Akio Tanii, president of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, resigned to take responsibility for the group’s part in Japan’s biggest post-war loan fraud case – its National Leasing Co subsidiary made loans to Osaka restaurant owner and speculator Nui Onoue, known as the Bubble Lady because she symbolised the excesses of Japan’s bubble economy of the late 1980s, and she was arrested in August 1991 in a case involving allegedly forged certificates of deposit worth about $3m used as collateral to borrow from institutions such as National Leasing; his resignation followed a 60% fall to $429m in third quarter pre-tax profit on sales down 6.5% at $16,000m.
