China Southern Airlines is now Asia's largest carrier by passenger numbers after overtaking troubled Japan Airlines Corp, or JAL, according to figures provided by the two companies, Agence France-Presse reported. China Southern actually overtook JAL in 2008 when its passenger volume rose to 58.24 million, according to data supplied by the Chinese carrier to AFP on Wednesday. The airline, which has China's largest fleet, extended its lead even further last year as its numbers climbed to 66.28 million passengers, China Southern said.

The operator of major eye clinic chain Kanagawa Clinic Ophthalmology Department has filed for bankruptcy proceedings after dozens of infections following laser surgery at a clinic and a warning from the government over misleading pricing, iStockAnalyst reported on a Kyodo News story. The operator, the Hakubikai foundation based in Tokyo, said Friday that the Tokyo District Court had approved bankruptcy proceedings on Thursday. The foundation said Kanagawa Clinic branches in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka will be passed on to another healthcare group.

The Bank of Japan moved to offer Y2,000bn ($21.6bn) in overnight liquidity on Friday to “increase markets’ sense of security” because of turmoil resulting from the debt crisis in Greece, the Financial Times reported. It is the bank’s first exceptional offer of overnight funds since the scare over Dubai’s sovereign debt in December 2009 and its biggest since the height of the financial crisis in December 2008. The move shows that fears about sovereign debt default in Europe are rippling across global markets, with the Bank of Japan the first central bank to react by adding liquidity.

Commercial RE Co., a Japanese real estate management company whose largest stakeholder is Goldman Sachs Group Inc., filed for bankruptcy protection today, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. The Tokyo-based developer has had to sell assets at a cheaper price, hurting its income as Japan’s real estate market deteriorated following the subprime mortgage crisis, the company said in a release to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Commercial RE had liabilities of 15 billion yen ($159.7 million) as at the end of March, according to the statement.

Struggling Japan Airlines is to cut 45 more international and domestic routes this financial year as it accelerates its plan to return to profitability, it said Wednesday. The airline, being restructured with the help of a state-backed turnaround fund after filing for bankruptcy in January, will slash international and domestic capacity by 40 percent and 30 percent respectively, compared to fiscal 2008, Agence France-Presse reported.

Debt-ridden Japan Airlines Corp (JAL) could miss its June-end deadline for submitting a rehabilitation plan by as much as two months as it deals with local governments opposed to flight cuts, the Nikkei said. The struggling airline's main lenders have said they will not recommence lending unless the company drastically revamps unprofitable flight operations in the restructuring plans to be drawn up by the end of June.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s bankruptcy estate sued three arms of Japanese investment bank Nomura Holdings Inc. in an attempt to wipe out more than $1 billion of claims related to derivatives contracts, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Lehman filed legal complaints Friday against Nomura International PLC in London, Nomura Global Financial Products in New York and Nomura Securities Co. Ltd. in Tokyo, seeking to invalidate large claims the companies made against the investment bank after it had filed for bankruptcy. In each complaint, filed in the U.S.

The decision to file for bankruptcy was not his, the president of language-school chain Geos Corp., Tsuneo Kusunoki, implied in an unusual statement released Thursday, the Japan Times reported. A Geos lawyer explained that because "three directors could not reach agreement" on the bankruptcy filing, the action was not taken by the board of directors but rather by some executives. The lawyer stressed that the process is legal.

Japan Airlines Corp., restructuring under a 900 billion yen ($9.7 billion) state-backed plan, shouldn’t allow government aid to distort competition, the International Air Transport Association said. “Restructuring has to be fast and painful,” IATA Director General Giovanni Bisignani said, BusinessWeek reported. JAL, which was delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange in February, is planning to cut almost a third of its workforce, slash flights and retire older planes over three years to return to profit. All Nippon Airways Co.

Debt-ridden Japan Airlines Corp said it will suspend its scheduled freighter flight services by the end of October and would instead use the cargo belly space of passenger flights, Reuters reported. The airline's passenger flights provide cargo capacity of about three times the volume available on its scheduled freighter flights, the company said in a press release posted on its website.