
Japan's major banks emerge from bad-loan crisis, authorities say
After years of chipping away at bad loans, Japan's biggest banks have reached a milestone: They have met a key target set by the government three years ago to significantly cut loans to deadbeat corporate borrowers. On Wednesday, Bank Minister Tatsuya Ito declared that seven Japanese banks had reached a "turning point" in reducing by half the proportion of their bad loans to overall lending - a benchmark used to gauge a bank's health - after UFJ Holdings became the last to do so. Ito pledged to "maintain efforts to ensure this kind of bad-loan problem never resurfaces," and said authorities would now focus more attention on rebuilding the financial system...more...