Japanese bank Mizuho Financial Group has announced it will buy $380 million worth of shares to bail out troubled credit card company Orient.
The move follows Orient posting a net loss of $3.9 billion following debts incurred from bad loans, which led to its second-largest shareholder Mizuho cutting its forecasted annual profit by 25 percent earlier this week.
Under the terms of the deal Orient will receive $1.27 billion in investment capital through selling preferred shares to Mizuho, Morgan Stanley and other smaller investors.
Mizuho, which is the second-largest bank in the territory, has also acceded to a $1.19 billion debt-equity trade-off with Orient.
Orient’s losses come after Japanese regulatory bodies initiated a crackdown on domestic credit card companies in December of last year, which capped the maximum rate of interest that they are able to charge at 20 per cent.
Since the ruling, Japanese credit card companies have seen revenues nosedive, with Japan’s fourth-biggest consumer lender Aiful having $15 billion wiped off its value.