in April 2001. Sumitomo Bank was a major Japanese bank founded in 1895; while Sakura Bank was a descendant of Mitsui Bank, another major Japanese bank founded in 1876, but with operations dating back to 1683, when the Tokugawa Shogunate granted Mitsui Takatoshi permission to act as a money changer. The merger created one of the world's largest banking group, with similar size to Deutsche Bank and the pending merger that would form Mizuho Bank. However, the newly created bank was still plagued with bad assets at that time post the asset price bubble burst (the Japanese banking industry as a whole suffered from significant non-performing loans during the 1990s and early 2000s). This led to several corporate actions taken by SMBC to clean its balance sheet and raise capital such as writing off its non-performing loans and selling its entire stake in Goldman Sachs. In 2003, SMBC conducted reverse merger with its subsidiary, Wakashio Bank, to secure financial resources to cover large deferred losses from its equity holdings. Although SMBC was technically dissolved and Wakashio Bank became a company that survived, under the Japanese Commercial Code, the surviving entity took the name Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., just like the disbanded bank name. SMBC President Yoshifumi Nishikawa and Chairman Akishige Okada became president and Chairman of the new entity respectively. Hiroyasu Ichikawa, President of Wakashio Bank, assumed the position of senior managing director. The idea of the reverse merger is to create smaller entity with excess profit. The profit, then, was used to accelerate write-offs of the bank's unrealized securities losses and boost sales of its shareholdings to reduce risk from the fluctuation of stock prices. Post the merger, the new entity grew rapidly through organic and inorganic growth strategy. The assets expanded from 102.4 trillion yen in 2003 to more than 200 trillion yen by the end of 2019, making it the 12th largest bank in the world. At present, the bank serves as the core retail, corporate, and investment banking arm of both the namesake Sumitomo and Mitsui groups. Its traditional client base is made up of Japanese corporates, but overseas corporate lending increased following overseas expansion. SMBC's overseas network consists of 130 branches and offices in 40 countries and regions as of 2018. SMBC provides financial products and services to a wide range of clients, including individuals, small and medium-sized enterprises, large corporations, financial institutions and public