Godzilla Resurfaces

[Dennis R Redmond]

Well, not really, but here's the rough economic equivalent: an excerpt
from the Mitsubishi keiretsu's house organ, the Mitsubishi Monitor, which
has an interview with the President of the Godzilla-sized Bank of
Tokyo-Mitsubishi (the full text is over at
<http://www.mitsubishi.or.jp/e/monitor/9908/INT.HTML>): 

"Q: The Japanese government allocated a huge package of public funding
recently to help recapitalize the financial sector and thereby promote
renewed lending. You were the only large Japanese bank that did not apply
for funds under that program. Why? 

A: We didn't need the funding. We were able to raise sufficient funds on
our own to rebuild our capital foundation. We did that largely by issuing
preferred shares--primarily to Mitsubishi companies--by selling part of
the ownership of our headquarters buildings to Mitsubishi Estate, and by
selling a portion of our majority stake in Union Bank of California."

Scary. They bailed themselves out without even breaking a sweat, and
they're not even the biggest keiretsu, either. I've got a map of the
Mitsubishi group over at
<http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dredmond/keiretsu.html>, if you're
wondering what all the fuss is about. 

-- Dennis