A banking giant in Japan has announced a plan to liquidate $63 billion in US and European treasuries in an attempt to mitigate a massive amount of unrealized losses on its balance sheet.
Japan’s Norinchukin Bank, which has $681.6 billion in total assets, plans to complete the sell-off of sovereign bonds by March of next year, reports Nikkei Asia.
The sales will bring the bank’s net loss for the current fiscal year to 1.5 trillion yen, which is triple the bank’s previous estimate.
“[The bank’s CEO Kazuto Oku] said the bank ‘acknowledged the need to drastically change its management’ to reduce unrealized losses on its bonds, which totaled roughly 2.2 trillion yen as of the end of March.
Oku explained the bank’s intention to shift its investments, saying, ‘We will reduce [sovereign] interest rate risk and diversify into assets that take on corporate and individual credit risk.’”
As of March, the banking…
