“ Tokyo Gas Co. and Asahi Breweries Ltd., Japan’s biggest gas utility and second-largest brewer, are using free beer and pasta lunches to lure housewives into becoming investors. Forty women gathered at Tokyo Gas’s new test kitchen in the Ginza shopping district this week to listen to investment pitches followed by an Italian cooking class and four-course lunch washed down with Asahi Super Dry beer. The event is an effort to attract individual investors after sales by institutional shareholders drove Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average down 46 percent so far this year because of the global credit crisis. Individuals hold shares for longer, said Tokyo Gas Executive Director Kazuo Yoshino.
