The head of a government-backed Japanese bank said Wednesday he would quit in response to an internal probe that found wide-ranging misconduct involving some $2.2 billion in shady loans.

The report alleged that hundreds of employees at almost all of Shoko Chukin Bank's offices across Japan falsified documents to make low-interest loans to firms ineligible to receive them.

The scheme was designed to lend public funds to small and mid-sized companies hurt by the 2008 global financial crisis and Japan's 2011 quake-tsunami disaster.

In all, the Tokyo-based bank made some 260 billion ($2.2 billion) in dodgy loans, according to the report, which it made public on Wednesday.

Bank president Kenyu Adachi, a former high ranking industry ministry official, said he would step aside "at the appropriate time".

The private bank is about 80 percent government-funded.

The claims "shake trust in the organisation to its core", Adachi told a press briefing.

"Top management has the biggest responsibility and I want to take that responsibility as the company's most senior executive."

Public broadcaster NHK said that Adachi will forgo his salary for six months -- a common act of contrition among Japanese executives.

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Cashing out: The end of Hong Kong's historic trading floor
Hong Kong (AFP) Oct 22, 2017
In its heyday in the 1980s, more than a thousand brokers dressed in signature red blazers made deals on the trading floor of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, in what was a raucous, competitive bear pit. But as electronic and internet services burgeoned, brokers drifted away to corporate offices. With just a handful of traders remaining, the historic hall will close at the end of the month. ... read more

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