Perhaps the most notable media around that topic from last week involved Toyota Financial Services being in talks with the state-backed Bank for International Cooperation to loan some money.
It is understandable that media misinterpreted and started calling “bailout” very quickly, but what needs to be understood is that in this instance Toyota Financial Services is not an operating function of our company. They're the financial services. Their job, all year long, is to secure credit from an array of lenders, credit that they can translate into loans and leases for customers.
By talking to this state-backed bank and all of the other array of lenders that they talk to, they're just being prudent in making sure that, as things go forward, they still have sources to be able to run the credit and lease arm. None of this money is for operating; it's just to do what they normally do and to be prudent about it.
That's not to say that there isn't a challenge in Japan. Toyota has 60,000 team members, maybe 100,000 people who work for supplier companies, and thousands of contract team members hired for flexibility but who have had to be let go. They're looking at reduced hours. They're looking at executive and labour wage structures. They're in the same mode: how can we save the dollars but protect the core of what we have and not give up our values in employment? They're struggling just the same as everyone else.