JAPAN

Banks Are Likely to Make a Profit: Major commercial banks are not likely to suffer sharp setbacks in annual earnings even though some of them have been tainted by scandal, according to industry sources and analysts. In fact, the banks are on track to achieve their forecasts of a modest profit rise after two years of sharply falling profits. The country’s scandal-ridden Big Four brokerage houses, by contrast, announced last week that they anticipate huge drops in profit. The brokerages lost public trust after admitting that they compensated big clients for stock market losses--but not smaller clients, analysts have said. An even bigger reason for the brokerages’ profit dip was an economic downturn that has hurt the Japanese stock market this past fiscal year.