Chapter 540: Change
The plan to restructure the long-term credit institutions, led by the Ministry of Finance and the Cabinet, was only briefly discussed by the parties at first and then shelved.
It can be seen that both the Ministry of Finance and the Cabinet are actually very conflicted.
On the one hand, he hated Changyin, the black sheep, and wanted to let it destroy itself, but on the other hand, he couldn't bear to do so.
After all, Chang Hwa Bank had provided great support for Japan's economic development, and its status in the hearts of the people and the government was far higher than that of other banks.
In addition, the Ministry of Finance and the Cabinet were also worried that if the Long-Term Credit Bank was allowed to go bankrupt, it might shake the foundations of Japan's financial economy.
Now all major banks are desperately trying to maintain their own debts. If Long-Term Credit Bank collapses, it is likely to cause a chain reaction.
Once a breach occurs in the levee, the collapse will be unstoppable.
Therefore, the Ministry of Finance did not dare to leave the Long-Term Credit Bank unattended, and therefore convened several parties to discuss the so-called Long-Term Credit Bank restructuring plan.
But after a round of talks, it was clear that no one party was satisfied with the final result.
UBS left the market in anger because the bad debts of China Merchants Bank were not made public. After all, they are an outsider, and the acquisition of assets without transparency is likely to be a big pitfall for them.
Because Sumitomo was powerless, he made a symbolic offer and then left.
Kitato Bank has come up with a practical acquisition plan, and it seems that it has considered everything very carefully.
However, the Ministry of Finance was very unwilling to accept the fact that Chang Hwa Bank, a large bank with great international influence, was being sold at such a low price.
Therefore, they accepted the plan of Kitato Bank but did not make any statement on it.
Shirakawa Feng knew that the Ministry of Finance still wanted to support Waverley, and subsequent developments were just as he expected.
Not long after their private meeting, Congress approved a special $10 trillion relief fund in October to be invested in banking industry relief.
Including the funds previously allocated by the Ministry of Finance itself, the total relief funds amount to 12 trillion yen.
When the media learned of this news, many people thought they had heard it wrong.
This number is too small and is almost negligible compared to the more than 50 trillion yuan in non-performing assets.
However, many people still expressed opposition to this money.
Ken Nagano, chairman of Keidanren and the financial giant, said this at a press conference.
"If banks do not seriously disclose relevant operating information such as wages to the public in order to apply for state aid, they will not be recognized by society."
Most banks in Japan have always kept their employees' salaries confidential, even banks with state-owned backgrounds such as Industrial Bank and Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank.
Currently, salaries in the financial industry are much higher than those in the manufacturing industry, but the outside world has never known it.
One of the responsibilities of Keidanren is to investigate the average wages in various industries and then compile them into a "Regular Wage Survey Report" for publication.
If your banking industry wants to receive financial support from the government, then your basic operating conditions must be made public.
How much non-performing assets are there, where are the applied national funds used, and how much are the employees' salaries.
These all need to be written out clearly, otherwise if you use all the relief funds to pay the salaries of senior management, then what is the point of rescue?
When the public heard this, they immediately agreed with Nagano's point of view. They were already very unhappy with the banks.
You are the ones who raised the land price, and it's your fault that everyone is suffering now.
As a result, your bank can apply for state support, so who will support us?
The public cannot decide Congress’s relief plan, but right? The banks should be given an account of where their money is spent.
However, the Ministry of Finance, which once again played dead, did not respond to these questions at all, so the banks naturally could not say anything.
In the eyes of the Ministry of Finance, Japan's financial industry is already in danger, so it has no time to pay attention to the nagging of the common people.
As a result, the 12 trillion yuan of funds were quickly approved and distributed to dozens of medium and large bank accounts.
However, because there were too many banks, more than 20 of them, in the end each bank only received a few hundred billion yen.
The Nagashik Bank, which was hated by the Ministry of Finance, received the least, only 180 billion yen.
The media is generally not optimistic about the Ministry of Finance's wave of spending.
In their reports, this is just the "last life-saving remedy" for the banking industry.
After all, compared with the nearly 60 trillion yuan in non-performing assets, this amount of money is too insignificant.
After learning about the relief funds from Changchun Bank, Shirakawa Feng smiled slightly. It seems that the Ministry of Finance is also ready to give up Changchun Bank.
Time came to the end of the year and soon entered 1993.
Almost three years have passed since the bubble began.
In the past two years, due to the bursting of the bubble, the sectors most affected were the securities and real estate industries.
But after more than two years of transmission, the negative impact of the bubble collapse has begun to penetrate into the lives of ordinary people.
The most obvious change is that company benefits have been greatly reduced and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a job.
A group of young girls who had just come out of the airport were walking towards the convenience store, chatting and laughing.
