Japan

In Japan, the world's largest retirement fund is being eyed to help the country come out of its long-running economic woes, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his supporters in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are trying to push more of $1.2 trillion in public pension money into more speculative investments, especially the stock market. More aggressive investments could help continue the market momentum that has made the Tokyo market the best performer among major markets this year.

Japan needs to quickly lower its corporate tax rate to less than 30 percent to boost the nation’s competitiveness in the global market, Deputy Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said, according to Bloomberg News today. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to experiment with reforms in the labor market, health care and agriculture and other areas in the zones -- a central plank of his growth strategy. Japan will lower its tax on corporate profits to 35.6 percent from 38 percent in April when a temporary levy to fund reconstruction of regions devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami ends.

Japan’s banking regulator will seek to introduce penalties for manipulation of financial benchmarks, joining market watchdogs around the globe in pushing for broader authority and tougher supervision, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The Financial Services Agency should get formal authority to supervise organizations that set benchmarks such as the Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate (Tibor) and to conduct investigations, an advisory committee to the regulator said in a statement on Tuesday. The FSA plans to submit a bill including the changes to parliament next year.

The president of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc., one of Japan's biggest financial institutions, said his company has extended an unspecified number of "suspicious loans" to people with ties to organized crime, the latest in a series of firms to make such an admission since a scandal in September over a similar disclosure by a rival, Mizuho Bank Ltd., The Wall Street Journal reported.

The share of Japanese households with no financial assets rose to a record as falling incomes forced people to dig into their savings, highlighting the potential for widening disparities under Abenomics, Bloomberg reported. The proportion reached 31 percent, according to a Bank of Japan survey released in Tokyo yesterday, up from 26 percent a year earlier and the highest since the poll began in 1963. The BOJ surveyed 8,000 households of two or more people aged 20 years or older from June 14 though July 23.

Japanese restaurant chain Wagamama has gone into voluntary administration, and its Southbank venue in Melbourne has been shut down, The Age reported. Administrator KPMG took control of the business on Tuesday. Staff at the restaurant chain received news that the company behind Wagamama had gone into administration on Thursday and Friday. KPMG partner and administrator Ian Hall said the Southbank restaurant had been closed soon after the business was taken over. "The reason being was that it was not profitable," he said.

A move by the Bank of Tokyo to challenge the Solid Energy debt restructuring deal could backfire, leaving the bank being owed even more money, says Finance Minister Bill English, The New Zealand Herald reported. A debt restructuring process aimed at rescuing the struggling state-owned coal miner Solid Energy was announced on October 1. The Auckland branch of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ is recorded as the second-largest lender to Solid Energy and is opposing the proposed deal. Last week It lodged proceedings in the High Court in Auckland challenging the process.

Orient Corp., the Japanese consumer credit firm being probed for lending to crime groups with Mizuho Financial Group Inc., said it’s cooperating with police to prosecute gangsters who obtained loans fraudulently, Bloomberg reported. The company is in talks with lawyers to consider action against borrowers who signed 37 loan contracts by falsely declaring they have no mob ties, Orient said in a statement on its website yesterday. It is seeking to cancel the transactions.

Stimulus vs. debt reduction. That big question has tormented advanced economies in recent years, as they juggle attempts to lift sluggish growth with curbing unsustainable borrowing. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this week will try to have it both ways, The Wall Street Journal reported. Brushing off warnings that Japan's nascent economic recovery, stirred by his own package of bold stimulus policies, is still too delicate to withstand austerity measures, Mr.

Japan is on a roll. Its economy is growing at a robust 3.8 percent, the stock market is up by 40 percent this year, and the country is on the cusp of overcoming 15 years of deflation. Adding to the positive trend, Tokyo just won its bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, raising hopes of an investment and construction boom, the International Herald Tribune reported. What could possibly go wrong? A plan to raise taxes at the worst conceivable moment, economists warned. “It’s nonsense.