Mitsubishi, Tokyo, Sanwa and Tokai.

MUFG is a set of initials for Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, a Japanese bank holding company headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo. Wikipedia says it was created in 2005 by the merger of Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group and UFJ Holdings, and that it was the product of three successive mergers in less than a decade: between the Bank of Tokyo and Mitsubishi Bank in 1996; between Sanwa Bank, Tokai Bank and Toyo Trust and Banking in 2000–2002; and between the two resulting groups in 2005.

Each merger left a trace in the name. The “Mitsubishi” part goes back to Mitsubishi Bank, established in 1880, according to Wikipedia. The “Tokyo” part came from the Bank of Tokyo, which was the post-war reorganisation of the Yokohama Specie Bank, also established in 1880. The UFJ group brought in Sanwa Bank, established in 1933 by merger, and Tokai Bank, established in 1941 by merger. When the two groups combined, the Mitsubishi name stayed whole, while the second group was represented by its three letters.

The older history reaches into the numbered banks of Meiji Japan. Wikipedia explains that MUFG incorporates several of the National Banks that were numbered in order of establishment between 1873 and 1880. Among them were the 13th National Bank, established in Osaka in 1877 and renamed the Konoike Bank in 1897, a predecessor of Sanwa; the 134th National Bank in Nagoya, which merged in 1896 to form Aichi Bank, a predecessor of Tokai; and the 119th National Bank, established in Tokyo in 1879, a predecessor of Mitsubishi Bank.

The link to the wider Mitsubishi name is still part of the brand. Wikipedia says MUFG retains strong links with the Mitsubishi Group and is often described as one of the group’s “Three Great Houses”, together with Mitsubishi Corporation and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. In everyday use, however, the group presents itself through the four-letter form, which keeps the Mitsubishi initial at the front and folds the rest into a compact abbreviation.

From BTMU to MUFG Bank.

For more than a decade the group’s core bank used a long name that recorded the mergers directly. MUFG Bank was established on 1 January 2006, Wikipedia says, through the merger of The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi and UFJ Bank, and it was originally named The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, often shortened to BTMU. The name stacked three elements, Tokyo, Mitsubishi and UFJ, in the order the mergers had happened.

In 2018 the bank took the group’s short form instead. The New Straits Times reported on 2 April 2018 that Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (Malaysia) Bhd had been rebranded as MUFG Bank (Malaysia) beginning 1 April 2018. The newspaper said the change aligned the bank with the MUFG Group brand and reflected steps the group had taken to offer a broader and more integrated range of financial services. It quoted the bank’s president and chief executive, Kanetsugu Mike, saying that although the name had changed, the bank’s dedication to its customers would continue.

The rename did not happen on the same day everywhere. Gulf News reported on 16 July 2018 that MUFG had renamed its core banking subsidiary MUFG Bank as part of a global initiative to bring its banking operations together under one brand, and that the name change in the Middle East was effective from that date. The Dubai branch in the financial centre became MUFG Bank, Ltd., DIFC Branch — Dubai, and the Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and Doha units took matching names. The newspaper said MUFG’s presence in the Middle East dated back to 1926.

In MUFG’s case the four letters already used by the holding company became the name of the bank itself, so the group and its core bank now share one name.

The head office of MUFG Bank is in Marunouchi, in Chiyoda, Tokyo, according to Wikipedia.

Bank names, colours and surfaces.

Many bank names in Asia are the product of mergers, and the name chosen at each merger tends to tell the story in compressed form. Some institutions keep a founder’s family name or a place name; others stack the names of the banks that combined; and many settle on a set of initials. Over time those initials often stop standing for anything in particular and become the name in their own right, while the long form survives mainly in legal documents and company histories.

Colour does a great deal of the recognition work. Red and gold carry associations of prosperity and good fortune in several Asian cultures, and both appear widely in banking, often as one dominant colour applied flat across every surface so that a mark stays legible when it is very small.

The surfaces themselves have multiplied. Branch signage, illuminated fascias and cash-machine housings were once the main public face of a bank; today the payment card in a wallet and the app icon on a phone screen are seen far more often. A square icon a few millimetres wide leaves room for little more than a symbol and a colour, which is one reason bank identities are increasingly simplified to those two elements.

One name for a group of companies.

The four letters now front a family of companies. Wikipedia lists MUFG as the parent of MUFG Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, among others. Some of these keep the longer Mitsubishi UFJ form, while the bank uses the short one, so the brand works on two levels: the abbreviation for the group and its core bank, and the spelled-out form for several specialist companies.

Outside Japan the group also owns banks that keep their own names. Wikipedia names Bank Danamon in Indonesia and Bank of Ayudhya in Thailand as majority-owned subsidiaries. In those markets the local name stays on the branch, and the MUFG name appears as the parent rather than on the fascia.

The 2018 rename shows how a brand change in a large bank spreads in stages. The Malaysian subsidiary changed on 1 April 2018, according to the New Straits Times, while the Middle East branches followed on 16 July 2018, according to Gulf News. Each change meant new signage, new legal entity names and new paperwork in a different jurisdiction, even though the brand being introduced was the same four letters.

For a design study, MUFG is a case of compression. The full history includes numbered Meiji banks, a specie bank in Yokohama, banks in Osaka and Nagoya, and the Mitsubishi bank of 1880; the public name reduces all of that to four capitals. The palette and type here respond to that compactness rather than to any official specification.

For a design guide, MUFG shows how a long merger name can be reduced to group initials; compare it with Mitsubishi, the wider group whose name it carries, and with DBS Bank, another Asian bank known by its initials. For this guide we use red, deep red and ink with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep MUFG’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.