Five of the nation's 10 city banks announced plans Friday to write off their massive bad loans during fiscal 1997, four of them saying they expect to go into the red at the end of the year.
The banks say they will fall into the red due to active efforts to get rid of nonperforming loans before April, when more stringent benchmarks for checking creditworthiness will be introduced.
Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank forecasts pretax losses of 150 billion yen for fiscal 1997, the second consecutive fiscal year the bank will report a deficit, due to a combined writeoff of 450 billion yen worth of bad loans.