UFJ Holdings Inc. said Thursday its member banks' total bad-loan writeoffs will balloon sixfold from original estimates to an unprecedented 2 trillion yen for the full business year ending March 31, on the back of likely failures among major borrowers.
For the six months to Sept. 30, Japan's fourth-largest bank booked 331 billion yen in loan-loss reserves, prompting it to report net consolidated losses of 67.4 billion yen.
"We were forced to increase our writeoffs in this rapidly deteriorating economic situation," UFJ President Hideo Ogasawara said.