Press Conference by Taro Aso, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, and Minister of State for Financial Services
(Excerpt)
(Tuesday, February 20, 2018, 8:41 am to 8:46 am)
[Questions and answers:]
-
Q.
-
Some media outlets have reported that as interest rates in the US have seen a sharp rise, the Financial Services Agency (FSA) discovered, upon looking into 20 regional banks’ foreign bond investments, all of them had unrealized losses, and that the FSA has asked them to improve their business operations. Please let us know whether this reporting is true or not and, with regard to these 20 banks or others, whether the FSA will conduct on-site inspections whenever a problem arises with their foreign bond investment.
-
A.
-
As for whether we conduct on-site inspections or not, I have no comment. While it also depends on the scale of the bank, the major problems with holding these foreign bonds are that they hold a high percentage and that they have unrealized losses on them, but I do not think this constitutes a crisis for them as financial institutions, and it is thus not the case that they are in precarious circumstances.
