It should be noted, however, that in past phases of economic recovery, firms borrowed from financial institutions to expand their business fixed investment in addition to using their cash flow. This time, however, few firms have increased bank lending or issued bonds for this purpose. Rather, in quite a few cases, firms have used the increase in profits to repay their debt.
Thus, there has been no significant acceleration of business fixed investment when compared to past recovery phases. One factor behind this seems to be the various BIS Review 117/1997  -7-  structural adjustment pressures that the Japanese economy faces today, notably persistent balance-sheet adjustment pressures.