The setting is Japan's post-war period of rapid economic growth. Daisuke Mampyo heads the Hanshin Bank, the country's tenth largest in deposits, and leads the Mampyo Conglomerate, which owns many other businesses as well as the bank. Learning from Mima, his daughter Ichiko's husband and an elite finance ministry bureaucrat, of a government plan to consolidate the Japan's big urban banks, Daisuke maneuvers to ensure his empire's survival by plotting to acquire other banking majors through mergers.