Japan Banknotes Just Got a Redesign, and Some Stocks Are Surging

(Bloomberg) -- Japan announced new currency note designs today, sending shares of several somewhat obscure companies soaring.

Glory Ltd. -- a provider of cash sorting machines -- rallied as much as 19 percent, the most in more than 11 years, after the Ministry of Finance said that it plans to circulate new bill designs by the first half of the fiscal year starting April 2024, partly to guard against counterfeit notes. The redesigned notes will feature new watermarks and 3D holograms.

Shares of Glory hit their daily limit and traded on more than 11 times their average three-month volume. The stock pared gains, and was up 7.5 percent at the midday break in Tokyo. Glory has more than 70 percent of the Japanese market for various products in the financial, distribution and transportation industries to handle money, according to the company’s website.

Finance Minister Taro Aso revealed the possible design ideas for the new 1,000, 5,000, and 10,000 yen bills featuring new historical figures, with Eiichi Shibusawa -- an industrialist who helped found the Tokyo Stock Exchange in the late 19th century -- chosen as the face of the new 10,000 yen bill. Umeko Tsuda, one of the first Japanese women to study abroad, was chosen for the new 5,000 yen note, and physician Shibasaburo Kitasato, who worked on finding a cure for tetanus, was chosen for the new 1,000 yen bill.

Aso commented that the notes are not intended to stimulate the economy and that they are redesigned periodically. If the redesigns take place as scheduled, it would be the first aesthetic change of the country’s currency notes in 20 years.

Other Japanese companies that surged on the news today:

• Japan Cash Machine Co. gained 13 percent, most since Aug. 3
• Musashi Co. jumped 10 percent, biggest gain since Sept. 19, 2017
• Mamiya-Op Co. surged 9 percent, highest since March 18

Aso told reporters that he had the final say on who would appear on the bills. Asked if he himself would like to appear on a bank note in the future, he said: “Absolutely not.”

--With assistance from Paul Jackson and Tomoko Yamazaki.

To contact the reporters on this story: Shoko Oda in Tokyo at soda13@bloomberg.net;Yuko Takeo in Tokyo at ytakeo2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Niluksi Koswanage at nkoswanage@bloomberg.net, Divya Balji, Teo Chian Wei

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