Seit einem Jahr von 55 auf 69 Billionen Yen gestiegen = ca. 600 Milliarden Euro.
Bitte nachfolgenden Artikel beachten, es ist eigentlich ganz einfach. Man nehme eine notwendige Verzinsung des Kapitals, auf die derzeitigen Gewinne an (4%) und vergleiche diese mit der aktuellen Verzinsung. Um die Verzinsung anzuheben muss Kapital liquidiert werden (Imobillienbesitz abgeschrieben etc...). Diese Abeschreibungen müssen nun vom Eigenkapital aufgenommen werden, sonst passiert das gleiche wie bei Holzmann.

Liegt der abzuschreibende Wert über dem gesamten Eigenkapital so entsteht ein"capital shortage" und dieser liegt auf diesen schwindelerregenden Höhen.

Ein Grund dafür ist sicherlich die schlechte Gewinnlage in den Unternehmen, wenn man aber bedenkt, dass gerade die Kapitalprobleme für einen Großteil der Probleme verantwortlich ist so ist nicht davon auszugehen, dass wir einen massiven Gewinnsprung bekommen werden der die Probleme in der Bilanz ausbügeln kann.

Japan: Captial Shortage Update -- 1 First Street

Robert Alan Feldman



The non-performing loan (NPL) problem is coming back on the agenda of both policymakers and investors. Senior policymakers are once again raising the issue intensively, and the decline of bank stock index to about 200 (Jan. 6, 1992 = 1000), after peaking at 235 on June 3, indicates that investors too are re-examining the financial sector issue. In light of the skepticism about bank forecasts of prospective credit costs, it is important to see how balance sheets of Japanese industries have developed over the last year. Such an examination will update estimates of the capital shortage on the corporate side, and thus help to show whether NPL problem is getting better or worse. The answer is mixed. That said, even the more positive data suggest that the problem remains huge, and that massive efforts will be needed to eliminate the capital shortage in Japanese industry. This result also suggests that investors will again turn their attention to the non-performing loan issue.

At the June 7 meeting of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP), many members re-emphasized the importance of the non-performing loan issue, and its relationship with the efficiency of corporate asset use. For example, the following statements were made:

* Prof. Hiroshi Yoshikawa:"The NPL problem is still there.... It is intertwined with the issue of corporate revival."

* METI Minister Takeo Hiranuma (in response to Prof. Yoshikawa):"This is an extremely important observation."

* BoJ Governor Masaru Hayami:"The most important and pressing issue is, after all, conquering the NPL problem."

* MoF Minister Shojuro Shiokawa:"I think that overbanking is a major problem."

* Economics Minister Takenaka:"Ever since our ‘Thick Bone Report’ [of June 2001], we have said that the financial problem and the balance sheet problem live at 1 First Street."

In light of these statements, it is clearly incorrect to believe that somehow the financial sector issue has dropped off the radar screen of the government. Moreover, now that such statements are coming with more frequency and intensity, investor attention is likely to refocus on the financial sector issue.

Unfortunately, investor confidence in forecasts of NPLs from financial institutions and from the authorities remains low. After all, in each of the last three years, initial forecasts have underestimated the final outcome by a country mile. This year, as my colleague Hideyasu Ban recently has written, the estimate of credit costs issued by the major banks of Y2.5 trl. will likely be far too low -- with a figure of Y3.9 trl. likely as the minimum. Once again, investors will be looking outside the forecasts from the financial sector to get a handle on where the NPL issue stands, and where the balance sheet clean-up stands.

Outside of financial sector data, the only source of aggregate data on balance sheet trends is the Ministry of Finance’s Corporate Statistics. Last summer, I published an estimate of the capital shortage, using these data. (See"The Capital Shortage," July 10, 2001.) The method is simple. First, divide recurring profits by a target return on assets (I use 4%, the pre-1990 average in this data set) to derive a target level of total assets. Second, take the difference between actual assets and target assets. If the former exceed the latter, the excess is the amount of required balance sheet shrinkage. Third, assume that the loss to shareholder equity from asset liquidation is 50%. Fourth, apply this loss ratio to the required balance sheet shrinkage, and derive the amount by which shareholder equity will decline. Fifth, compare the actual level of shareholder equity with the required decline. If the required decline exceeds actual shareholder equity, then the industry (or firm) has a capital shortage, equal to the difference of the two.

In my report of July 10, 2001, I applied this method to the 35 industries in the MoF Corporate Statistics, and calculated that the aggregate capital shortage for the 7 capital-short industries was Y55 trl (see Exhibit 1). Applying exactly the same method to data for March 2002, the total capital shortage rose to Y69 trl. There were two major differences between the two years. First, the number of industries that were capital short rose to 15 -- largely as a result of the collapse of profits during the year. In particular, the posting of a loss by the electrical machinery industry generated a capital shortage there of nearly Y13 trl. Other industries that fell into capital shortage were non-ferrous metals, petroleum, apparel, construction (which barely avoided capital shortage in 2001), and wholesale. Second, there were substantial improvements in some industries. In particular, the capital shortage in the real estate industry shrank considerably, from Y39 trl in 2001 to"only" Y15 trl in 2002. This improvement came from both an improvement of profitability (recurring profits in the real estate went from Y1.63 trl in 2001 to Y2.07 trl in 2002) and a shrinkage of the asset base (from Y131 trl in 2001 to Y111 trl in 2002).

