Japan Tobacco (JT) last Friday announed a stock split as well as the delisting of its shares from three out of five stock exchanges.

JT will split the stock at the ratio of 1:200 or 200 shares to one share "for the purpose of enlarging the company’s investor base".
The company will further adopt the share unit system which sets a share trading unit to 100 shares. As a result of the stock split and adoption of the share unit system, the investment unit amount of the company’s shares will be one half. Both measures will take effect on 1 July 2012.
Regarding the reason for delisting, JT named rationalization and the reduction of costs caused by the listing of the "extremely small volume" of their shares traded on the three stock exchanges.
The application to delist the company's shares from the Nagoya Stock Exchange, the Fukuoka Stock Exchange and the Sapporo Securities Exchange was filed on 16 April. JT shares continue to be traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Osaka Securities Exchange. (ci)