Expiration Date under the Professional Investor System

Expiration Date under the Professional Investor System

The expiration date for application to change investor status to Professional Investor under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Law at our company is as follows:

August 31 every year (inclusive of weekends and national holidays)

The Financial Instruments and Exchange Law (the “Law”), which came into effect on 30 September 2007, introduced the Professional Investor System, whereby customers will be divided into two categories, which are “Professional Investor” and “customers other than Professional Investor” (hereinafter referred to as “General Investor”).

Where customers are categorized as Professional Investor under the Professional Investor System, the financial instruments business provider may be exempted from some of its obligations, such as delivering documents that explain risks to General Investor before entering into the relevant contract.

After the customer undergoes the prescribed application process and is approved by our company, the customer may be authorized to shift statuses from either “Professional Investor” to General Investor or from General Investor to Professional Investor.

Please be informed that we may decline requests from customers regarding a change of their Investor Category from a General Investor to a Professional Investor, depending on our examination of the appropriateness of their requests.

In principle, the term of changing a customer's Investor Category from a General Investor to a Professional Investor expires one year from the date of the change thereof. However, in our case, please note that the expiration date for changing a customer's Investor Category to a Professional Investor is the first coming August 31 (inclusive of weekends and national holidays) after the date of the change. In addition, if a customer requests us to revert the Investor Category to a General Investor, such change can be made prior to the expiration date.

Where a customer has changed its Investor Category from a General Investor to a Professional Investor, if the aforementioned expiration date has passed without the completion of certain procedures for renewal of the change to a Professional Investor, the customer's Investor Category will revert to a General Investor. Therefore, we kindly request that any customer who wishes to renew their change of Investor Category to a Professional Investor perform the required procedures before the expiration date.