Nippon Credit Bank announced April 8 that it will ask other commercial banks and insurance firms to put up an additional 290.7 billion yen in capital for the troubled bank so it can put its house in order.

The additional capital is needed to prop up the bank after it writes off its nonperforming loans and posts pretax losses for the second straight year as part of a major restructuring effort, bank officials said. NCB executives are currently engaged in negotiations to have other financial institutions accept the plan, they added.

Insurance firms would convert 140.7 billion yen worth of their subordinated loans to NCB into shares -- 97 billion yen in ordinary stock and 43.7 billion yen in preferred stock, according to one part of the plan.

NCB, long rumored to be facing bankruptcy, last week unveiled a restructuring package that included a massive writeoff of bad loans, sale of property such as its Tokyo head office and termination of all overseas operations.

After assuming losses over Nippon Credit Bank's three troubled affiliates and marking a larger-than-expected evaluation loss on stocks, Mitsubishi Trust and Banking Corp. on April 8 shaved its profit estimates for the year through March 31. Mitsubishi Trust, the largest of Japan's seven trust banks, said it now estimates its unconsolidated pretax profits at 75 billion yen, down from the 130 billion yen forecast in January. Parent-only net profits are estimated at 25 billion yen, down from 85 billion yen, it said. The bank set aside 375 billion yen in allowances for nonperforming assets, up from the 320 billion yen it expected in January. Mitsubishi Trust noted that the 375 billion yen includes allowances to cover unrecoverable loans to three NCB affiliates -- Crown Leasing Corp., Nippon Total Finance Inc. and Nippon Assurance Finance Service Co.