Buying Ashikaga Bank back from the state, and the 2013 relisting (2008)

A market player as the exit from state control

What makes this decision singular is that the receiver of a failed regional bank was neither another regional bank nor a government institution, but a consortium built around a securities group. The Financial Services Agency made minimizing the public burden the central test of its selection, and chose a private buyer with the capital strength to close the deficit — roughly ¥120bn for the shares plus a subscription to new capital — and to return the bank to the stock market within a few years. The skeleton of the design shows in the attempt to make the securities side's investment return and the survival of Tochigi's regional finance work within one and the same framework.

The 2013 relisting was not, however, the end of the rebuild. Ashikaga Bank alone could not meet the wider consolidation demanded by a shrinking population, and just three years after listing, in 2016, it was recast through the combination with Joyo Bank into Mebuki Financial Group. Nomura's own exit, the sale of its shares, was deferred until 2019, after the merger. Privatization and relisting can be seen as a way station on the road to handing the framework of regional finance to a larger, broader alliance. Whether a failure was resolved well is shown less by the fact of the return to market than by what that return led on to.