Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc.'s trust banking arm plans to increase the assets it administers overseas for institutional investors by about 30 percent to $400 billion over the next two years to boost fee income, the unit's new president said.
The trust bank, which has acquired four firms that provide services to funds over the past three years, will seek more takeovers to achieve the goal, Mikio Ikegaya said in a recent interview. "We can expect to earn stable fee income from this business," said Ikegaya, 57, who became president of Mitsubishi UFJ Trust & Banking on Friday.
Japan's biggest lenders are expanding abroad and increasing their focus on fee businesses at a time when a slowing economy and the central bank's introduction of negative interest rates are disrupting markets and further eroding loan profitability at home. Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and its major trust bank peers last week were the first lenders to say they would begin passing on some costs of the Bank of Japan's policy to some institutional customers.