peaked in the year to March 2006 and then fell — retail investors retreated after the Livedoor scandal, the financial crisis followed, and the firms competed away what was left through price cuts. “Being cheap was innovative,” Matsumoto said later, “and then it became ordinary.” Talks with Matsui Securities in 2009 went nowhere. In October 2009 Monex agreed to merge with Orix Securities instead: on combined revenue the group leapfrogged Matsui into second place behind SBI, and because the deal was paid in shares, Orix became one of Monex’s largest shareholders. A Hong Kong broker was acquired that December.

In June 2011 Monex bought TradeStation Group of the United States outright — an online broker built around an automated-trading platform — giving the group operations in Japan, America and Asia, and consolidated its US entities into one company by 2012. At home it closed a circle in 2012 by buying Sony Bank Securities, the brokerage subsidiary of its own founding shareholder, and folding it into Monex Securities. In 2013 the group adopted a committee-based board structure, separating supervision from execution, after which Matsumoto’s title became representative executive officer.

The shareholder register kept turning over. In April 2014 Shizuoka Bank bought just under 20% of Monex Group from Orix for about ¥24.4 billion and became the largest shareholder, raising the stake to 25.49% by March 2017. The timing was poor: net income fell from about ¥3.5 billion in each of the two preceding years to ¥298 million in the year to March 2017, last among the six large online brokers on ordinary profit, and Shizuoka Bank wrote down ¥12.1 billion on the holding. Collaboration on fund distribution and blockchain trials had begun, but it had yet to show up in earnings.

Back as president of Monex Securities from October 2017 under the slogan of a “second founding,” Matsumoto wanted a crypto exchange and did not have one: SBI and GMO had already registered subsidiaries while Monex was still preparing. In January 2018 Coincheck lost about ¥58 billion of the NEM token to theft and could no longer stand alone. Monex signed in April and took 100% of the company — facing multiple lawsuits — for $32.6M (¥4bn), holding the price down by promising existing shareholders half the profits for three years.

The acquisition reshaped the group’s earnings and made them cyclical. Crypto lost ¥1.73 billion at the segment level in its first year, then the 2021 bull market lifted consolidated revenue to ¥77.9 billion and net income to ¥14.4 billion — half again the prior year — before revenue fell back to ¥55.8 billion by the year to March 2023. Meanwhile the commission itself was disappearing: SBI declared a three-year path to zero in late 2019, rivals followed on margin and fund fees, and Matsumoto — who saw no Japanese equivalent of American payment for order flow to replace the revenue — announced a shift toward earning fees on assets under management, founding an active Japanese-equity manager in January 2020 and giving up his representative authority at the brokerage to concentrate on it. Asked whether that meant Monex Securities would be sold, he said it was “absolutely out of the question.”

In autumn 2023 SBI and Rakuten took Japanese equity commissions to zero and Monex could not follow. On 4 October it announced an alliance with NTT Docomo: Monex Securities was placed under an intermediate holding company owned about 51% by Monex Group and 49% by Docomo, but with Docomo appointing a majority of directors it became Docomo’s consolidated subsidiary and Monex’s equity-method affiliate. The brokerage — 2.23 million accounts and ¥7 trillion in client assets — was valued at ¥97 billion against net assets of ¥48.6 billion, and Monex booked a gain of $120.1M (¥18bn); the target was raised to 5 million accounts and ¥15 trillion. What remained in the group was Coincheck, TradeStation and asset management.

The gain flattered one year and reversed the next: net income of ¥31.3 billion in the year to March 2024 was followed by a net loss of ¥5.1 billion in 2025, as costs of about ¥18.2 billion from listing Coincheck’s parent on Nasdaq landed against it and crypto revenue slumped. The year to March 2026 returned to profit — operating revenue of ¥83.6 billion and pre-tax income of ¥15.8 billion — on growth in asset management and a record year at TradeStation, and in May the group announced a crypto alliance with KDDI. Customer referrals from Docomo reached a monthly record for new accounts in January 2026, more than two years after the deal was struck.