Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. has been on an expansion kick in the debt market. But its first attempt as a sole underwriter on a dollar high-yield bond sale didn’t go so well. The bank’s securities unit bought $500 million of bonds directly from oil and gas exploration firm CNX Resources Corp., with plans to parcel them off to investors later. Its decision to essentially guarantee the deal’s price allowed it to beat out Credit Suisse Group AG, which had already started gauging investor interest in the company, people familiar with the matter said.

Bank of Japan board member Hitoshi Suzuki on Thursday warned that profits in the country’s financial institutions could be significantly hurt by rising credit costs if the economy slides into recession, Reuters reported. With their margins squeezed by years of ultra-low interest rates and a dwindling population, Japan’s regional lenders have increased loans to borrowers with low credit standings that could sour if economic conditions deteriorate, Suzuki said. “If the default rate of borrowers rises, banks would have to set aside more allowances for bad debt.

After a tough start to the year for the corporate debt market, many managers of specialist investment vehicles backed by risky loans believe that March will be make or break. This has little to do with the financial health of the companies whose leveraged loans end up in these structures, known as collateralised loan obligations, the Financial Times reported. Instead, the CLO market is on tenterhooks because Japan’s largest agricultural bank is set to finalise its budget for the financial year beginning in April.

Nissan lowered its profit forecast for the full year on Tuesday, partly due to special charges related to alleged false financial reporting by its former chairman, Carlos Ghosn. Nissan Motor Co.'s profit in the October-December quarter was 70.4 billion yen ($637 million), down from 301.6 billion yen the previous year, he International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. Quarterly sales grew 6 percent to 3.05 trillion yen ($27.5 billion). The main factor behind the sharp weakening in profit for the fiscal third quarter was the absence of a lift from U.S.

As SoftBank Group Corp. continues its transformation into a giant investment fund, some analysts are increasingly watching a metric more familiar to lenders as they judge its creditworthiness, Bloomberg News reported. And by that gauge, they say, its massive debt pile looks manageable. SoftBank’s loan-to-value ratio, its net interest-bearing debt over the value of its investment portfolio, is less than 20 percent, according to separate calculations by Daiwa Securities Group Inc. and SMBC Nikko Securities Inc.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told Theresa May the whole world wants to avoid a no-deal Brexit even as she faces likely defeat when Parliament votes on her plan next week, Bloomberg News reported. Following a day of meetings between the two leaders in London Thursday, Abe publicly backed May’s agreement and offered her his “deepest respect” for the work she has done in securing an agreement with the European Union. “We truly hope that a no-deal Brexit will be avoided and in fact, that is the whole wish of the whole world,” Abe said at a press conference in Downing Street.

Japanese prosecutors want Carlos Ghosn, the detained auto executive who oversaw an alliance that sold 10 million vehicles a year, to confess to financial misconduct, his son told France's weekly Journal du Dimanche (JDD), the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Ghosn has been held in a Tokyo detention center since his Nov. 19 arrest on allegations of under-reporting his income at Nissan Motor Co Ltd. He is also accused of aggravated breach of mistrust in transferring personal investment losses to Nissan, from which he has since been ousted as chairman.

Japanese shares slumped at the open on Friday as markets in Japan came back online after a holiday during which a profit warning from Apple sparked a global equities sell-off and fuelled concerns over slowing Chinese growth, the Financial Times reported. The Topix, in its first day of trading for the year, fell as much as 3.2 per cent in early trading with resources stocks down 4 per cent and the technology segment off 3.5 per cent.

Tokyo District Court said on Monday it has extended the detention of ousted Nissan Motor chairman Carlos Ghosn until January 11th, The Irish Times reported. Mr Ghosn, accused of aggravated breach of trust, is facing allegations of making the car maker shoulder 1.85 billion yen (€14.6 million) in personal investment losses. The latest extension will see Ghosn remain in Tokyo’s main detention centre, where he has been confined since his first arrest on November 19th on allegations of financial misconduct.

Japan’s industrial output contracted in November and partially reversed the previous month’s gain, while retail sales slowed sharply as increasing global risks drag on demand and threaten the country’s export-reliant economy, Reuters reported. The 1.1 percent month-on-month fall, pressured by a pullback in production of general purpose machinery, compared with a median market forecast of a 1.9 percent decline, following a 2.9 percent increase in October, the data showed. While the latest figure was better than expected, the outlook pointed to a bumpier road for Japanese manufacturers.