The Tokyo Metropolitan Government filed Friday for court protection under the fast-track civil rehabilitation law for three public-private joint ventures set up in the 1980s for redeveloping a waterfront area along Tokyo Bay.
The filing is part of a plan to rehabilitate the money-losing ventures with a large debt waiver from financial institutions, while setting up a new holding firm under which their operations will be integrated with those of profitable quasi-public entities, sources said.
The three are saddled with about 400 billion yen in liabilities, the sources added.
In 1985, the metro government launched a project of redeveloping more than 400 hectares of reclaimed land along Tokyo Bay, including the Daiba area, as a subcenter for the capital.
Tokyo Teleport Center Inc. and the other two entities were established in the mid-1980s with the metro government putting up about 50 percent.
Their operations -- mainly the management of large business and commercial complexes -- have been slack partly because an inconvenient transportation infrastructure has hindered development in the area.
The bursting of the bubble economy also dealt a serious blow to their operations.