Mitsui Taps Fed Program to Get Low-Interest Funds, Nikkei Says

By Toru Fujioka

Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Mitsui & Co., Japan’s second-biggest trading house, is the nation’s first firm to apply for borrowing through the Federal Reserve’s commercial paper purchase program, the Nikkei newspaper reported.

Mitsui applied to the program to secure stable funding at low interest after the borrowing rate rose about 2 percentage points in September because of the impact of the global financial crisis, Nikkei reported, without saying where it got the information.

Mitsui has sold about 50 billion yen ($523 million) of commercial paper a year in the U.S. through a subsidiary, according to the report.

To contact the reporter on this story: Toru Fujioka in Tokyo at tfujioka1@bloomberg.net