Japan's Resona to tie up with Public Bank

Resona Holdings Inc, Japan's fifth-largest bank by market value, is
poised to tie up with Malaysia's Public Bank Bhd as part of its efforts
to expand in Asia.

Resona will sign an agreement with Malaysia's
third-biggest lender on May 20 to service Japanese companies looking to
enter the country and borrow in the local currency, president Kazuhiro
Higashi said in an interview this week.

"There are many Japanese
companies in Malaysia, so we want to support them with a local banking
partner," said Higashi, 56, who became president last month. "We've
covered most big Asian countries by now," he said, adding that he's
interested in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.

Resona is tapping
credit demand from faster-growing economies as deflation and a
shrinking population limit growth at home. Higashi said in March that
he plans to boost new loans to Japanese businesses expanding in Asia by
25 per cent to 50 billion yen (US$490 million) within a year.

With
no banking licenses 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.

Shares of Resona have climbed 36 per
cent this year, compared with a 45 per cent increase in Japan's
benchmark Topix Index. The lender last week unveiled plans to complete
a bailout repayment in five years.

Resona will repay the
remaining 872 billion yen it owes to the government by March 2018, it
said in a statement on May 10. The company is among 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