Had auditors informed banking group Resona Holdings Inc. by March of critical changes in auditing standards, next month's infusion of 1.96 trillion yen in public funds could have been avoided, former Resona Holdings President Yasuhisa Katsuta told the Diet on Wednesday.
In their first appearance before the Diet since the government pledged to funnel an unprecedented sum of public money into the nation's fifth-largest banking group, whose capital levels had plunged, Katsuta and the heads of Resona's former and current auditing teams engaged in two hours of finger-pointing.
"We could have cut risk assets, but we were denied time to do even that," Katsuta told the Lower House Financial Affairs Committee, adding that the bank could have tightened credit or transferred housing loans to other financial institutions.