TRANSITION IN OVERSEAS OFFICE LOCATIONS OF JAPANESE REGIONAL BANKS IN ASIA

Abstract

Due to globalization in finance, the restructuring of Japanese banking industry is accelerating. This paper focuses on the changes in the location of Japanese overseas banking and explores the backgrounds behind the trends. Two Japanese regional banks are taken as case studies. As a result, Japanese regional banks gravitated their overseas business into Asia throughout the 1990s. Simultaneously, decentralization from Hong Kong was proceeding among the locations of their overseas offices within Asia. The paper concludes that the business style of Japanese banks, which used to be very uniform, is becoming more diversified.