Souichirou Kozuka

Interfirm Relationships and Trade Credit in Japan: Evidence from Micro-Data

In this paper, we describe the current status of interfirm relationships in Japan with a special emphasis on the trade credit between firms. To do so, we first need to clarify what kind of firms in Japan we report on. In this section, we describe the source of our data, and how we chose the sample firms that are used for the analysis in the subsequent sections. We also explain the methodology that we use when we report our findings in the sections below.

A New Look at Bank-Firm Relationships and the Use of Collateral in Japan: Evidence from Teikoku Databank Data

Employing a unique micro dataset on the financial relationships between Japanese firms and their main banks and the use of collateral in their debt financing, this chapter provides a detailed account of the current landscape of business financing in Japan. The findings can be summarized as follows. First, main bank relationships are stable for most firms: less than 1 % of firm switch their main bank in any particular year, although more than 80 % of firms have established relationships with multiple banks. Second, main bank relationships are stronger in terms of deposit transactions than in terms of borrowing: the share of deposits with the main bank in the total amount of deposits is larger than the share of the amount borrowed from the main bank in the total amount of borrowing outstanding. Third, the most frequently pledged type of collateral is real estate property. And fourth, more than 30 % of real estate properties are used as collateral for multiple secured loans, suggesting that the use of junior liens is quite common in Japan.

Security Interests in Transport Vehicles: The Cape Town Convention and Its Implementation in National Law

Today no one doubts that the Cape Town Convention is one of the most successful uniform law instruments, already boasting a significant number of Parties 15 years after its adoption. As it represents the international regime for security interests in aircraft, no practitioner in the field can work without knowledge of it. This Report analyses in what respects the Cape Town Convention differs from the existing laws of various jurisdictions, and how it will modify the latter once the State becomes a Party to it. Interestingly, the Cape Town Convention takes a rather modest approach to unifying divergent laws of nations in the traditional sense. Its impact will be greater in modernising the existent laws on secured transactions, which are sometimes outdated, complicated or not favoured by the investors in the capital market. Thus, the Cape Town Convention is not simply a successful example of uniform law, it also models a new role for private law unification, namely to modernise domestic legal systems and make the latter more competitive in the “law market.”

The Cape Town Convention and Its Implementation in Domestic Law: Between Tradition and Innovation

This chapter is the general report on the subject, drawing on the reports on various jurisdictions contributed to the volume. After giving an overview of the Cape Town Convention and its three Protocols (together as “the Cape Town Convention”), the chapter makes a “functional analysis” of what changes the Cape Town Convention has brought, or will bring, to existing domestic laws of the countries. As a uniform law instrument, the Cape Town Convention chooses one rule from among a variety of them where countries’ rules diverge. However, such unification in a traditional sense is rather limited, and the Cape Town Convention in many respects creates a novel set of rules and works as a sort of law reform. Furthermore, the Cape Town Convention, together with its Registry regulations, introduces a mechanism to ensure that the intended goal is achieved. Having reviewed these various aspects of the Cape Town Convention, this chapter concludes by emphasising how innovative the Cape Town Convention is as uniform law instrument.