Metropolitan Tokyo to buy BNP Paribas Japan unit?

It seems that plans for the controversal bank to be set up by the Tokyo metropolitan government are far from a pipedream: Governor Shintaro Ishihara today announced that the city is in negotiations to buy the Japanese arm of BNP Paribas, citing the fact that this would avoid the hassle of getting regulatory approval for a new bank, and the transparency of BNP's asset quality given its foreign affiliation (the implication being that it doesn't cover things up and play dirty like Japanese banks, we assume; Ishihara's distaste for Japan's banks is well known, and is indeed what started this quest to set up a new one).

(reported on the Nikkei website earlier today in Japanese)