Editorial

14:56 JST, August 7, 2025

SBI Shinsei Bank completed the repayment of public funds it received during the era of its predecessor — the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan — at the end of last month.

This means that all public funds injected by the government in response to the financial crisis of the late 1990s have now been repaid. However, the fact that it took a quarter of a century for the repayment to be completed can be said to have left behind a sobering lesson about the public fund system.

In the early 1990s, the bubble economy collapsed, and financial institutions burdened with massive nonperforming loans were forced to deal with losses, leading to a sharp deterioration in performance. The Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, which had supported Japan’s postwar reconstruction, fell into decline after enjoying the bubble economy and became a symbol of the........

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