5 major Japan banking groupsʼ latent stock profits total 8.7 trillion yen

September 30, 2017

TOKYO- Combined latent profits on domestic shares held by five major Japanese banking groups totaled some 8.7 trillion yen as of Friday, the final business day of the first half of the country's fiscal 2017, according to an estimate by an analyst.

The figure, up by some one trillion yen from the end of March, hit the highest level since the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008, Akira Takai, chief analyst at Daiwa Securities Co., said.

The benchmark 225-issue Nikkei average on the Tokyo Stock Exchange ended at 20,356.28 on Friday, up 1,447.02 points, or 7.65 percent, from the end of March.

The combined latent profits are three times higher than the five groups' total net profits of 2.5 trillion yen for fiscal 2016, according to Takai.

The five groups are Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. , Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. Mizuho Financial Group Inc., Resona Holdings Inc. and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Holdings Inc..

Meanwhile, unrealized profits on domestic shares stood at some 4.62 trillion yen as of Friday at Nippon Life Insurance Co., up 7.6 percent from the level six months before, and at about 2.47 trillion yen at Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co., up 5.6 percent, according to the major Japanese life insurers' respective announcements. Jiji Press