Critics also charged that the bank reform measures were insufficiently transparent. It's my impression that, at the time, there were quite a few real estate assets that could be bought cheaply. If you simply purchase real estate assets but do not have the wherewithal to rehabilitate them, that won't earn you much in the long term. Let me put it another way. In order to rehabilitate the properties, you need a cash injection.
Someone has to finish a project to have some staying power.
You need capital infusions. You need methods by which it is attractive to put new capital into those companies. But, it seems to me that, with certain exceptions, DIP lending would be hard to do in Japan. Some U.S. observers have questioned the adequacy of Japanese financial statements, suggesting that companies often cook the numbers, so to speak. First of all, most of the companies in which Third Avenue Funds has invested are in nonlife insurance.