Exhibit 1. Estimates of the Capital Shortage (Yen in trillions)


March 2001
March 2002

All Firms



Single Year Basis
55
69

Three Year Average Basis
90
66

Five Year Average Basis
89
80

Real Estate



Single Year Basis
39
15

Three Year Average Basis
44
36

Five Year Average Basis
47
41


Source: Morgan Stanley Research estimates.

With such large fluctuations in the estimates of the level and composition of the capital shortage, some smoothing of the data seems reasonable. The same calculations can be performed with multi-year moving averages, in order to eliminate the cyclical component. The results are interesting. The good news is that the estimated levels of the capital shortage fall for both 3-year and 5-year moving averages. The bad news is that the levels of capital shortage remain very high. These estimates suggest that much remains to be done in raising profits and shrinking balance sheets. The equally troubling, other side of this coin is that the financial sector will also require much more work before investors can be confident that the problem of financial fragility has been solved.



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Japan's bad-loan agency

Garbage in
Jun 20th 2002 | TOKYO
From The Economist print edition


The Irresolution Corporation

SOME pin their hopes on the Resolution and
Collection Corporation (RCC), the state's
loan-collection agency, to help change Japan's awful
banks, weighed down by ¥150 trillion ($1.2 trillion) of
bad debts. The RCC is modelled on America's
Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), which cleaned up
after the savings-and-loan mess in the late 1980s.
Sadly, Japan's version is no RTC. That body worked
efficiently to clear up problem loans. It had a limited
life, after which it was wound up. It brought the
problem under control fast, at a cost to the taxpayer
that was less than expected. Japan's RCC has fewer
resources and less authority in tackling a bad-loan
problem that dwarfs any in history.

If the Japanese government chose the right model, it
is running the RCC the wrong way, says James Fiorillo
of ING, a Dutch bank. The flaws run deep. The
RCC—created in 1999 and financed by
government-guaranteed bonds issued by its parent,
the Deposit Insurance Corporation—does not have a
limited life and is under no pressure to act quickly.
Though the government set a deadline of March 2004
for it to buy up bad loans, it has not set a date to
wind up the RCC. Disposals of bad loans could drag
on, at a cost to taxpayers.

With only 2,400 employees, compared with the 8,000
that the RTC had, the RCC also lacks resources. Most
of its staff come from the bust financial institutions
that generated the bulk of the bad loans in the first
place; many of the rest are former bureaucrats. Since
unemployment is rising among white-collar workers,
they have no incentive to finish the job and lose
theirs.

The RCC has few good assets with which to dilute the
bad. It took over some ¥5 trillion of bad loans from
bankrupt mortgage companies and banks, and has
recovered about half of these. Yet unlike its American
counterpart, which took over all assets, good and
bad, of bust savings-and-loans, the RCC got only the
bad bits that new owners of bust banks did not want.
That makes it harder to group assets, by geography
or industry, into attractive packages for securitising
or selling in bulk.

Instead of fixing these flaws, politicians have
attacked the RCC for offering banks prices for
distressed debt that are supposedly below market
value. How else, they ask, could the RCC have spent
Â¥39 billion on bad loans recorded on banks' balance
sheets as worth over ¥1 trillion—a mere 3.9% of their
recorded value? This ignores how banks have
notoriously overvalued collateral, and how the RCC
took on many of the very worst assets, such as
buildings in which gangsters have squatters' rights.
The RCC has made little profit, if any, on these
assets. Besides, banks have always been free to take
rival bids for their loans from private institutions.

There is indeed no shortage of private companies
keen to buy bad loans from banks—at the right price.
Since 1999, when they were allowed to apply for
licences, some 60-odd firms, including foreign
investment banks such as Morgan Stanley and
Goldman Sachs, have competed with the RCC to buy
bad loans from banks.

Does Japan even need an RCC,
then? Not in its current form.
Still, one politician in the ruling
Liberal Democratic Party,
Yasuhisa Shiozaki, believes that
a reformed RCC could play a role
in restructuring banks and their equally wobbly
borrowers. It could, he says, buy blocks of debt in
rotten companies and then force needed changes on
the companies—even outsourcing debt workouts to
specialist foreign institutions. Banks, he says, should
be made to sell many more of their bad loans to the
RCC. If that means more losses for the RCC, then the
banks' shares could be transferred to the
government, in effect nationalising them.

Foreign bankers agree that the RCC might have a role
as a warehouse for bad loans. They say that it should
not attempt, as it is now doing, to restructure
companies itself, as this can take years (and
expertise that the RCC lacks) to complete.

No matter how the RCC might be reformed, it will be
unable to help solve the problem of Japan's bad loans
until the banks themselves are forced to act. Yet
they fear that selling or writing down more bad loans
would leave them badly under-capitalised or even
bust. Suggestions that the government should
sweeten the sales by buying loans at a premium
make little sense. That would be an indirect injection
of public funds—which the government has spent the
past two years denying the banks need anyway.

Quelle: Economist (nur Abo)

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