일본의 관계금융 기능 강화와 지역금융기관

Abstract

The Japanese "main bank system" figures prominently in the recent literature on "relationship banking." By most accounts, the main bank epitomizes relationship finance: traditionally, every large Japanese firm had one, and that bank monitored the firm, participated in its governance, acted as the delegated monitor for other creditors, and rescued the firm if it fell into financial distress. Yet all this has begun to change, continue these accounts. Japan deregulated its financial markets in the 1980s, and many firms abandoned their relational lender for market finance. As the main banks then lost their ability to constrain firms - as relationship banking unraveled - the firms gambled in the stock and real estate bubbles, the bubbles burst, and the firms threw the country into recession. Relationship lending depends on the accumulation over time by the loan officer of soft information. Because the loan officer is the repository of this soft information, agency problems are created throughout the organisation that may best be resolved by structuring the bank as a small, closely-held organisation with few managerial layers.