The Tokyo Olympics, postponed in 2020 during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, are facing increasing hurdles in putting on a 2021 show, CNN.com reported. The latest troubling sign for the Summer Games came on Monday when the State Department advised U.S. citizens against traveling to Japan because of a sharp increase in Covid-19 cases. The "Level 4: Do Not Travel" advisory is the highest cautionary level in the department's hierarchy of warnings.
It's been more than a year since Americans have paid tourist calls to the nation. Japan has been closed to U.S.
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The global surge in commodities prices has now made Japan's decades-old fight against its "deflationary mindset" even more critical as businesses in the world's third-largest economy's struggle to break even, Reuters reported. Japanese firms' aversion to passing on higher prices has made it hard to raise wages for fear of being saddled with high fixed costs, which in turn feeds deflationary pressures.
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Nomura Holdings Inc. announced business partnerships at home, Australia and New Zealand as Japan’s biggest brokerage seeks to move past a $2.9 billion hit from the implosion of Archegos Capital Management, Bloomberg News reported. Nomura signed an agreement with three regional Japanese banks to set up a joint venture to provide remote financial consulting services. It also struck up an alliance with investment bank Jarden Securities Ltd. to provide services such as stock and bond underwriting for clients in Australia and New Zealand, it said in separate statements on Monday.
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Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga extended a state of emergency that covers Tokyo and expanded it to two more regions hit by rising virus cases, in an attempt to stem infections ahead of the capital’s hosting of the Olympics in less than three months, Bloomberg News reported. The move announced on Friday adds the industrial region of Aichi and the southern prefecture of Fukuoka to areas subject to restrictions. It also extends the state of emergency already in place for Tokyo, Osaka, Hyogo and Kyoto until the end of May.
World shares advanced Thursday ahead of the release of U.S. economic growth data and following a speech by President Joe Biden outlining ambitious plans for beefing up early education and other family oriented policies, the Associated Press reported. London’s FTSE 100 jumped 0.7% to 7,013.40. In Paris, the CAC40 climbed 0.6% to 6,344.17. Germany’s DAX slipped 0.2% to 15,262.39 as a report showed weakening consumer confidence. The future for the Dow industrials rose 0.4% and that for the S&P 500 surged 0.6%. U.S.
Toyota Motor Corp. will acquire Lyft Inc.’s self-driving technology unit for $550 million, as the Japanese firm steps up its automation ambitions with the newly created Woven Planet division, Reuters reported. The acquisition of Level 5 automation will also provide Toyota access to the U.S. ride-hailing firm's more than 300 employees of the essentially complete autonomy technology. For Lyft, the deal will allow it to become profitable sooner and takes away the burden and risk of developing a costly technology that has yet to enter the mainstream.
Since the global financial crisis in 2018, Japan’s financial sector has become increasingly linked to global market moves as foreign investment funds pile into the country and domestic banks invest more in overseas securities, the BOJ said, Reuters reported. That has increased overlaps in portfolios between domestic and foreign financial institutions, the central bank said in a semi-annual report analysing Japan’s banking system.
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The number of bankruptcies in Japan’s eatery industry totaled 715 the last fiscal year, the third largest in 20 years, amid the new coronavirus pandemic, a credit research firm said, the Japan Times reported. The dour result for the year ending March 31 reflects 183 failures in the bar and beer hall sector, the highest since fiscal 2000 when comparative data became available, Teikoku Databank said in a recent survey report on firms that went bankrupt with debts of ¥10 million ($91,000) or more.
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Japanese regulators will heighten scrutiny on high-risk trades by domestic financial institutions in the wake of the Archegos fallout, the Nikkei business daily reported on Wednesday. Top investment bank and brokerage, Nomura Holdings, was one of the highest-profile casualties while Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) warned of a loss of around $270 million. The Financial Services Agency (FSA) and the Bank of Japan (BOJ) will scrutinise how financial institutions that incurred losses had been managing transaction risks, the Nikkei said.
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Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund, the world’s largest pension pot, considers the impact of its investments on markets and isn’t distorting the country’s stocks, said Hirohide Yamaguchi, the newly appointed chairman of the fund’s board of governors, Bloomberg News reported. Yamaguchi, a former deputy governor of the Bank of Japan, said also that it was important to look at the fund’s long-term returns, rather than focusing on the short-term. He spoke in Tokyo at his first press conference since taking the role last week.
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