WhyItDropped

Nikkei 225 · November 19, 1997

Japan's Bank Failures

-5.29%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

When the banks themselves failed

midway through · 1996-06-26 → 1998-10-09, -43.18% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • 19 November 1997 — Nikkei 225 fell 5.29%
  • Major Japanese financial institutions were failing one after another
  • Root cause was the 1990 bubble collapse. Even after property collateral fell apart, banks carried the bad loans on their books and held on
  • Seven years later came the point where holding on was no longer possible
  • The Asian crisis was running at the same time. Japanese banks held big loans across Southeast Asia, piling losses on top
  • Fell 28.73% from peak
  • Japan then began injecting public funds and restructuring its financial sector in earnest

Sources

Every figure on this page is recomputed from the original daily closing prices and checked against them at build time. The account of what happened is written from the sources listed above.