World's biggest banking group launched in Japan

The world's biggest banking group in terms of assets was launched in Japan on Saturday through the merger of Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group Inc and UFJ Holdings Inc.
The creation of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc (MUFG) reduced to three the number of Japan's major banking groups with the other two being Mizuho Financial Group Inc and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc.
MUFG's total assets are estimated at 190 trillion yen (1.7 trillion yen) with the number of accounts totalling some 40 million.
But the merger of the core banking units of the two groups, the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi and UFJ Bank - has been postponed by three months to January 1 to allow more time to fully integrate their computer systems.
"MUFG aims to be a premier, comprehensive, global financial group that is competitive world-wide," MUFG chairman Ryosuke Tamakoshi and president Nobuo Kuroyanagi said in a statement.
They also pledged to realise the company's "aspiration of becoming one of the top five global financial institutions by market value by fiscal 2008."
"The newly created MUFG has a broad and well-balanced network in Japan and overseas, and an extensive customer base," the statement said.
It added, "MUFG is also a truly comprehensive financial group that encompasses subsidiaries in commercial banking, trust banking and securities, as well as top class credit card companies and consumer finance companies, asset management companies, leasing companies and a US bank (Union Bank of California)."
The subsidiaries, including Mitsubishi Trust and Banking Corp and UFJ Trust Bank as well as Mitsubishi Securities Co and UFJ Tsubasa Securities Co, were also integrated on Saturday.
In the year to March this year, MTFG posted a consolidated net profit of 338.42 billion yen against UFJ Holdings' group net loss of 554.53 billion yen largely due to bad-loan disposal costs.
The combined balance of the two banking groups was in the red in the year to March this year. But the new group aims to post a net profit of 1.1 trillion yen in the year to March 2009.