| He said Singapore banks should avoid the problem now posed by Japan's keiretsu system, which links a group of companies with a main bank. |
| The keiretsu system of interlocking cross-corporate ownership made it next to impossible to identify the real owners of Japanese capital. |
| Once bitter rivals, they were effectively forced together as the unwinding of Japan's keiretsu led to increased rivalry at home. |
| The weak control over lending was allowed because of the keiretsu tradition, which links companies with their banks via complex cross-shareholdings. |
| It's a system that locks together the interests of venture capitalists, bankers, lawyers, and entrepreneurs, much like Japan's keiretsu. |
| Until the mid-1990s about half of equities in Japan were held by banks, a legacy of the keiretsu cross-shareholding networks. |
