was a major Japanese bank which merged with

Mitsui Bank was a major Japanese bank from 1876 to 1990. It merged with Taiyo Kobe Bank to form Mitsui Taiyo Kobe Bank (MTKB), which was renamed The Sakura Bank in April 1992. Sakura Bank is now part of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC). History T ...

in 1990 to form Mitsui Taiyo Kobe Bank (MTKB), renamed The Sakura Bank in April 1992. Sakura Bank is now part of

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation is a Japanese multinational banking and financial services institution headquartered in Yurakucho, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The group operates in retail, corporate, and investment banking segment worldwide. It provides financial products and ser ...

(SMBC). TKB was unique during its time in that it was a major commercial bank unaffiliated with a

keiretsu A is a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings. In the legal sense, it is a type of informal business group that are loosely organized alliances within the social world of Japan's business community. The ''ke ...

group or a general trading company.

History

The Bank of Kobe was established in

Kobe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whic ...

in 1936 and became a major lender to the industrial sector in the Kobe region, as well as a major financier for the city of Kobe. It established several overseas offices in the 1950s and 1960s to support its municipal finance operations. Bank of Kobe merged with Taiyo Bank in 1973. Taiyo Bank was descended from Dai Nippon Mujin, a mutual savings and loan company established in 1940. It changed its name to Nippon Mujin in 1948 and to Nippon Sogo Bank in 1951 before adopting the Taiyo Bank name in 1968 in an attempt to project a more international image. The 1973 merger gave TKB the largest branch network of any Japanese bank. The bank grew consistently through the 1970s and 1980s and opened numerous overseas offices. TKB agreed to merge with Mitsui Bank in 1989. At the time (in the midst of the

Japanese asset price bubble The was an economic bubble in Japan from 1986 to 1991 in which real estate and stock market prices were greatly inflated. In early 1992, this price bubble burst and Japan's economy stagnated. The bubble was characterized by rapid acceleration ...

), the merger was to create the second largest bank in the world behind

Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank , abbreviated as , was one of the largest banks in the world during the latter half of the 20th century. Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank was created in 1971 by a consortium of two banks: Dai-Ichi Bank, Japan's oldest bank, and Nippon Kangyo Bank, a state fin ...

. While TKB had a strong base of individual and small business customers, Mitsui had a complementary base of larger institutional clients. The merger was aimed at leveraging these synergies, as well as providing stronger competition against European banks, which were expected to consolidate following a deregulation in 1992.

References

{{Authority control Defunct banks of Japan Companies formerly listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Banks disestablished in 1990 Japanese companies disestablished in 1990