JAPAN'S BANKS FILL GLOBAL LENDING GAP
Thanks to their conservative styles adopted after their long struggle with bad loans in the 1990s and the early part of this decade, Japanese banks such as Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. have posted relatively narrow losses from securities affected by the U.S. mortgage problems.
Now, as Yuka Hayashi reports, the banks, armed with huge assets gathered from Japanese savers, are quietly expanding their lending business in the global market as many U.S. and European banks, facing mounting losses from the credit crisis, begin to tighten their spigots. The Japanese banks are turning the situation into an opportunity to become powerful suppliers of loans to fund costly acquisitions and infrastructure projects around the world.
At Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd., the primary banking unit of MUFG, Japan's largest bank by both assets and market value, the balance of overseas lending jumped by roughly 20% in the last quarter of 2007 to 12 trillion yen, or about $115 billion, and has continued to grow this year. "Since around the middle of last year, we have been asked to join a number of excellent deals," Katsunori Nagayasu, president of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, says in an interview. "Two years ago, we never had this kind of experience."
Read Yuka Hayashi's report from Tokyo:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120880107227531893.html?mod=djemeurolinks
