Word: banking
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...major deals on successive days show that Japan's banks have not only repaired their balance sheets over past 10 years, they're not shy about taking advantage of the current weakness of their American competitors in a fight for international market share. On Sept. 22, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Japan's largest bank, announced plans to pay up to $9 billion for a 10% to 20% stake in Morgan Stanley, one of two major U.S. investment banks left standing. The announcement capped a frantic few days during which Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack sought a saving dose...
...Also on Sept. 22, another Japanese bottom fisher took a step it had been preparing for since spring, when Kenichi Watanabe, CEO of Nomura Holdings, began raising a $5.6 billion war chest to increase his firm's international footprint. Tokyo's biggest investment bank said it would buy the Asia operations of Lehman Bros., the bankrupt Wall Street firm, and was in negotiations to take over its European operations as well. The $225-million deal saves the jobs of about 3,000 Lehman employees, some of whom expressed surprise as well as relief that they might keep their jobs...
...dominoes fell one right after another: the demise of Lehman Brothers tipping into the rushed sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America, followed by the federal takeover of AIG. Then, the desperate credit crunch of Wednesday caused the emergency maneuvering by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury on Thursday and Friday...
...Banks also learned lessons from the 1997-98 financial crisis, which was partly caused by weak risk management. Lenders haphazardly tossed money at conglomerates for questionable industrial projects and property investments, and they chased high-yield, high-risk investments around the globe. But they paid the price in bank and finance company failures. In August 1997 Thailand closed 42 finance companies, Indonesia closed 16 banks two months later, and South Korea closed 14 merchant banks in December 1997, according to Merrill Lynch. Others were sold or merged. Those that survived cleaned up their act. Credit analysts are more thoroughly trained...
...Thursday evening, however, the Fed and the Treasury proposed a more fundamental solution to the meltdown, and it curiously seems to embrace the idea of eternal return. The bailout package sent to Congress envisages the purchase of toxic mortgage-related assets from banks by a government agency directly dependent on the Treasury. It has a direct precedent in the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), an institution created during the Savings and Loans crisis to avoid dumping real estate assets after bank failures, and thus to avoid a further decline in real estate prices through the usage of federal funds. The current...