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.

The latest investigation by Tokyo prosecutors into Nissan Motor Co.’s Carlos Ghosn centers on his relationship with a Saudi Arabian businessman, Khaled Al Juffali, who runs part of Nissan’s Middle East business, the Wall Street Journal reported. Some of the people said that payments by Nissan to a Juffali company — on which prosecutors have cast suspicion — were for legitimate business purposes. Ghosn was initially arrested in Tokyo on Nov. 19 and charged Dec. 10 with underreporting his income on Nissan’s financial statements.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet approved a record initial budget for the 2019 fiscal year that offers plenty of help for consumers facing a higher sales tax while increasing the nation’s debt load, at least for now, Bloomberg News reported. The budget will top 100 trillion yen ($890 billion) for the first time, highlighting the government’s push to head off a potential economic downturn when the levy rises in October. The broad outline of the plans were revealed earlier in the week in draft documents.

Five months ago, Carlos Ghosn, a multimillionaire executive credited with reviving Nissan Motors, hosted the wedding of his daughter Caroline on Naoshima, a rarefied island enclave of art and sculpture. Now, Ghosn is living in a Tokyo jail cell, unable to communicate with his daughter or any family member, as investigators explore possible financial wrongdoing related to his nearly 20-year career at Nissan, the New York Times reported.

Nissan announced this morning that it planned to remove Mr. Ghosn as its chairman, saying an internal investigation had found that for years he underreported his salary by millions of dollars and committed other acts of “misconduct,” the International New York Times reported. Nissan said it was working with the Japanese authorities. According to news reports, prosecutors are preparing to arrest Mr. Ghosn. The developments could bring about a swift fall for Mr.

Toshiba Corp. said Thursday it would liquidate its U.K. nuclear business and sell its U.S. natural-gas business, taking a combined loss of nearly $1 billion. The moves are intended to clear away legacy problems after Toshiba went through waves of restructuring in the past three years that included the bankruptcy of its former Westinghouse Electric business in the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K. business—NuGeneration Ltd., known as NuGen—had sought to build what was planned as Europe’s largest new nuclear project in northwest England.

Toshiba is set to liquidate UK nuclear arm NuGen, according to people familiar with the company, dealing a hammer blow to plans to build a new plant at Moorside in Cumbria. The Japanese conglomerate, whose board is meeting on Thursday, is almost certain to take the decision to wind up NuGen after all avenues to sell the unit were exhausted, the Financial Times reported. “It is 80 per cent likely that Toshiba will decide at the board meeting to wind it up,” a source close to NuGen told the Financial Times.