With the industrial web of cross-shareholdings unraveling, major commercial banks remained net sellers of stocks for the fifth straight month in August.

Long-term credit banks, city banks and regional banks as a whole sold 376.6 billion yen more shares than they bought on the Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya stock exchanges, according to a weekly industry report. This roughly constituted a three-fold increase on the previous month's level, the report says.

It also brought their net sales over the first five months of fiscal 2001 to some 900 billion yen, up 260 billion yen over the same period in 2000.

The application of mark-to-market accounting rules on cross-held shares during the current business year has hastened seasonal sales by these banks, brokerage officials said.

In the last week of August alone, however, their selloffs have visibly subsided.

They posted 50.83 billion yen in net sales, down from 84.34 billion yen the previous week.

With a broad array of stocks having taken a repeated battering in recent weeks, banks and corporate investors appear to be opting to delay their planned sales, they said.

Trust banks, on the other hand, remained net buyers for the sixth month in a row, posting a buying excess of 80.7 billion yen, compared with 62.9 billion yen in July.

Meanwhile, foreign investors turned net buyers of Japanese stocks for the first time in three months.

Nonresidents bought 295.5 billion yen more than they sold, marking a turnaround from the 22.1 billion yen in net sales posted the previous month.

Major buyers included U.S. investment trusts and pension funds.

There were indications that U.S.-based hedge funds unwound their Japanese positions to cash in on profits.

Stocks sold by these funds included those expected to benefit from the government's urban redevelopment plan.

In the week from Aug. 27 to 31, foreign investors bought 44.37 billion yen more than they sold, down from 83.87 billion yen the previous week.