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Senior Japanese IT exec hits out at country’s greed

Blames banks for giving big loans they can’t back up

A senior executive at a major Japanese IT corporation has hit out at banks and companies funded by them for bringing the country to a "terrible" state. Yasuo Nishiguchi, executive vice president at Kyocera Corporation, said today: "As you know, the Japanese economy is in a terrible situation. We in Japan feel very badly about this and day to day business is badly affected by it." Nishiguchi said: "The manufacturers together with their funding banks created this situation in Japan. Five or ten years ago, Japanese banks loaned large amounts of money to companies which couldn't manage their businesses and at the time each bank made profits." Using the big loans, many Japanese companies got involved in real estate, developing golf courses in Japan and developing their businesses outside Japan, he claimed. "Everyone was just thinking only to create profit, not just the banks but the companies," he said. "At that time Japan was in the bubble but that bubble burst and now we are in a terrible situation." He said more Japanese banks were in danger of either folding, mering with other banks, or inviting investment from foreign banks. The reason for that, he said, was because "most banks have back loans and have to clear those back loans". He said that the banks will find this difficult to do because of their already weakened situation. "Most Japanese banks are withdrawing from the US markets," Nishiguchi said. The second step would be that banks were baled out by foreign companies, he said. ®

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