An Explanation of Main Bank Relationship in Japan

First, it is necessary to define what a Japanese "main bank" is. The "main bank" is defined as the "financial group" ("kinyu keiretsu" in japanese) in the paper. "Financial group" is defined in principle by the amount of financing that a bank supplies to a particular borrowing company. When a given company has taken out the largest amount of loans from a particular bank for the past three or more years consecutively, the company is viewed as belonging to that bank's "financial group." Nearly all the companies listed in the first section of Tokyo Stock Exchange have a main bank. …