The government-sponsored Industrial Revitalization of Corp. of Japan disbanded Thursday after overseeing 41 distressed companies with more than 30 billion yen in combined retained earnings.

"The body was beset by skepticism and criticism that it might fail to rehabilitate ailing companies and then hand the bill to the taxpayers. But we will not cost taxpayers (any money)," IRCJ President Atsushi Saito said at news conference at the bailout entity's Tokyo office, accompanied by COO Kazuhiko Toyama and Industrial Rehabilitation Committee Chairman Shinjiro Takagi.

Toyama credited IRCJ's success to each employee who worked at a target company and the professionals who were assembled from all over the nation for the projects.

"Once Japanese companies cleared up the debts they racked up during the bubble economy, they were left with professionals with high potential and technological proficiency, and that's why so-called sponsor companies, the prospective buyers, offered to pay high prices for them," he said.

On top of that, Saito said the corporate rehabilitation business is becoming common because IRCJ helped reduce resistance to the idea of buying and selling a company through a series of rescue programs. "The corporate rehabilitation model caught on," he said, adding that Japan closed its doors to private equity four years ago.

The bailout agency, set up in April 2003 under the watch of then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, was tasked with offering assistance to troubled companies and reviving the nation's financial and industrial sectors.

Toyama said Japan still has a lot of work to do. It must try to nurture these talented workers and send them out to rehabilitate struggling companies nationwide.