4. Reorganization of our leasing business

In April 2015, U.S.-based General Electric Company (GE) announced its business restructuring plans, which included the sell-off of a large part of the assets held by GE Capital, the financial services division of GE, in order to focus on the manufacturing division. Sumitomo Mitsui Finance and Leasing Company (SMFL) signed an agreement with GE to acquire the leasing business of GE Japan Corporation for 575 billion yen, as announced in December 2015.

SMFL principally aimed to: 1) strengthen its top-class position in the Japanese leasing market where the oligopoly was progressing; 2) absorb the expertise developed by GE, including efficient digital data marketing and advanced automated credit screening systems; and 3) develop cross-selling strategies, taking advantage of the two companies’ respective customer bases not overlapping. GE Japan’s leasing business became a wholly owned subsidiary of SMFL in April 2016, and changed the company name to SMFL Capital Co., Ltd. in September 2016.

In November 2017, SMFG and Sumitomo Corporation announced the plan to restructure the leasing business centered on SMFL, positioning the company as the platform for building a strategic leasing joint business. Based on this plan, the co-ownership of SMFL by SMFG and Sumitomo Corporation was changed from 60-40 to 50-50, and then SMFL was deconsolidated from SMFG to become an equity-method affiliate of SMFG and Sumitomo Corporation. In January 2019, SMFL and SMFL Capital merged to strengthen the domestic leasing business base.