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To: Asymmetric who wrote (1529)	5/27/1998 2:52:00 AM
From: Asymmetric	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2542

Japanese banks make largest provisions on record Saturday May 23 1998 (In case anybody's interested. Peter) BENJAMIN FULFORD in Tokyo Japanese banks are setting aside the largest provisions in banking history in their struggle to cope with huge non-performing loans. Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi - the largest bank in the world - said yesterday it had written off 1.43 trillion yen (about HK$81.66 billion) to cover non-performing debt and reported a group loss of 524 billion yen for the year to March 31. Salomon Smith Barney Securities research head Alicia Ogawa said the provision was "the same as the [amount the] top eight United States money centre banks combined set aside in 1991 at the peak of the US banking crisis." "It is probably a world record," Morgan Stanley financial sector analyst Betsy Daniels said. The huge numbers are due to strict new accounting standards and are also a sign Japanese banks are getting serious in their efforts to dispose of bad loans left over from the bubble years. The need to deal with the massive bad-loan portfolios was one of the top priority issues cited by Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto at the Birmingham summit of the Group of Eight nations this month. Unfortunately for the banks, results for fiscal 1998 were worse than expected as a result of Japan's financial crisis last autumn, a weak domestic economy and the crisis in Asia, banking sources in Tokyo said. Despite the huge new loan loss provisions, Tokyo-Mitsubishi - under stricter new reporting guidelines - still had 2.25 trillion yen in bad debt, up from a figure of 1.16 trillion reported under easier guidelines in March last year, a bank official said. Tokyo-Mitsubishi's total assets rose to 82 trillion yen in fiscal 1998, compared with 77.9 trillion yen in fiscal 1997. Its loans to Asia were worth 32.6 billion yen at the fiscal year-end. Its capital to asset ratio was 8.53 per cent, up from 8.49 per cent on September 30. Daiwa Bank also released accounts for fiscal 1998 showing a loss of 52.8 billion yen. Daiwa wrote off 392.5 billion yen worth of bad debt but still had 958 billion yen on its books, the bank said. Its bad-debt numbers were up 284 billion yen on account of the new reporting standards, it said. Sanwa Bank revealed a fiscal 1998 loss of 182 billion yen. The rest of Japan's big banks were expected to publish similarly dismal results on Monday, analysts said. (Here's more for those who want to read on. The point is not whether I am bearish or not, but that one needs to keep a finger on the pulse of world financial events/markets, IMHO.) exchange2000.com