Pertinent market/industry news/articles, page-4919

Nice find Giovanni

Here is an extract from Giovanni's link, the take away is that our potential partners Sumitomo, Mitsui and Mitsubishi have banking arms in the Japanese economy alongside what they are famously known for.

Toyota is considered the biggest of the vertically integrated keiretsu groups, although the company is rather considered as a "emerged" keiretsu, along with Softbank, Seven & I Holdings Co.^[13] The banks at the top are not as large as normally required, so it is actually considered to be more horizontally integrated than other keiretsu.

The Japanese recession in the 1990s had profound effects on the keiretsu. Many of the largest banks were hit hard by bad loan portfolios and forced to merge or go out of business. This had the effect of blurring the lines between the individual keiretsu: Sumitomo Bank and Mitsui Bank, for instance, became Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation in 2001, while Sanwa Bank (the banker for the Hankyu-Toho Group) became part of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.