SBI Shinsei Bank Returns to Stock Market

Tokyo, Dec. 17 (Jiji Press)–SBI Shinsei Bank made a comeback to the Tokyo Stock Exchange after a hiatus of some two years on Wednesday, in one of the largest stock listings this year. After fetching the first quotation of 1,586 yen apiece, higher than its initial public offering price of 1,450 yen, the stock rose to as high as 1,680 yen and ended the day’s trading at 1,623 yen on the TSE’s top-tier Prime section. Based on the closing price, the market capitalization of the bank, a unit of major Japanese online financial service group SBI Holdings Inc., stood at about 1.45 trillion yen, making the stock listing one of the largest IPOs in Japan this year. The Japanese bank is expected to play a leading role in the SBI group’s “fourth megabank” initiative, designed to promote cooperation with regional banks across the country. “We plan to speed up investments in growth areas by leveraging our high-quality capital,” SBI Shinsei Bank President Katsuya Kawashima told a news conference held at the TSE in the afternoon, discussing the lender’s business strategy following its return to the stock market. The bank will promote cooperation with regional banks according to their needs, he also said. The bank’s predecessor, Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, went bankrupt in 1998 and was temporarily placed under state control. This is the bank’s third TSE listing, including during a period when it was under the control of a U.S. investment fund. The bank became a subsidiary of SBI Holdings in 2021, after it was unable to fully repay the public funds it received from the government to deal with loans that became unrecoverable in the wake of the collapse of the country’s bubble economy. SBI Shinsei Bank was delisted from the TSE in September 2023. In July this year, the bank repaid all of the remaining public funds of some 230 billion yen using financial resources from SBI Holdings. SBI Shinsei Bank aims to work with regional banks that have received investments from SBI Holdings in offering joint loans. Norinchukin Bank, which has reached a basic business tie-up agreement with SBI Shinsei Bank, will invest in the lender following the listing. U.S. investment fund KKR is also set to provide capital to the bank. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]