The year 2021 brought a new medium-term business plan for MUFG and the conclusion of the old one. Gone are the ambitions to expand their business portfolio through investments in Asia, which has already played out through shrewd purchases in Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and elsewhere. Instead, the new priority is to ramp up profitability in key areas – Asia included – in order to hit 7.5% return on equity and ¥1 trillion ($8.7 billion) of net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent in fiscal 2023.
MUFG has identified five areas to fuel this growth: wealth management; proposing solutions to corporate customers’ issues; Asia; GCIB and global markets (that is, business with large non-Japanese companies and institutional investors); and global asset management. Notably not among them is US retail; in September MUFG announced it would sell its MUFG Union Bank to US Bancorp for $8 billion (including a $2.5 billion, 2.9% stake in Bancorp), with Morgan Stanley now the flagship for the bank in the Americas.
