For years, Nobuhiro Doi resisted calls for Japanese banks to end the long-standing practice of holding shares in their corporate clients. Now the 68-year-old president of Kyoto Financial Group is beginning to come around to the idea.
"We cannot completely ignore increasingly demanding views toward strategic holdings,” Doi said in an interview at the bank’s headquarters in the ancient capital. He is also becoming more open to mergers, though he has no plans in place now.
With about ¥1 trillion ($7 billion) in cross-shareholdings, Kyoto Financial has been a symbol of Japan’s old guard holding out against selling the stakes, given its historic ties to exporters based in the city including Nintendo, Nidec and Kyocera.
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