Sony Bank to Acquire Majority of Shares in Kaiyo Securities

Sony Bank Inc., an 88.0%-owned subsidiary of Sony Financial Holdings, announced today that it had reached a basic agreement with Kaiyo Securities Co., Ltd. ("Kaiyo Securities"), to acquire the majority of this company's shares, subject to the approval of the regulating authorities. The two companies have begun discussing transaction specifics.

1. Purpose of Share Acquisition

Since commencing operations in June 2001, Sony Bank has focused on Internet banking, primarily providing asset management products and services to individual customers. As part of its efforts to begin providing full-fledged securities intermediary services to its customers, Sony Bank intends to acquire shares in Kaiyo Securities and convert this company to an Internet-specialized securities subsidiary. As a result of this acquisition, in the first half of fiscal year 2007 Sony Bank plans to begin offering stop-loss* services on domestic equity transactions, thereby increasing the number of asset investment alternatives it offers to meet the broad-ranging financial needs of its customers.

* Stop-loss transactions are a unique service in Japan, provided by Kaiyo Securities. With these transactions, each customer share purchase is managed individually, and if market prices drop to a certain amount below the share acquisition price, the shares are sold automatically to limit the loss from equity investment.

2. Share Acquisition Schedule

Immediately after receiving approval from the authorities, Sony Bank intends to acquire a third-party allotment of new shares from Kaiyo Securities.

3. Overview of Kaiyo Securities (As of March 31, 2006)