Banks play an important role in the Japanese economy. This paper addresses some recent changes in Japanese banking industry over the past decade by focusing on the ownership structure of Japanese commercial banks. Ownership type, concentration and shareholder network are investigated to explore the structural changes and further demonstrate their effects on bank performance.

Introduction

The Japanese economic system is famous for its institutional features such as corporate groups and main banks. Corporate groups (keiretsu) provide a governance mechanism to monitor member firms and a channel to share information and risks among member firms (e.g., Bernotas, 2005). Member firms of a corporate group were usually organized around a main bank that can hold both debt and equity shares of keiretsu firms (Prowse, 1992; Morck et al., 2000). Main bank have positive effects – such as access to capital and assistance in financial distress as well as corporate governance role – and meanwhile, are also criticized for their multiple roles as creditor and shareholder since their equity shareholding seems less important when compared with their debt claims and interest income earned (e.g., Yao and Ouyang, 2007). Developing and evolving with corporate groups and main bank system, cross-shareholding is thus pervasive in the Japanese economy, especially intercorporate ownership within corporate groups and cross-shareholding between main banks and keiretsu firms (e.g., Lincoln et al., 1992). Some structural changes have occurred especially since the banking crisis in late 1997 (Miyajima and Kuroki, 2007) , but it seems that the dominance of financial institutions including banks was remarkably stable (Grbic, 2007). Obviously, the banking industry plays an important role in the Japanese economy. Comparing with the previous studies of ownership structure in Japanese corporate groups and cross-shareholding, this paper concentrates more on the ownership structure in Japanese banking industry and its evolution over the past decade. Moreover, the effects of ownership structure on bank performance are investigated, rather than the effect of bank ownership on firm performance that has been extensively studied (e.g., Agarwal and Elston, 2001). Specifically, what is the current ownership structure in the Japanese banking industry? What is new feature emerging and how does it evolve over the past decade since 2005? Does ownership structure affect Japanese bank performance? These questions are exactly what this paper attempts to answer.