Japan Firm’s Founder Offers to Quit Cabinet

Toshio Komoto, a Cabinet minister who in effect owns Sanko Steamship Co., offered to resign Monday because of financial troubles at the company, one of the world’s largest operators of oil tankers, an aide said.

Meanwhile, Kyodo News Service said Sanko planned to ask a court today to protect the company from its creditors under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law, in effect declaring itself bankrupt.

Komoto’s aide said Komoto, former director general of the Economic Planning Agency and now a minister without portfolio, met with Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and handed him a letter of resignation.

The aide, who asked not to be named, said Nakasone tried to persuade Komoto to remain in his post but agreed in the end “to keep the letter of resignation for the time being.”

The aide said Komoto had “decided to step down because of all this trouble Sanko Steamship has been causing.”

Komoto, 74, founded Sanko Steamship and was its president until 1973. In recent years, however, he has not been directly involved in its management.

Komoto is the leader of the fifth-largest faction within Nakasone’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and served as acting prime minister while Nakasone was on a trip to Europe earlier this year.

Sanko has suffered financial problems since it invested heavily in giant oil tankers in the 1970s, when an oversupply of tanker capacity was developing.

In fiscal 1984, it posted a net loss equal to $289 million. Its losses now amount to $7.07 billion.

Last Friday, the president of Daiwa Bank, one of three major banks supplying loans to Sanko Steamship, said he was reluctant to continue lending to the company, a bank official reported.

Earlier, Sanko President Yoichi Akishino had denied news reports that the three banks had decided to halt lending to his company, but he conceded that the banks were taking a “severe attitude” toward new loan requests.

Transport Minister Tokuo Yamashita told Japanese reporters Monday that he had asked Sanko’s bankers to help the company reconstruct itself so that Japan’s position in the world shipping market would not be damaged.

Kyodo said Sanko’s troubles also would hurt some trading and shipbuilding companies involved in building small bulk carriers for Sanko, which was trying to restructure its fleet after losing money on the big tankers.

On the Tokyo stock market, trading in Sanko shares was suspended Monday for the second time since news of the company’s financial trouble broke late last week.