Regulators in the US and Europe could use Japan’s success in recapitalising its banks to quell outrage over the use of public funds to bail out their struggling financial institutions, Japan’s top financial regulator said on Wednesday.

The Japanese government made profits of more than Y2,000bn ($21bn) on the Y8,600bn of public funds it injected into Japanese banks during the country’s banking crisis, Takafumi Sato, Financial Services Agency commissioner, told an audience in Tokyo on Wednesday.