LEX 
Achilles, Agamemnon, Oedipus and now ... Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group? Hubris felled many ancient Greeks. Earlier this decade, it caught out many Japanese banks too. Round two may beckon this week. MUFG, Japan’s biggest lender and Morgan Stanley’s saviour, is tapping shareholders for up to $10.6bn. This comes less than a month after paying $9bn for a 21 per cent stake in the US investment bank – and shortly after decanting a combined $5bn into Union Bank of California and Acom, a domestic consumer finance company.
MUFG, of course, is smart to get in first with its sale of common and preferred shares. If local newspaper reports are correct, fellow mega-banks Mizuho Financial Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group will follow suit, seeking $5bn or so a piece. But MUFG’s money will only go so far – adding 0.9 percentage points to its tier one capital, in effect repairing the erosion caused by the Morgan Stanley acquisition.
