By Kazuma Nagahara / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

Japan's SBI Shinsei Bank Ltd., which made a successful return to the Tokyo Stock Exchange $(TSE)$ on Wednesday, now aims to cooperate with regional banks, as well as its parent company, SBI Holdings Inc., to expand its operations.

The bank was delisted in September 2023 and applied for relisting on the TSE's Prime Market this July after the completion of repayment of public funds received by its predecessor firm following the financial crisis of the late 1990s.

SBI Shinsei Bank's stock opened at 1,586 yen on Wednesday, higher than the initial public offering price of 1,450 yen. The stock closed at 1,623 yen, giving the bank a market capitalization of about 1.45 trillion yen. The relisting was the biggest initial public offering in Japan this year.

"I believe that (the high stock price) represents the appraisal and expectations of investors and new shareholders," said SBI Shinsei Bank President Katsuya Kawashima.

SBI Holdings has set a goal of becoming the "fourth megabank" in Japan by expanding its cooperation with regional banks, and SBI Shinsei Bank is the cornerstone of the plan. Through the cooperation between SBI Shinsei Bank and regional banks, SBI Holdings aims to increase SBI Shinsei Bank's corporate loans and standardize core systems to reduce cost. The company also intends to increase deposits in SBI Shinsei Bank by linking clients' accounts to those they have with SBI Securities Co.

The predecessor to SBI Shinsei Bank was Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan Ltd., which went bankrupt because it accumulated a massive amount of bad debt from real-estate lending. The government injected a total of 416.6 billion yen in public funds into the bank in 1998 and 2000. The firm became a subsidiary of SBI Holdings in 2021. SBI Shinsei Bank's repayment of the public funds took such forms as SBI Holdings purchasing preferred shares owned by the Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan.

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This article is from The Yomiuri Shimbun. Neither Dow Jones Newswires, MarketWatch, Barron's nor The Wall Street Journal were involved in the creation of this content.

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December 18, 2025 03:46 ET (08:46 GMT)

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