Japan's new corporate rescue chief started work yesterday saying he needs businessmen to help him decide which indebted companies the country should salvage.
Sadakazu Tanigaki will build and lead the agency, as yet unnamed, which will offer loans and investment to viable companies hurt by government efforts to clear up the estimated US$432 billion in bad loans held by Japanese lenders.
Tanigaki has rescue experience: He was Japan's financial reconstruction chief in 2000 when then Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori attempted to bail out department store operator Sogo Co.
In his inaugural press conference yesterday, Tanigaki said he needs corporate help. "The agency will decide the fate of companies and I don't believe we can make this kind of judgment based only on the government's experience," he said.
Japanese business leaders last month criticized Minister for Financial Services Heizo Takenaka for establishing a bad-loan task force headed by Takeshi Kimura, president of accounting firm KPMG's Japan unit, that didn't include corporate executives.
Welcoming executives to the new agency may represent a step to ease concerns about Takenaka, who has said that no company was too big to fail. Takenaka's approach makes it difficult for him to win cooperation, so choosing an alternative to head the new agency was essential, said Minoru Morita, a political commentator and head of Morita Research Institute.
"Letting Takenaka take control of this would have been a disaster," Morita said.
Hiroshi Okuda, head of the Japan Business Federation, the country's most powerful business lobby, Wednesday urged the government to appoint experienced business managers to the new agency. Okuda is also chairman of Toyota Motor Corp, the country's biggest automaker.
Government ministers have added to the calls for cooperation with the business community. Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa urged Tanigaki to appoint a person from industry as his second-in-command.
"It's going to be difficult rehabilitating without the help of people from the private sector," said Hisanori Kataoka, an equity analyst at Standard & Poor's rating service.
Japan's lenders were estimated to hold ?52.4 trillion (US$432 billion) in bad loans as of March 31, with about half that figure held by the country's seven biggest banks.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Wednesday said that a new chip manufacturing technology called “A16” is to enter production in the second half of 2026, setting up a showdown with longtime rival Intel over who can make the fastest chips. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of advanced computing chips and a key supplier to Nvidia and Apple, announced the news at a conference in Santa Clara, California, where TSMC executives said that makers of artificial intelligence (AI) chips will likely be the first adopters of the technology rather than a smartphone maker. Analysts said that the technologies announced on
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
CALL FOR DIALOGUE: The president-elect urged Beijing to engage with Taiwan’s ‘democratically elected and legitimate government’ to promote peace President-elect William Lai (賴清德) yesterday named the new heads of security and cross-strait affairs to take office after his inauguration on May 20, including National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Wellington Koo (顧立雄) to be the new defense minister and former Taichung mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) as minister of foreign affairs. While Koo is to head the Ministry of National Defense and presidential aide Lin is to take over as minister of foreign affairs, Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) would be retained as the nation’s intelligence chief, continuing to serve as director-general of the National Security Bureau, Lai told a news conference in Taipei. Koo,
MANAGING DIFFERENCES: In a meeting days after the US president signed a massive foreign aid bill, Antony Blinken raised concerns with the Chinese president about Taiwan US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and senior Chinese officials, stressing the importance of “responsibly managing” the differences between the US and China as the two sides butt heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea. Talks between the two sides have increased over the past few months, even as differences have grown. Blinken said he raised concerns with Xi about Taiwan and the South China Sea, along with China’s support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, as well as other issues