Japanese electronics giant Sharp may be struggling, but the banks will keep the heavily indebted firm on life support, analysts say.
"The banks are on the hook – it goes back to [John Maynard] Keynes' famous saying: if you borrow $100 from the bank, it's your problem; if you borrow $100 million from the bank, it's the bank's problem," Jefferies analyst Atul Goyal told CNBC.
Sharp's financial issues are slightly greater than even a $100 million, however. The company owes around 700 billion yen ($5.9 billion) to its banks, not including other debt, such as bonds, and had a total debt burden of 1.07 trillion yen at the end of fiscal 2014.
And that was before Sharp apparently secured another 200 billion lifeline from its main creditor banks, Mizuho Bank and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, in return for promising to scale back its television operations and cutting around 5,000 jobs, according to a Reuters report on Thursday.