Sony said on Oct 1, 2025 that it completed the partial spin-off of its financial services business and kept a 16.40% stake

Written by Claude Sonnet 5.5, an AI model, from public records. Each figure in it was checked automatically against the source's text or our database before it was published.

On Oct 1, 2025, Sony Group announced that it had completed the partial spin-off of Sony Financial Group Inc. (SFGI), which operates its Financial Services business and until then was a wholly owned subsidiary. It said so in a Form 6-K, the report a foreign private issuer files with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. As a result, Sony held 16.40% of SFGI's common stock, and SFGI was no longer a consolidated subsidiary, one whose accounts are added into the parent's, but an affiliate accounted for under the equity method.1^,2^,3^,4^,5^,6

The spin-off was a dividend in kind, a dividend paid in assets rather than cash, and the assets were SFGI shares. Sony finalized the carrying amount of the distributed shares at 463,885,829,967 yen, or 77.61 yen per share, and said the same amount reduces retained earnings. The company said this is the amount recorded in its standalone accounts under Japanese rules (J-GAAP), an accounting figure and not a trading price or the equity value of SFGI shares. In its consolidated accounts under IFRS, Sony said, it would instead reduce equity by the fair value of the SFGI shares distributed.7^,8^,9^,10^,11^,12

For Japanese tax purposes, Sony finalized the proportion of distributed assets at 0.206, with no change from the final estimate it disclosed on Sep 17, 2025. Shareholders use that factor to calculate the acquisition cost per share of their Sony and SFGI shares. The record date for the dividends in kind was Sep 30, 2025, and Sony expected to send a notification in early November 2025 to its shareholders as of that date.13^,14^,15^,16

Sony said the effect of the spin-off on its consolidated results was still being evaluated and had not been determined at that time. It nonetheless expected a loss of about 1 trillion 400 billion yen, as of Oct 1, 2025, within net income or loss from discontinued operations in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026. The loss would come from reclassifying the Financial Services business's accumulated other comprehensive income at deconsolidation. Sony described that as a reclassification within equity that does not affect total equity, cash flows or the profit or loss of continuing operations. For details of the accounting treatments, the Oct 1, 2025 report points to Sony's resolution to execute the spin-off, which the company disclosed on Sep 3, 2025.17^,18^,1^,19^,20^,21

Sony Group, listed as TSE: 6758, is the parent of Sony Interactive Entertainment, which in turn is the parent of studios such as Bungie, the developer and publisher of Destiny 2 and Marathon, and Housemarque, the developer of Returnal. The account of the spin-off rests on this one report of Oct 1, 2025, and the loss figure is the estimate Sony gave that day.22^,23^,24^,25^,26^,27^,1