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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StanX Long who wrote (63998)	5/24/2002 2:58:26 AM
From: StanX Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Japanese banks reports huge losses but hope for recovery By Chikako Mogi Friday May 24, 2:04 PM sg.biz.yahoo.com TOKYO (Reuters) - Top Japanese banks on Friday reported huge losses for the full year ended on March 31, staggering under the burden of cleaning up loans that have soured during 12 years of economic stagnation. With the economy recovering, the banks held out the prospect of a return to profit this year although analysts said they would have to tread a fine line between raising interest rates to better reflect risks and charging so much that weak borrowers go to the wall. Boosting lending margins and expanding revenue from fee-based business such as advisory services and investment banking is a top priority at big Japanese banks desperate to raise funds to purge bad loans from their fragile balance sheets. Without a healthy banking system able and willing to take fresh lending risks, the world's second-largest economy will remain in the doldrums, the International Monetary Fund and other outside experts have repeatedly warned. UFJ Holdings Inc , the smallest of Japan's four megabanks, posted a group net loss of 1.23 trillion yen ($9.84 billion), in line with a recent forecast of a 1.2 trillion yen loss. The company was created in April last year, combining Sanwa Bank, Tokai Bank and Toyo Trust & Banking Co. For the year to next March it forecast a group net profit of 130 billion yen ($1.04 billion). It said it expected loan-loss charges this year to fall sharply to 480 billion yen ($3.84 billion) from 1.95 trillion yen in 2001/02 and 958.09 billion yen the previous year.