Japan Airlines Corp said Monday it will terminate the employment contracts of up to 250 pilots and cabin attendants after its additional voluntary retirement program failed to meet its job reduction target, Japan Today reported. The decision by JAL, which is restructuring under court protection, and its bankruptcy administrator, the state-backed Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp of Japan, comes as the airline is aiming to obtain court approval for its restructuring plans by the end of this month.

The Tokyo District Court has decided to start bankruptcy protection procedures for consumer lender Takefuji Corp., its administrator said Sunday, The Japan Times reported on a Kyodo News story. Takefuji, snowed under by mounting refund claims for excessive interest charges, filed for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 28. The number of borrowers who haven't sought reimbursement yet is meanwhile estimated at anything from 1 million to around 2 million, with potential claims estimated at ¥1 trillion to ¥2 trillion.

The chairman of Japan Airlines Corp. said Wednesday that the airline plans to boost its capital by another Y50 billion ($615.5 million) on top of an expected Y350 billion injection from a state-backed turnaround body as it restructures itself in bankruptcy, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Kazuo Inamori also said the company, together with the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp., is trying to drum up new loans from JAL's reluctant creditors as it plans to refinance its roughly Y300 billion debt by the end of March.

Acom Co. and Promise Co. said they’ve seen an increase in customer inquiries about repayments of overcharged interest since rival consumer lender Takefuji Corp. sought bankruptcy protection two weeks ago, Bloomberg reported. Masahito Osawa, a spokesman for Acom, and Promise’s Risa Matsumura said more clients are asking about refunds for overcharged interest since Takefuji’s collapse, without providing estimates for the potential cost. Takefuji’s Sept.

Takefuji Corp., once the symbol of the era of rapid growth in consumer finance, filed for bankruptcy protection in late September under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law, Asahi.com reported in an editorial. Takefuji's failure is not the simple saga of the demise of a single company. It poses a big question to the entire consumer credit industry: How can the sector push through the reforms needed to carve out a viable future for itself? Takefuji collapsed under the crippling burden of refunding borrower claims of overpaid interest.

Shinsei Bank is expected to become the financial adviser for the search of an investor for failed consumer lender Takefuji Corp, three people with direct knowledge of the matter said, Reuters reported. Takefuji last month filed for bankruptcy owing about $5 billion, making it the biggest Japanese consumer lender to fail since a court ruling in 2006 forced the industry to repay borrowers for excessive interest charges. Shinsei Bank's appointment will become official pending court approval, one of the people said. Read more.

Takefuji Corp., a consumer lender that came to symbolize practices that led to a crackdown against the industry, filed for bankruptcy protection with 433.61 billion yen ($5.15 billion) in outstanding debts, the first major failure in an industry suffering under the weight of stricter regulatory control, The Wall Street Journal reported. Takefuji's demise marks the end of an era in an industry that lent millions of yen to lower-income Japanese at sky-high interest rates.

Consumer loan company Takefuji Corp. has decided to file for bankruptcy in the face of mounting claims by borrowers for reimbursement of excessive interest charges and thinning profit margins under tightened consumer loan regulations, sources said Monday, The Japan Times reported. Takefuji President Akira Kiyokawa denied media reports that it would seek court protection from creditors, telling reporters at his home in Yokohama that no decision had been made.

Japan’s ruling Democratic party plans to introduce a supplementary budget of up to $55bn to pay for further stimulus measures aimed at combating the impact of the strong yen and kick-starting the flagging economy, the Financial Times reported. The move highlights growing concerns that the Japanese economy is stagnating in the face of weakness in export markets and a strong yen and that more needs to be done in spite of the government’s September 15 currency market intervention.

Takefuji Corp. shares are poised to drop by their daily limit after a report Japan’s third-biggest consumer lender was preparing to seek bankruptcy protection in what would be the country’s second-biggest filing this year, Bloomberg reported. Takefuji, with 430 billion yen ($5.1 billion) in liabilities as of June 30, is in final talks to file for bankruptcy at the Tokyo District Court, the Nikkei newspaper said, without saying where it obtained the information.