Household HSBC Watch

Yasuo Takei, founder of Japan’s top consumer finance firm and Japan’s second-richest man took more than three decades to turn a lending operation aimed at cash-starved housewives into a $10 billion company that prides itself on its ethical standards in a sector rife with shady operators.

It took just nine months for the business success story to unravel.

The problems started when Takei was arrested on charges of wire-tapping a journalist critical of his company, Takefuji Corp.

A horde of foreign firms has descended on Takei’s firm to bid for a slice of the lucrative $96 billion consumer finance industry in the world’s second-biggest economy.

U.S. private equity firm Newbridge Capital is set to buy a 33 percent stake for up to 400 billion yen from the founding family by the end of the year, media have reported. New York-based buyout firm Ripplewood Holdings and top banks HSBC Plc and Citigroup have reportedly had a peek as well.

A stake in Takefuji would give the buyer a foothold in an industry where firms can charge as much as the legal limit of 29.2 percent for money borrowed at close to zero percent.

Sounds like Household Finance and Beneficial Finance in the United States. CitiGroup and their predatory lending model CitiFinancial, and HSBC with their predatory lending model Household International are hovering like flies around the body. The lure of interest rates at the maximum legal limit are all to familiar to some US executives.

Household Watch will continue to watch this for you as it unfolds.