A plan to cull the smallest listings on the Tokyo Stock Exchange is spurring a record number of buyouts of young companies in Japan, reflecting Tokyo’s push to create more billion-dollar startups to better match the country’s global standing in scientific research, the Japan Times reported. Regulators are ratcheting up pressure on startups to gain more scale before debuting on the stock market, warning that the TSE will seek to delist companies that fail to reach a market value of at least ¥10 billion ($66 million) within five years of going public, starting 2030.

Bank of Japan board member Hajime Takata said the time is ripe for raising the bank’s policy interest rate, looking past political instability to reiterate his conviction after he dissented from a decision to hold policy steady last month, the Japan Times reported. "I believe that now is a prime opportunity to raise the policy interest rate,” Takata said Monday in a speech to local business leaders in Hiroshima.

Japan is poised to rewrite the rules of crypto oversight, moving to curb crypto insider trading as part of a broader push to bring digital markets into its orbit, Decrypt.com reported. The country's Financial Services Agency plans to empower its market watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission, to police illicit crypto trades, in a shift that could reshape global standards for market integrity. The framework is slated to be finalized this year and submitted to parliament by 2026.

Japan's three largest banks, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mizuho Financial Group will jointly issue "stablecoins", digital currencies pegged to the value of real-world currencies, the Nikkei business daily reported on Friday.

The number of corporate bankruptcies involving liabilities of ¥10 million or more in Japan in the April-September period has hit the highest level in 12 years, partly due to labor shortages, Tokyo Shoko Research said on Wednesday, the Japan Times reported. In the first half of fiscal 2025, which began in April, business failures rose 1.5% from a year earlier to 5,172, up for the fourth consecutive year. The figure was close to the 5,505 recorded in the same period of fiscal 2013.

The Bank of Japan should be cautious about raising interest rates again as the economy is still fragile, said Etsuro Honda, a close economic adviser to Sanae Takaichi, who is likely to become the country's next prime minister, Reuters reported. "Japan is at a delicate stage right now, where the long-standing deflationary mindset is gradually giving way to a more positive inflationary outlook," Etsuro Honda, who advises Takaichi on economic policy, told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.

Household spending rose for a fourth month in Japan, showing resilience amid persistent inflation as the central bank continues to mull the timing of its next interest rate hike, Bloomberg News reported. Outlays by households adjusted for inflation gained 2.3% from a year ago in August, led by spending on transport and entertainment, the internal affairs ministry reported Tuesday. The result beat the median economist estimate of a 1.2% increase.

By 2010 almost 1 in 5 companies limped along because of bailouts and other financing relief, rather than tackling their fundamental problems, Bloomberg News reported. In 2008 three economics professors, one from Japan and two from the US, coined a term for these enterprises: “zombie companies.” Now the country’s financial landscape is changing. In March 2024 the Bank of Japan increased interest rates for the first time in 17 years, reflecting an improving economic climate and rising prices.

Japan's jobless rate rose to its highest in over a year, signaling a slight loosening of the labor market as speculation swirls over a Bank of Japan rate hike in the near term, Bloomberg News reported. The unemployment rate rose to 2.6 per cent in August from 2.3 per cent in the previous month, the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported Friday, against a median economist expectation of 2.4 per cent . Separate data from the labor ministry showed that the job-to-applicant ratio ticked down to 1.20 from 1.22.

Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda said inflation was on track to durably hit the bank's target but warned of global uncertainties that could discourage firms from raising wages, leaving himself a free hand on whether to raise interest rates in October, Reuters reported. Ueda reiterated the central bank's resolve to continue raising still low interest rates if the economy and prices move in line with its forecasts.