Less than a decade ago Japanese banks were the sick men of global finance. Today they are bouncing back. Having rebuilt their ba

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问题     Less than a decade ago Japanese banks were the sick men of global finance. Today they are bouncing back. Having rebuilt their balance sheets, Japan’s financial institutions are rich in cash while their foreign peers are helpless and in debt. And unusually for sumo-sized, bureaucratic Japanese firms, they are moving fast.
    On September 22nd Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group(MUFG), Japan’s biggest bank, agreed to pay about $8.4 billion for up to 20% of Morgan Stanley. The Japanese will have at least one seat on the board. In August MUFG also spent about $3.5 billion on the 35% of Union-BanCal, a bank based in San Francisco, that it did not already own.
    Meanwhile Nomura, Japan’s biggest broker, bought the Asian, European and Middle Eastern divisions of Lehman Brothers, the collapsed Wall Street bank—though not its trading assets or liabilities. The Asia-Pacific business, which employs 3,000 people in ten territories, cost Nomura $225m. The European and Middle East equities and investment-banking operations have 2,500 staff in around ten countries. Kenichi Watanabe, Nomura’s new and atypically young(ie, 55-year-old)boss, called the deals "a once-in-a-generation opportunity".
    Other institutions are also looking abroad. Earlier this year Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group(SMFG)and Mizuho, the other two big banks, invested about $1 billion in Barclays and Merrill Lynch, respectively. Before Warren Buffett’s show of support, SMFG had considered putting fresh cash into Goldman Sachs, an old friend: since the 1980s the two groups have often helped each other through hard times.
    Both MUFG and Nomura are giants at home but pygmies abroad, for lack of human capital rather than the more tangible stuff. Both hope the purchases will provide badly needed expertise in advising on international mergers and acquisitions, and equity underwriting.
    But Nomura faces huge difficulties in managing two vastly different corporate cultures: Japanese salaryman and American psycho. Japanese companies prize loyalty and seniority, and pay is more or less egalitarian. By contrast, Americans are unafraid to change jobs, value youth at least as much as experience, and pay big salaries supposedly based on merit. Keeping staff— the most important asset in banking after money—will be hard. Welding together the IT systems will be, too.
    There are also strategic concerns. In the booming 1980s Japanese banks gobbled up American ones at inflated prices, and then sold at a loss. Now their acquisitions may look cheaper, but they are buying into an industry in trouble. Profits could be thin for years, tighter regulation looms, leverage is a dirty word and fears of recession are growing around the world.
According to the passage, people hold their view that the economy in the future will be

选项 A、promising.
B、destructive.
C、flat.
D、satisfactory.

答案C

解析 观点态度题。本题需要对全文进行综合理解与把握:文章第一段阐明了日本银行目前现金充裕,有实力收购或投资因经济危机而不景气的国外银行。第二、三、四段分别以三个实例证明日本银行在此次经济危机中的海外作为。这看起来是让人欣慰的:面对危机,有较强的金融实体进行拯救。但是第五、六段讨论了日本的金融机构在海外运营时所要面对的种种困难。而且第七段提到了上世纪80年代日本银行在经营中的失误,再加上文章末句fears of recession are growing around the world,可见,人们对经济的未来仍然忧心忡忡,故[A]“有前途的”、[D]“令人满意的”,均不正确。[B]“灾难性的”,夸大其词,因为现在至少日本的银行还是有所作为的;末段提到这些日本银行在近年的利润将是微薄的,这表明未来经济既有些许希望,又存在问题。所以[C]“不景气”是正确答案。
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