Mitsubishi UFJ proves banks still have access to market capital

Large U.S. banks have raised money to improve their capital position this year, in some cases because the government required them to do so. Bank analysts have worried that a wave of write-downs on commercial real estate and credit card debt might require some big financial firms to go back to the funding well. That raises the question of whether institutional investors still have any appetite for putting money into global banks.

Those concerns about bank funding may have been allayed a bit. Mitsubishi UFJ (MTU), the largest bank in Japan and a major investor in Morgan Stanley (MS), is raising $11 billion. The firm has already filed papers with Japan's Ministry of Finance to sell common shares.