The new head of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp (SMBC) said the Japanese bank is watching closely for chances to buy assets in the United States, adding that the latest banking crisis hasn’t dented its confidence in the world’s largest bank.
“On the face of it, the bank’s position is good in the U.S.,” said Mitsui Bank vice president of banking and securities Natsuki Yamagishi. “But there’s more to that than that. A bank can look at a good deal and find a way to increase its overall value.”
The first-ever $100 billion Sumitomo Mitsui Bank announced a joint venture with Japanese home-stay company K.M.G.T.O. and a leading American equity fund, E.L.M.K., that will give Japan $350 billion in equity shares from Japan to help finance the construction of a new $100 billion bank. The bank’s president, E.L.M.K., has said he’ll seek out a stake in the bank by the end of the year.
Fukutome ruled out the possibility of buying a U.S. bank as a whole but said the Japanese group would be looking at assets that may be offered for sale and a team of bankers, including a lawyer and a politician, would take a lot of risk.
The “strategies” to buy a bank were not new. According to the new bank rules, anyone who buys a bank or can participate can register by clicking the “Sign-In” button. But most banks were not looking for a buyer from the United States, and that was before a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation.
“What we were doing was the opposite of what the Japanese government wanted: they wanted to buy a U.S. bank as a whole,” said Daniel M. D. Davis, a financial journalist for The Wall Street Journal. “That’s where the Japanese government wants to go.”
At least four Americans are members of the U.S. banking lobby whose bank the Bank of America and Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase International were linked in a probe over the bank’s transactions with New York bank Mellon.
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