Japan's Aozora Bank warns of $2.15 billion loss

Aozora Bank, a mid-sized Japanese lender, said Tuesday it expected to lose more than two billion dollars in the financial year to March because of the global financial crisis. The company has been badly burned by its exposure to failed US investment bank Lehman Brothers, an alleged pyramid scheme run by Wall Street broker Bernard Madoff and other investments gone sour.
It said its president and chief executive, Federico Sacasa, had stepped down and would be replaced by deputy president Brian Prince, 45, a former top banker with Lehman Brothers who joined Aozora last year. "In the environment of the unprecedented financial market turmoil, the bank has taken proactive measures to aggressively... put our problem assets behind us," Prince told a news conference.
The Japanese bank, majority owned by US investment fund Cerberus, forecast a net loss of 196 billion yen (2.15 billion dollars) for the year to March, against a 27-billion-yen loss previously projected.