The trustee presiding over the Mt. Gox civil rehabilitation case has taken the next step toward partially reimbursing victims who lost money to the cryptocurrency exchange in hacks that date back nearly a decade. As of today, claimants can begin to vote on whether or not they will accept the civil rehabilitation proposal, Coin Desk reported. The deadline for claimants to cast their vote online is Oct. 8.
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New figures reveal that 1,500 companies in Japan have gone under due to the coronavirus pandemic since February of last year, NHKNews reported. Credit research firm Teikoku Databank says the businesses have either already declared bankruptcy, or closed down to prepare for liquidation proceedings. The dining industry has been the hardest-hit, with 250 businesses failing. It is followed by construction with 140, and accommodation with 89. Monthly totals have been rising since January. That's when the second coronavirus state of emergency started for the Greater Tokyo Area.
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Japan stands to lose 1.8 trillion yen ($16 billion) if the Olympics were cancelled, but that would pale in comparison to the economic hit from emergency curbs if the Summer Games turned into a super-spreader event, a top economist estimated, Reuters reported. Takahide Kiuchi, executive economist at Nomura Research Institute and a former Bank of Japan board member, said that the first nationwide state of emergency last spring had caused an estimated 6.4 trillion yen loss. Further losses have resulted from the second and presently third running state of emergency.
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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