Resona: Public Bank tie-up part of Asian expansion

TOKYO: Resona Holdings Inc, Japan’s fifth
largest bank by market value, is poised to tie up with Public Bank Bhd
as part of its Asian expansion efforts.



Resona will sign an agreement with Malaysia’s third biggest lender on
Monday to service Japanese companies looking to enter the country and
borrow in the local currency, its president Kazuhiro Higashi said in an
interview earlier this week.

“There are many Japanese companies
in Malaysia and, therefore, we want to support them with a local banking
partner,” said Higashi.

“We have covered most of the big Asian countries now,” he said, adding that he is also interested in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.

Resona is tapping credit demand from fastergrowing economies as deflation and a shrinking population limit growth at home.





Higashi said in March he plans to boost new loans to Japanese businesses
expanding in Asia by 25 per cent to 50 billion yen (RM1.47 billion)
within a year.

With no banking licences outside Japan,
Tokyo-based Resona has so far forged partnerships with 12 banks in Asia,
including Bank of China Ltd and Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking
Corp, to boost loans to companies with offshore operations.

Resona
last week unveiled plans to complete a bailout repayment in five years.
The bank will pay the remaining 872 billion yen it owes to the
government by March 2018, it said in a statement
on May 10.

Resona
is among those lenders that were rescued by taxpayers after amassing
bad loans in the wake of Japan’s property and stock market bubble in the
1990s. Bloomberg