Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc., the biggest seller of Japanese government bonds among the nation's three biggest banks, may start buying again once inflation picks up, President Koichi Miyata said.
The lending unit of Japan's second-largest bank by market value stopped selling JGBs after reaching the minimum it needs on hand to use as guarantees in interbank transactions, Miyata said in an interview Friday. Sumitomo Mitsui cut its debt holdings by 47 percent to ¥14.7 trillion as of September from a year earlier, company data show.
Sumitomo Mitsui sold the bonds and shifted its investments into stocks as the Bank of Japan made record purchases of debt, pushing down interest rates as part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plan to revive the world's third-largest economy by stoking inflation. Once that strategy starts working, driving up returns on JGBs and steepening the yield curve, the bank may resume buying, Miyata said.