Aozora Bank
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| Aozora Bank, Ltd. | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Type | Public (TYO: 8304, FWB: AON) |
| Founded | April, 1957[1] |
| Headquarters |  Tokyo, Japan[2] |
| Key people | Kimikazu Noumi, Chairman and CEO Federico J. Sacasa, President and COO[3] |
| Industry | Money Center Banks |
| Products | Time deposits Investment trusts Individual annuity insurance Telephone banking services ATM alliances Personal Loans Asset Management Consulting Services [4] |
| Revenue | ¥114.4 B JPY (▲0.2% FY '05 to FY '06) [5] |
| Net income | ¥81.5 B JPY (▼ 32.1% FY '05 to FY '06) [5] |
| Employees | 1,359 (Bank only) [6] |
| Website | www.aozorabank.co.jp |
Aozora Bank, Ltd. (株式会社あおぞら銀行 Kabushiki-gaisha Aozora Ginkō?, lit. "Blue Sky Bank") is a Japanese commercial bank that offers service in 19 branches in Japan and in 5 overseas representative offices.[2]
[edit] History
Aozora Bank is the successor of the Nippon Credit Bank, which was founded in 1957 under a special government trust banking license alongside the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, based on the assets of Bank of Joseon in Japan. In December of 1998, NCB was brought under government control in order to deal with its extraordinary amount of bad debt left over from the crash of the Japanese asset price bubble in the early 1990s: at the time, the bank was approximately ¥270 billion in debt.
An investor group led by Softbank, Orix and Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance Co. purchased NCB in 2000 and renamed it "Aozora Bank" in 2001. As part of this deal, the government included a "defect warranty provision" (瑕疵担保条項 kashi tanpo jōkō?) to the effect that Aozora could demand within the next three years that the government purchase any claims which had fallen by twenty percent or more from value. Aozora applied this provision conservatively in order to write off ¥400 billion in bad debts owed by about 100 companies, in contrast to Shinsei Bank, the contemporaneous successor of the Long-Term Credit Bank, which wrote off nearly three times as much and was criticized in political circles for doing so.
Softbank initially planned to make Aozora an investment bank for internet-related companies. However, Softbank was unsuccessful in obtaining the cooperation of the Financial Services Agency, and sold its stake to Cerberus Capital Management in September of 2003. Aozora launched operations as a retail bank on April 1, 2006, and opened its first new branch in Nihombashi on November 20.
[edit] Locations
Aozora's head office is located in the Kudan area of Chiyoda City, Tokyo, near Yasukuni Shrine.
The bank has retail branches in Chiba, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Kanazawa, Kyoto, Nagoya, Osaka (Namba and Umeda), Sapporo, Sendai, Takamatsu, Tokyo (Ikebukuro, Nihonbashi, Shibuya, Shinjuku and Ueno) and Yokohama.
Aozora also has representative offices in New York, Singapore, Seoul, Jakarta and Shanghai, and financing subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom and the United States.
[edit] References
- ^ Corporate History. Retrieved on June 26, 2007.
- ^ a b Company Profile. Retrieved on June 26, 2007.
- ^ Directors and Auditors. Retrieved on October 14, 2007.
- ^ Corporate Brochure 2006, Page Three. Retrieved on July 2, 2007.
- ^ a b Aozora Bank Financial Results for FY2006, Page Two. Retrieved on June 26, 2007.
- ^ Corporate Brochure 2006, Page Six. Retrieved on July 2, 2007.
