Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda faces an increasingly uphill battle to push through a plan to double the nation's sales tax, struggling to win support from both opposition parties and his own government amid rising global scrutiny of Tokyo's deteriorating fiscal condition, The Wall Street Journal reported. Mr. Noda needs to meet an end of March deadline, as stipulated by the tax law, to submit to parliament a bill that would raise the 5% consumption tax to 10% by 2015.

Directors of some pension funds that invested money with AIJ Investment Advisors Co. say they were attracted by promises of high, or at least sustainable, returns on their investments through the global economic downturn, The Wall Street Journal reported. Now those funds may be facing losses, days after Japan's Financial Services Agency ordered AIJ to suspend its operations, saying the firm allegedly lost most of ¥183 billion ($2.27 billion) in funds it managed. Neither AIJ nor its broker, ITM Securities Co., has been accused of wrongdoing.

Elpida Memory filed for protection from creditors on Monday with $5.6 billion in debt, the biggest bankruptcy filing by a Japanese manufacturer, after potential partners failed to come through to rescue the cash-strapped chipmaker, Reuters reported. Japan, which had lent or invested 40 billion yen ($500 million) with the country's last maker of PC memory chips to help it through the post-Lehman Brothers crisis, appeared to throw in the towel this time as it confronts slumping prices and relentless competition from well-funded Korean rivals.

Japan's financial regulator said Friday it has halted operations of a little-known Tokyo money-management company after the firm allegedly lost billions of dollars in client money, The Wall Street Journal reported. In one of the biggest cases of its kind in Japan, with Tokyo's reputation as a financial center still bruised by the billion-dollar Olympus Corp. accounting scandal, the regulator said investigators found that AIJ Investment Advisors Co. can't account for "most of" the 183 billion yen, or about $2.3 billion, in pension-fund assets under management.

Western investors in Japan's disgraced Olympus have accused its banks of trying to take control of the boardroom by stealth, amid media reports that the firm's major creditors are set to install their own appointees in the top jobs, Reuters reported. Foreign investors in the maker of cameras and medical equipment, engulfed last year by a $1.7 billion accounting fraud, have been arguing for a complete renewal of the board, including outside talent untainted by the scandal.

Japan Airlines Co. outlined a five-year plan that includes spending $6 billion on new aircraft as the carrier emerges from two years of bankruptcy protection, The Wall Street Journal reported. JAL has been turning its business around more quickly than expected by withdrawing from unprofitable routes, modernizing its fleet and cutting operating expenses. The airline has reduced its work force by a third. The strategy shows how the airline is embarking on an offensive to increase profit and growth amid intensifying competition.

Doubling Japan’s sales tax by 2015 won’t be enough to contain the nation’s growing debt load and the government needs to outline how it will pay for swelling social-welfare expenses, a Standard & Poor’s analyst said, Bloomberg reported. “There’s no way that would be enough,” Takahira Ogawa, director of sovereign ratings at S&P in Singapore, said in a phone interview, referring to the plan to raise the levy by 5 percentage points.

The International Monetary Fund is conducting "stress tests" on Japanese banks to gauge how vulnerable they are to a potential drop in the value of their huge holdings of Japanese government bonds, people familiar with the matter said. The move could sharpen investors' focus on the risk to Japan's economy from its ballooning debt, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Japan Airlines plans to raise more than 500 billion yen ($6.5 billion) ahead of re-listing its shares as early as September, a source with knowledge of the matter said, marking a sharp turnaround for the carrier following its bankruptcy in 2010, Reuters reported. A government-backed fund overseeing the airline's restructuring has said it would aim to recoup its 350 billion yen investment through a public offering by January 2013, three years after it went under with 2.3 trillion yen in debts.

Japan's ruling party compromised on a plan to double the sales tax by 2015 to help reduce the world’s largest public debt, delaying implementation by six months to help lawmakers meet a campaign pledge, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The proposal by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda would raise the sales tax from 5 percent to 8 percent in April 2014 and to 10 percent in October 2015. The agreement, reached late yesterday, must be approved by a government panel led by Finance Minister Jun Azumi before discussion with the opposition.