(Bloomberg) — Japan’s Shinsei Bank Ltd. is weighing the potential acquisition of non-bank financial firms in the Asia-Pacific region, under financial conglomerate SBI Holdings Inc., as it seeks to tap a more lucrative business with higher interest rates.
“We are getting many proposals (from investment banks), and we would like to examine each of them,” Shinsei Chief Executive Officer Katsuya Kawashima said in an interview. Non-bank finance — providing consumer loans, credit card and other business through its retail units — is “one of the few markets where interest rates remain. There is potential.”
Kawashima, 59, who took over as CEO after Japan’s biggest online brokerage forced a management change after it acquired about a 48% stake in Shinsei in December, said regional emerging markets also offer “big opportunities.” Investors are watching for how the former SBI Holdings senior executive builds out maverick financier Yoshitaka Kitao’s ambition of creating a banking alliance to transform finance in the nation and rival its conservative old guard.
Shinsei may also team up with SBI to acquire larger non-bank financial targets, Kawashima said, declining to give a potential size for such deals. “It’s important to expand the client base and build revenue foundation and to show Shinsei’s growth prospects,” the former senior executive vice president of SBI said.
The mid-sized lender with 10.6 trillion yen ($85.7 billion) in assets came into the spotlight last year when SBI Holdings Inc. made a tender offer to take effective control of the firm. Shinsei’s initial opposition to the deal raised the prospect of Japan’s first ever hostile takeover of a bank, but Shinsei dropped its poison pill defense measure in a last-minute turnaround.
Kawashima, a top lieutenant of SBI chief Yoshitaka Kitao, started his career at Nomura Securities Co. in 1985 and was in charge of what is now SoftBank Group Corp. Kawashima followed his boss to the firm after Kitao was hired by SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son.
In 2020, Shinsei acquired Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.’s UDC Finance Ltd., which was New Zealand’s largest non-bank lender, for NZ$659 million ($454 million).
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