NCB President's Suicide (Cross-posted from RB thread):
Japanese Bank Pres. Commits Suicide
Wednesday September 20 3:08 PM ET
TOKYO (AP) - The new president of Nippon Credit Bank, appointed to revive the ailing
bank under a privatization deal, committed suicide by hanging himself from a curtain
rod in an Osaka hotel room, police said Thursday.
Tadayo Honma, 60, was found hanging with a rope round his neck by his secretary,
said Noboru Kakei, a duty officer at the Sonezaki police station in Osaka.
Kakei said the former central bank executive left several suicide notes, but their
contents were not made public.
Honma was in Osaka, a commercial center in western Japan, to visit local bank
branches and business partners, Japanese media reported. Nippon Credit Bank
officials could not be reached immediately for comment.
On Sept. 1, Honma was named Nippon Credit Bank president under a deal transferring
control of the bank from the state to a private consortium led by Internet investor
Softbank Corp.
Nippon Credit Bank was taken over by the state in 1998 after it collapsed because of
bad loans. The bank had at least $28.8 billion in stock valuation losses and
unrecoverable or high-risk loans.
The government has already pumped in about $27 billion to cover the bad loans and
more public cash is slated for the bank, which is to be renamed Aozora Bank next year.
Suicides in Japan are at a record high, driven up in part by the county's prolonged
economic slump. Nationwide, some 33,048 people killed themselves in 1999, up from
32,863 in 1998, police said.
...Not pleasant reading at all!
Becky B. |
