Japan breaks up post office spawning giant bank
Tuesday, 2 October 2007
TOKYO, Oct 1 (AFP): Japan broke up its sprawling post office today, spinning off a bank with the world's largest savings at the start of a privatisation process set to reshape the country's financial services industry.
Japan Post was split into four units to handle deliveries, savings, insurance and counter services. It was in effect the world's biggest bank, with some three trillion dollars in postal savings and life insurance policies.
The split is the initial step in a decade-long process that counts as the first major privatisation in Japan since the 1987 breakup of the national railway.
Major post offices opened one hour earlier than usual to mark the overhaul, which was at the core of former premier Junichiro Koizumi's reform agenda to streamline the bloated public sector.
"We are facing a tremendous challlenge," admitted the head of the post office's new holding company, Yoshifumi Nishikawa, a former head of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking. The government picked him to oversee the privatisation.
Koizumi, who staked his leadership on postal privatisation, joined other prominent politicians to cut the tape at the launch of Japan Post Holdings Co., the holding company 100 per cent owned by the government.
"Before I took office, all parties were against privatising the post office. It was thanks to people's support that we were able to realise" it, he said.
At Tokyo's central post office, some 350 people, many of them elderly citizens, queued up to buy commemorative stamps and
Japan Post was split into four units to handle deliveries, savings, insurance and counter services. It was in effect the world's biggest bank, with some three trillion dollars in postal savings and life insurance policies.
The split is the initial step in a decade-long process that counts as the first major privatisation in Japan since the 1987 breakup of the national railway.
Major post offices opened one hour earlier than usual to mark the overhaul, which was at the core of former premier Junichiro Koizumi's reform agenda to streamline the bloated public sector.
"We are facing a tremendous challlenge," admitted the head of the post office's new holding company, Yoshifumi Nishikawa, a former head of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking. The government picked him to oversee the privatisation.
Koizumi, who staked his leadership on postal privatisation, joined other prominent politicians to cut the tape at the launch of Japan Post Holdings Co., the holding company 100 per cent owned by the government.
"Before I took office, all parties were against privatising the post office. It was thanks to people's support that we were able to realise" it, he said.
At Tokyo's central post office, some 350 people, many of them elderly citizens, queued up to buy commemorative stamps and