They had just returned from vacation and were going to buy two job magazines and then find a job to go back to work.
Yes, those Japanese college students in the golden age were very cool.
In terms of lifestyle, they are already very close to European and American countries.
Generally after graduation, people find a high-paying job, work for a year or two, and then quit to travel.
It is very easy to find a job these days. All major companies are competing to recruit people and the salaries are very high.
The arrogant college students took a generous salary and then resigned to go on vacation.
After having enough fun outside, come back and continue looking for a job.
Because all the major companies are recruiting people, there is no need to worry about finding a job.
College students are already familiar with this kind of seamless connection.
However, when the girls arrived at the convenience store and got the latest issue of the recruitment magazine, they all looked surprised.
The recruitment magazine used to be hundreds of pages long, but now it only has a dozen pages left.
Then I looked through it and found that the job openings were extremely low-level.
Truck drivers, street cleaners...
What about the assistant jobs that used to pay well? And what about the training trips that came with the job ads?
How come it's gone? The girls looked at each other in disbelief.
Is it still possible to find a job these days?
However, the significant slimming down of recruitment magazines has not stopped the popularity of a disco called "Tokyo Juliana" in Minato Ward, Tokyo.
Here, men and women are standing in the audience, swaying wildly to the rhythm of the fan dancers on the stage.
The colorful lights, deafening music, the smell of alcohol and hormones all stimulate the nerves of men and women.
This discotheque, which opened in May 1991 after the bubble, is still packed every day.
It's impossible to walk around the store without bumping into people.
This is the life happening among the Japanese people at this time.
The bubble has collapsed and a cold wave is about to come, but everyone is still immersed in the hangover of the bubble and is unwilling to wake up.
In addition, affected by the bubble, the operating profits of Japan's real economy also began to decline gradually.
In the past, Shirakawa Holdings' annual net profit was at least over US$3 billion, but now it is only more than US$2.6 billion.
This is a profit reduction caused by the general environment, and most companies in Neon cannot avoid it.
In the second half of the 1980s, Japan's export share remained above 22%, but now this figure has dropped to 16%.
The fundamental reason is that the neighboring countries have accelerated the process of industrialization, and part of the market has been replaced by cheaper goods.
In addition, as the domestic bubble in Japan began to show its power after bursting, people have been consciously downgrading their consumption.
Therefore, due to several factors, economic downturn is inevitable.
In order to cope with the possible industrial depression in Neon, Shirakawa Holdings has been preparing for industrial transformation for a long time.
The first is large-scale manufacturing plants, which the headquarters basically no longer approves.
Not only are factories no longer approved, but former Walkman and CD player factories are also closing one after another.
Apart from retaining the limited production capacity that can be consumed by the domestic market of Japan, all other export batches of products are produced by OEM factories in China.
After 1992, the economic policy there was further liberalized, allowing large-scale foreign-owned enterprises to survive.
Today, the headquarters of Shirakawa Electric (Tianchao) has taken root in Shanghai, marking the beginning of Shirakawa Holdings' large-scale entry into the mainland.
In the next few decades, this will be the focus of Shirakawa Holdings' development.
As for Japan, once domestic demand drops to a certain level, the last remaining production capacity will be moved to China.
The surplus workers in the now closed Walkman and CD player factories have been gradually transferred to LCD TV, mobile phone and computer production lines.
These electronic products cannot be produced under China's current conditions, so Japan will still be the processing place for these export products.
With this method of internal circulation of employees, Shirakawa Holdings achieved the goal of zero layoffs even when the bubble cold wave came .
Even Shirakawa Electric publicly stated that no matter how bad the situation is, it will not lay off any employees.
To be honest, this is actually just a matter of gaining reputation. Although Shirakawa Electric did not lay off employees, it is a fact that some factories were closed.
The system of mass employment that other large companies adhered to was about to collapse, and with the arrival of the Great Depression, layoffs were the inevitable path.
Shirakawa Electric is striving for fame and also to build up buffs for future actions. Not everyone will like what Shirakawa is going to do next.
Of course, this is a later story. As the overall environment undergoes major changes, Shirakawa Electric has also undergone major changes in its physical investment.
The relocation of production capacity is a manifestation, and the internal change is that the entire manufacturing system is adjusting.
In the past, in order to save costs, Shirakawa Electric adopted a vertically integrated processing model.
The characteristic of this production method is that all processes of a product from start to finish are completed within Shirakawa Electric.
A typical example is Panasonic, which can even achieve 100% self-sufficiency of parts.
The same is true for Apple on the other side of the ocean. Apple computers are basically produced by its own factories, which is also a typical vertically integrated processing model.
But now with the increase in labor costs and raw material costs, this rule is gradually no longer applicable to neon today.
So Shirakawa Electric once again took the first step in reform and began to try horizontal division of labor to complete product processing.
