Business Notes Finance

Governments and business executives around the world have long complained that Japan keeps its economy essentially closed to outsiders. Last week, though, the Japanese opened the door a crack. New York-based Merrill Lynch became the first foreign company to take a seat on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and start trading. Before Merrill Lynch's team of eleven traders made their debut on the exchange floor, they gathered at the company's Tokyo office to toast the venture with whisky, beer and sake. "It is a historic time for us and Japan," said Walter Burkett, a general manager. Merrill Lynch will soon be joined on the exchange by two other New York firms, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, and three British companies, Jardine Fleming, Vickers Da Costa and S.G. Warburg.

For now, Merrill Lynch will employ mostly Japanese as traders on the exchange floor, where transactions are carried out with hand signals that are based on the Japanese language. The company's first American trader is Raymond Forbes, a New Yorker. He speaks fluent Japanese and has already spent four months at the Tokyo exchange as a trader for Nikko Securities.