Sumitomo Mitsui offers price to buy Aozora Bank stake.

Japan Weekly Monitor, March, 2003

TOKYO, March 1 Kyodo

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. has offered a certain price to Softbank Corp. to acquire its 48.8% equity stake in Aozora Bank, sources familiar with the deal said Saturday.

A specific bidding price is not known but it is estimated at around 100 billion yen, the sources said.

Sumitomo Mitsui and U.S. investment firm Cerberus Group, another potential buyer of the Aozora bank stake, assessed the quality of the bank's loans and other assets for three weeks from early February.

Sumitomo Mitsui apparently calculated the bidding price by taking into account the results of the assessment as well as Aozora Bank's indicators showing its creditworthiness and comparison of its stock prices with those of other...