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.
The reason for Japanese giants MUFG and Nomura being pygmies abroad is

选项 A、they are in lack of tangible resources.
B、they are in lack of human resources.
C、they don’t have much connection with overseas peers.
D、there are different corporate cultures at home and abroad.

答案B

解析 事实细节题。根据题干关键词pygmies定位至第五段。该段开头即提到题干所述的“日本国内的金融巨头三菱UFJ金融集团和野村在国外却是侏儒”,紧接着for lack of human capital rather than the more tangible stuff说明了原因,由此可排除[A]并得出正确答案[B]。[C]中所述与海外金融机构关系问题文章并未提及;[D]中的问题是经营海外机构所面临的困难,而非造成他们在国外是侏儒的原因。
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