The sub-prime loan debacle which emerged in the United States in 2007 developed into a global
financial crisis following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September of 2008. One after another,
large European and American financial institutions found themselves in difficulties, with financial
institutions rapidly losing confidence in the viability of counterparties. As a result, financial markets
around the world ceased functioning, with credit worldwide drying up.
Although calm has gradually been restored to financial markets around the world, the strength
of the recovery in the real economy has been weak, meaning that vigilance regarding
macroeconomic trends remains necessary. In Japan, financial institutions such as banks and life
insurance companies risk seeing the fact that their financial positions deteriorate further. Our present
report will therefore focus on these issues.
A look at financial results in the banking sector for the year ended March, 2009 shows an
incipient deterioration in both earnings and the capital base of banks. Owing to the decline in the
stock market, the value of shares held by banks has fallen sharply, and banks have written off huge
losses as a result. Due also to the global economic slowdown and the strong yen, Japanese exports,
which had been fuelling the economy in the last few years, have fallen sharply, undermining the
performance of business firms. Banks are also facing mounting loses on bad loans. Although the
mountain of impaired loan assets accumulated by banks in the second half of the 1990s had been
declining in recent years and remained low over the past few, it began to expand again at the start of
the present 2009 fiscal year (April 2009 - March 2010). If the poor business conditions resulting
from the financial crisis drag on, bad loans could once again pressure banks' finances.
http://www.jcer.or.jp/
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Japan Center for Economic Research November 2009
Japan Financial Report No.21
The accompanying table shows the financial health of the banking sector based on real capital
adequacy ratios by type of institution. Ratios for all banks nationwide have been improving since
bottoming out at the end of FY2002. However, due mainly to the sharp decline in stock prices since
the spring of 2007, they began worsening again in FY2007. They deteriorated even further in
FY2008 and are now approaching a level not seen since FY2001, during the financial crisis. A look
at the banking sector overall shows that bad debt write-offs in FY2007 and FY2008 could be
accommodated within the scope of earnings, but some banks which have experienced rising bad
debts are in such a position that they need to be monitored. There are also some banks whose real
capital adequacy ratios have turned negative.
With a view to preventing a recurrence of the financial crisis, authorities have been prone to
tighten regulations. In order to strengthen the capital adequacy of banks both qualitatively and
quantitatively as economic conditions recovered, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
raised the banks’ capital adequacy ratios required subject to international standards to higher than 8
percent. The Committee is also considering the adoption of narrowly defined core capital criteria,
with regulations expected to be adopted in 2012. This could be expected to have a major impact,
perhaps making it necessary for some Japanese financial institutions to boost their capital by issuing
common stocks. It is possible that stricter capital adequacy