Aiful, Japan's Top Consumer Lender Seeks Debt Payment Suspension

Aiful is Japan's second consumer lender by assets, and the third largest consumer lender by revenue. It was yet to trade, but already the bid was 27 percent lower.

Reuters reports that "Struggling Japanese consumer finance firm Aiful Corp (8515.T) said it would ask creditors to allow it to push back repayments on $3 billion in debt, as it faces difficulty raising funds and plans for more restructuring.

"Shares of Aiful were awash with sell orders and rival firms like Promise Co Ltd (8574.T) and Takefuji Corp (8564.T) also saw their stocks plunge."

Aiful was established in April, 1967 by Yoshitaka Fukuda as a sole-proprietorship. In 1978, this small company was reformed in Kyoto as Marutaka, Inc. and opened its first four branches to expand its consumer-finance business. The company continued to grow over the next five years and it acquired three small companies in the same business segment and renamed itself Aiful in 1983. These mergers gave the company over ¥90 million in capital and a growing market share in the consumer loan sector. Soon afterward, the company began to offer home-equity and small business loans. During the 1980s and up to the present day, the company has continued to expand by finding new investment opportunities, particularly real estate, engaging in mergers to increase its market share.

Prepared by Armen Hareyan
Materials from Reuters, Bloomberg and Wikipedia are used in this report.