Yasuo Hamanaka

Yasuo Hamanaka (Japanese浜 中 泰 男, Yasuo Hamanaka, born 1950 ) is a former copper dealer for Sumitomo Corporation in Japan. He was known by the nickname " Mr. Copper Finger " and "Mr. Five Percent" because he controlled 5 % of world copper market for some time. He is married and has a son and a daughter.

His career ended on 5 June 1996 when he had to confess to his superiors that he had amassed $ 1.6 billion loss. In 1998, he was sentenced to eight years in prison of which he had to serve six. The operation was known as Sumitomo affair.

Method

Yasuo Hamanaka was Deputy Director of the copper trading division of Sumitomo. Around the year 1985, the department made ​​loss and they began to manipulate the market with fictitious purchases in order to increase the price. He began secretly at night buy with borrowed money copper, later he is said to have falsified the books. When the matter was uncovered, he was said to have 400,000 tons of copper in the depot. As Sumitomo dealer this suddenly threw on the falling market, they made again about 800 million loss.

Officially, Hamanaka as individual perpetrators, but this is not believed by many. Already in 1991 the first studies undertaken by the Tokyo Stock Exchange have been initiated against him, which led to no consequences. Later, the bank sued some business partners of Hamanaka. The matter never came to court; they agreed on a comparison:

• Merrill Lynch $ 275 million
• UBS $ 85 million (April 2006)
• Crédit Lyonnais Rouse (CLR ) of 1,1 billion dollars. (2004)

In 2004, it was announced that the broker had received $ 8.4 million bonus for the business in the CLR. Business was in June 1993 under the code MAGM RADR and formally included about 25 % of the world market, or 2.53 million tons.