Financially ailing Toho Mutual Life Insurance Co. and leading U.S. nonbank financial firm GE Capital Services Inc. formally announced Wednesday that they will set up a new life insurance company in Japan.
The joint venture marks the first such tieup between a domestic life insurer struggling to survive and a foreign financial institution taking advantage of Japan's upcoming "Big Bang" financial deregulation.
Toho Mutual hopes to survive the burden of massive nonperforming loans and increasing cancellations by policyholders that followed the collapse last April of Nissan Mutual Life Insurance Co., another Tokyo-based midsize life insurer.