Marubeni Acquires American Freight Railcar Operating Leasing Company.

Tokyo, Japan, Dec 4, 2006 - (JCN) - Marubeni Corporation, with its US affiliate Marubeni America Corporation, announced on December 4 that it acquired 100% stake in Illinois based freight railcar operating leasing company Midwest Railcar Corporation (MRC). MRC, a freight railcar operating leasing company established in 1999, owns around 3000 freight cars. MRC leases to companies such as major railways, grain, food and mining companies. In addition to leasing business MRC manages railcar assets in variety of ways such as management of railcar assets owned by other institutions, brokerage of freight railcars.

The US transportation industry is characterized as railways being the major means of long distance transportation and with the strong US economy background, the demand of freight cars are growing very rapidly. Also with fact that half of the freight cars operating in the US are under leasing arrangements and that this tendency is to continue in the future, Marubeni has decided to strategically join in this business field. Marubeni will continue to invest and grow the MRC business quite intensively in a short time to double the size of its asset in order to meet the strong American railway transportation demand.

Marubeni has long experience in railway and transportation related businesses, including supply and construction of railway systems. With the acquisition of MRC, Marubeni is now growing its business further to meet all and every kinds of business demands in the railway and transportation field. The growth will be expanded to other international region such as Europe and Asia in the quite near future.

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