The Japanese government told the operator of the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant yesterday to consider accepting temporary state control in return for a much-needed injection of public funds, in effect proposing an interim nationalization of the struggling utility, the New York Times reported yesterday. The order came after Tokyo Electric Power requested ¥689.4 billion ($8.8 billion) in government aid to help pay for its response to the nuclear accident at its Fukushima site.

Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) said that it will hire 32 officials to help tighten oversight of illegal trading at securities firms and other regulations as it boosts its headcount and budget for next year, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The regulator plans to increase its net headcount to 1,548 people in 2012, the most in at least in five years, as its budget grows by 4.1 percent to 23.1 billion yen ($296 million), the agency said. The FSA penalized at least 35 financial institutions this year, including Citigroup Inc. and UBS AG, for breaching Japanese securities rules.

The Japanese and Indian governments agreed Wednesday to set up a three-year, $15 billion bilateral-currency swap line in an effort to buttress their economies against Europe's sovereign debt crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The new swap line - five times that of the previous arrangement that expired in early summer - follows a Japan-South Korea deal in October to boost their bilateral swap pact to $70 billion from $13 billion. The moves signal spreading doubts among Asian economic powerhouses about the ability of European leaders to fix their problems anytime soon.

The world's major central banks acted jointly on Wednesday to provide cheaper dollar funding to European banks facing a credit crunch as the euro zone's debt crisis drove EU ministers to urge more IMF help to avert financial disaster, Reuters reported. The emergency move by the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the central banks of Japan, Britain, Canada and Switzerland recalled coordinated action to stabilise global markets in the 2008 financial crisis after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Olympus Corp's losses on securities investments mounted to more than 100 billion yen ($1.3 billion) at one point, the Nikkei business daily said on Wednesday, citing sources close to the matter, Reuters reported. Olympus, engulfed by a scandal that has brought the 92-year-old company to its knees, admitted the previous day to using M&A transactions to conceal past losses.

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), operator of the Japanese nuclear plant destroyed by the tsunami in March, forecast a second year of heavy financial losses even as it secured Y890bn (US$11.4bn) in government aid to help compensate victims of the nuclear disaster, the Financial Times reported. The utility on Friday projected a Y600bn net loss for the year to March 2012, its first earnings guidance since the triple meltdown occurred at its Fukushima Daiichi facility. If the estimate is realised, it would bring its losses since the tsunami to Y1,847bn.

Failed Japanese lender Takefuji said on Monday its debt holders approved a court-led rehabilitation plan, overcoming opposition from a group of overseas creditors who had sought liquidation of the company in hopes of achieving higher repayment rates, Reuters reported. Approval had been expected for the restructuring plan proposed by Takefuji, which filed for bankruptcy in September 2010, although the conflict with foreign creditors had attracted attention in Japan where such disagreements are rare.

The Japanese government is expected to approve financial assistance to Tokyo Electric Power Co. this week, after the embattled utility sought about ¥1 trillion, or about $13 billion, in public funds Friday to deal with compensation claims from the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, The Wall Street Journal reported. The government's objective is to keep the company afloat. Without public funds, Tepco would have to report a capital deficit for the July-September quarter, results of which are due by Nov. 14.

China's massive economic-stimulus program has supported near double-digit growth, but also Suncity Co , a condominium developer based in Japan's quake-hit northeast, said it filed for bankruptcy protection with the Sendai District Court on Monday with 24.9 billion yen ($326.5 million) in liabilities after sales plunged in the wake of the March disaster, Reuters reported. Investment firm FinTech Global said it would back Suncity's restructuring. Suncity, which employs 159 people, said that it plans to delist its shares from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Plowing ahead with plans to return the company to the stock market by the end of the next fiscal year, the head of Japan Airlines Corp. said Monday its low-cost joint venture can learn from--and avoid--painful mistakes made by other well-established U.S. and European carriers in past attempts to tap into the budget travel market, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. But JAL President Masaru Onishi said the Japanese government needs to do its part too.