Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said on Monday the central bank was aware that prolonged ultra-loose monetary policy could squeeze financial institutions' margins and potentially destabilize the country's banking system, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Given subdued inflation and uncertainty surrounding overseas economies, however, he said the BOJ needed to maintain its massive stimulus programme while keeping a watchful eye on the merits and costs of its policy.
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Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is arranging 220 billion yen ($2 billion) in financial support for its aircraft unit, which has struggled to deliver its first passenger plane, national broadcaster NHK reported on Tuesday. Mitsubishi Heavy said in a statement that it was considering ways to resolve excess liabilities at the unit, but added it had not yet made any decisions, Reuters reported.
Toshiba has entered talks with Canadian asset manager Brookfield over the potential sale of its UK nuclear unit NuGen, which was slated to build the Moorside nuclear plant in Cumbria. The talks, which are at an early stage according to two people directly familiar with the matter, come after Toshiba’s negotiations with Korea’s state-owned Korean Electric Power Corp have dragged on, with an exclusivity period ending in July, the Financial Times reported.
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Hong Kong-based private-equity firm Baring Private Equity Asia has agreed to invest roughly half a billion dollars in Pioneer Corp., likely becoming the controlling shareholder, in another example of overseas investors taking a role in restructuring venerable Japanese brands, The Wall Street Journal reported. Pioneer, a struggling maker of car audio and navigation equipment, is trying to compete in the quickly changing market for internet-connected vehicles with autonomous-driving functions. In June, a group led by U.S.
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Suruga Bank Ltd.’s top executives resigned after an independent panel found that weak governance led to a loan scandal that has rocked the Japanese regional bank, Bloomberg News reported. Chairman Mitsuyoshi Okano, a member of the founding family and architect of the company’s aggressive lending strategy, stepped down after the panel said he bears the greatest responsibility for the debacle. President Akihiro Yoneyama was replaced by Michio Arikuni, the Shizuoka-based bank said in a statement Friday.
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Japanese 10-year bond yields had their biggest one-day jump in two years on Wednesday as traders wasted no time in testing the Bank of Japan’s resolve to loosen its target range for the debt benchmark, the Financial Times reported. The yield on the benchmark 10-year JGB jumped 6 basis points to 0.12 per cent, a day after the BoJ tweaked its vast quantitative easing programme. The central bank doubled the level it will permit 10-year yields to climb from 0.1 to 0.2 per cent.
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South Korea's Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO) has lost its preferred bidder status to buy Toshiba's NuGen nuclear project in Britain as Toshiba looks at other alternatives, the Japanese company said on Tuesday. The project in Moorside, northwest England, was expected to provide around 7 percent of Britain's electricity when built, but has faced setbacks after Toshiba's nuclear arm Westinghouse went bankrupt last year, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.
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Delays to the planned sale of Toshiba's NuGen nuclear project in Britain have prompted a review of the roles of 60 direct employees, who are mainly based in Manchester, raising further doubts over its future, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The plant in Moorside, north-west England, was expected to provide around 7 percent of Britain's electricity when built, but has faced several setbacks after Toshiba's nuclear arm Westinghouse went bankrupt last year.
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The maelstrom that hit global financial markets a decade ago is known in Japan as the Lehman Shock, after the bankruptcy of the American investment bank that caused it, The Economist reported. Japanese banks themselves escaped relatively unscathed, owing to defences built during the 1990s, when the country struggled with deflation and excessive debt. But they seem to have forgotten the lesson. Risk-taking is back. Squeezed at home by razor-thin margins and negative interest rates, both major and regional banks have been on a spree abroad.
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