Soft Assets Get Hard Cash

[Mulboyne]

The Development Bank of Japan has introduced a scheme which accepts intellectual property as collateral. Typically, lenders in Japan have required hard assets such as real estate before making loans which has been a major obstacle for start-up companies in the service sector who have been starved of funds. Although some loans have been extended so far to IT companies, the bank has expanded its remit in the case of Tokyo-based Actas Solution who received 30 million against their proprietary book sales system. Actas publishes a number of self-help titles which are sold through Lawson and Family Mart but the value of the company is not its titles its own marketing, publishing and inventory control. The company gets feedback from store sales and its own tokumoni website which have sharply reduced the return rate on titles that other publishers typically face. If all banks adopt a wider definition of collateral then service industries could get a much-needed boost.