HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Japanese insurer Yamato Life Insurance Co. filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors Friday, reportedly becoming the first in the industry to do so in seven years. The insurer said recent declines in the value of its securities holdings had impaired its balance sheet, with liabilities exceeding assets by 11.49 billion yen ($116.02 million), according to wire reports citing comments by a company spokesman at a press briefing Friday. Yamato had assets totaling 283.1 billion yen ($2.86 billion) and policies worth 1.075 trillion yen at the end of the fiscal year through March 2008, according to a report by the Nikkei newspaper. Yamato’s bankruptcy filing ranks as the fifth-largest corporate failure in Japan this year
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Japanese insurer Yamato Life Insurance Co. filed for bankruptcy
protection from creditors Friday...
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Gotta’ respect the Japanese.
First they grab our formerly world-class methods of manufacturing cars.
Now they carry on the good, old-fashioned (and nearly defunct in America)
way of dealing with a business failure.
The company goes belly-up, through some bankruptcy process, then
either emerges from bankruptcy or just goes out of bidness, liquidates,
and a more competent competitor expands to take over their market share.
Or a new company comes into the sector.
The business concept of “creative destruction” has left the USA and
found a new home in Japan.