Fuji Bank and Sanwa Bank, two of the nation's city banks, said Wednesday that their pretax profits for the April-September period fell 75.6 percent and 64.4 percent, respectively, from the same period last year as they continued efforts to dispose of bad assets.
In releasing their midterm earnings reports, both banks said they expect to go into the red when they close their books for the current fiscal year in March. The banks attributed the projections to active efforts to get rid of nonperforming loans before April, when more stringent benchmarks for checking creditworthiness will be introduced.
Fuji logged pretax profits of 13.99 billion yen for the April-September period, with net interim profits coming to 10.79 billion yen. Operating profits totaled 134.56 billion yen.