was a major Japanese bank headquartered in

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...

, which operated from 1933 to 2002. It merged with Tokai Bank to form UFJ Bank (now part of

MUFG Bank is the largest bank in Japan. It was established on January 1, 2006, following the merger of the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Ltd. and UFJ Bank Ltd. MUFG is one of the three so-called Japanese "megabanks" (along with SMBC and Mizuho). As such, ...

). In the 1990s, it was the most profitable bank in the world, and second-largest in terms of assets behind its eventual merger partner Tokyo-Mitsubishi. Sanwa was formed by the 1933 merger of three Osaka-based banks. The oldest of these banks, Kōnoike Bank, dated its operations back to 1656, when the Kōnoike family of Osaka established a money exchange business. The exchange was chartered to provide services for the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

in 1670. In 1877, it was awarded a national bank charter. By the 1930s, Kōnoike was unable to compete with larger banks tied to ''

zaibatsu is a Japanese term referring to industrial and financial vertically integrated business conglomerates in the Empire of Japan, whose influence and size allowed control over significant parts of the Japanese economy from the Meiji period unt ...

'' conglomerates, so it merged with the Sanjushi Bank and Yamaguchi Bank. It became the largest bank in Japan in terms of assets during the years prior to World War II. During the postwar era, Sanwa was a major financier of Japanese

heavy industry Heavy industry is an industry that involves one or more characteristics such as large and heavy products; large and heavy equipment and facilities (such as heavy equipment, large machine tools, huge buildings and large-scale infrastructure); o ...

as the central hub of the

Sanwa Group The was a leading Japanese keiretsu, based in Osaka, between World War II and the Japanese asset price bubble in the early 1990s. It remains in existence as a jointly held company called . Sanwa Bank was a major financier for the textile indust ...

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 '' ...

. It founded Japan Credit Bureau (JCB) in 1961, becoming a pioneer of the Japanese credit card business. Following the collapse 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 of ...

and a wave of bank mergers in the 1990s, Sanwa entered into merger talks with Tokai Bank and

Asahi Bank () is the holding company of , the fifth-largest banking group in Japan as of 2012. It is headquartered in the Kiba area of Koto, Tokyo. The main operating entities of the group are Resona Bank, a nationwide corporate and retail bank headqu ...

, and the three banks announced a merger in 2001, which would create the third-largest bank in the world behind

Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York St ...

and

Mizuho Financial Group , abbreviated as MHFG, or simply called Mizuho, is a banking holding company headquartered in the Ōtemachi district of Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The name "" literally means "abundant rice" in Japanese and "harvest" in the figurative sense. Upo ...

. Asahi pulled out of these talks later that year and The Toyo Trust & Banking Co. added to the merger group, the combined company then to be called United Financial Holdings of Japan. The merger was completed in 2002 and the new bank was called .

References

{{reflist Defunct banks of Japan Companies based in Osaka Prefecture Midori-kai Banks established in 1933 Banks disestablished in 2002 Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Companies formerly listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Japanese companies disestablished in 2002 Japanese companies established in 1933