ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Keita Ishii, President & COO; hereinafter "ITOCHU") announced today that it has agreed to acquire 40.19% of the issued equity securities (capital: 12.9 billion yen) of Gaitame.com Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Jun Takeuchi, President & Chief Executive Officer; hereinafter "Gaitame.com"), a major foreign exchange margin transactions (hereinafter, "FX") company, and convert it to an equity-method associated company.

Approaching the era of the 100-year lifespan, demand for asset management services are increasing. In the FX market, due to the adoption of transaction styles using mobile apps, the popularization of swap trading*¹, the enhancement of reserve-type services for investors who are managing assets on the medium- and long-term basis and other factors, the annual amount of FX transactions hit a record high of 6,364 trillion yen in 2020, and it has become a popular effective ways of managing assets.

Gaitame.com is a major FX transaction company in Japan that handles FX transactions worth more than 340 trillion yen annually. Under their "Customers First" philosophy, they provide services including reserve-type services that enable long-term management at the industry's lowest fees and delivery high-quality FX-related information via its subsidiary, Gaitame.com Research Institute Ltd. Their strength, the ability to thoroughly provide services from the viewpoint of the customer, has enabled them to expand their user base.

ITOCHU will obtain the issued equity securities of Gaitame.com from Sawada Holdings Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; Etsuto Uehara, President & COO) and convert it to an equity-method associated company to strengthen its personal asset management services in the retail finance field.
By utilizing the ITOCHU Group's wide range of internal and external networks, ITOCHU will support the company in its continued expansion of its customer base and will work with our strengths, or retail finance-related operators in the Group including Pocket Card Co, Ltd., an operator of a credit card business, Money Communications Inc. that is engaged in a payroll prepayment business, and Gardia, Inc., which operates a guarantee business, to promote the expansion of various future generation financial services for personal asset management.