The number of Japanese corporate bankruptcies is likely to rise after the summer on the impact from last month's devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami, a research firm said on Friday, with the effects of government spending on disaster relief expected to take some time to filter through, Reuters reported. The number of bankruptcies fell 9.9 percent in March from a year earlier to 1,183 cases, with six attributed to the impact from the quake and tsunami, Tokyo Shoko Research showed.

Takefuji Corp. said Monday that it has granted South Korean consumer lender A&P Financial Co. preferential negotiating rights to take over the failed Japanese consumer lender in what would be one of the biggest acquisitions by a South Korean firm of a Japanese company, but the unexpected development is leading bondholders and a rival bidder to question the way the lender's court administrators have handled the sale process, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Japan Airlines on Wednesday said it is seeking 200 employees to volunteer for unpaid leave, as it tries to cut costs due to falling travel demand after the March 11 disasters and amid a nuclear crisis, Agence France-Presse reported. The appeal comes just after the airline finally moved out of bankruptcy following its spectacular collapse that led it to go cap-in-hand to the government. "Due to a drop in visitors and cutbacks in routes, we are seeking 200 pilots and flight attendants to volunteer for a month of unpaid leave," said Japan Airlines spokesman Taro Namba.

The Japanese government is considering financial aid to the troubled Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, through an injection of public funds or debt guarantees, a government official said Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported. "Unless the government takes such a step it will be difficult for Tepco'' over time to secure necessary capital, Masayuki Sudo, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said in an interview Friday morning.

Japan Airlines Corp., once the world’s largest international carrier, is set to emerge from bankruptcy administration this week as a smaller company more reliant on Asian routes and global partners, Bloomberg reported. JAL has scaled back its global network, chopping 49 routes, including Sao Paulo, Amsterdam and Milan, and grounding the last remnants of what was the world’s largest Boeing Co. 747 fleet as it cuts 103 planes. The Tokyo-based airline, which holds its monthly press briefing at 5 p.m.

Japan Airlines Corp is expected to complete restructuring its business, under court guidance, on Monday, the Nikkei business daily said. After filing for bankruptcy protection in January, last year, the airline has tried to turn around, backed by Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp of Japan (ETIC), Nikkei said. Restructuring measures, including cutting workforce by 16,000, worked and operating profit for the nine months through December stood at of 158.6 billion yen, the paper reported. On Monday, the company is slated to receive 254.9 billion yen from 11 lenders.

The world’s most powerful central banks joined forces to sell billions of dollars worth of yen, battling speculators – described as “sneaky thieves” by one Japanese official – who have driven the currency to record highs, the Irish Times reported. The intervention by banks including the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan and Bank of England began early yesterday, after ministers from the Group of Seven most industrialised nations approved the first such co-ordinated action in more than a decade.

The cost of insuring Japanese government debt against default spiked by a third on Tuesday as world stock markets tumbled, The Guardian reported. Investors have calculated that the chance of a Japanese default has risen significantly since Friday's earthquake. As Japan battled to prevent a major nuclear crisis, the country's five-year credit default swap rose 31 basis points to 125bps. That means it would cost $125,000 to insure $10m of Japanese debt against default.

With the scale of the disaster in Japan still being measured, concerns are growing that last week's earthquake and tsunami could lead to a long-term disruption in the world's supply of automobiles, consumer electronics and machine tools, the Los Angeles Times reported. Japan is the world's third-largest economy and a huge exporter of cars, electronic components and industrial equipment as well as steel, textiles and processed foods. In turn, it's a voracious consumer of petroleum, imported agricultural products and luxury consumer goods.

On Sunday night, Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan was urging the public not to be pessimistic because Japan will enjoy "a New Deal-like" economic recovery on the back of the massive reconstruction task ahead. Any dividend from reconstruction and reform looked distant on Monday, however. Japanese stocks fell 7.6 percent, on track for the biggest daily loss since October 2008, and bond yields rose as investors expected the disaster to take a huge economic toll and require heavy government borrowing, according to a Reuters Special Report.