INTERVIEW: Norinchukin Bank to Diversify Investment Portfolio

Tokyo, April 21 (Jiji Press)--Norinchukin Bank will diversify its investment portfolio after suffering huge losses from foreign bonds, President and CEO Taro Kitabayashi said in a recent interview.

The Japanese bank for agricultural cooperatives expects to post a net loss of some 1.9 trillion yen for the year that ended last month after selling a large amount of U.S. and European bonds with appraisal losses.

"Our profit sources were heavily concentrated (in foreign bonds) and we were late in making decisions as we were not able to catch up with environmental changes," Kitabayashi said.

"We will increase the proportion of risk assets while reducing the amount of bonds that had occupied nearly 60 pct of our portfolio," he said. "We will also diversify regions and products of our investments," he said.

Kitabayashi became president and CEO of the bank on April 1, replacing Kazuto Oku, who stepped down to take responsibility for the investment losses.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]