It was early last month at moneylender Aiful Corp.'s midterm earnings news conference, and the mood at the Tokyo venue was grim.
Japan's largest consumer lender had just posted its first half-year consolidated net loss since becoming a publicly traded company in 1998, largely because of changes in accounting rules requiring it to put aside massive reserves for repayments to customers who were charged excessively high interest rates.
Aiful was also reeling from a business suspension meted out by the Financial Services Agency in April as punishment for what the company admitted were strong-arm debt-collection tactics.