It's a tantalizing prospect for traders whose success often hinges on microseconds: a desktop PC algorithm that crunches market data faster than today's most advanced supercomputers. Toshiba Corp. says it has the technology to make such rapid-fire calculations a reality — not quite quantum computing, ...

The biggest dealmaker in Japan this year has one thing on his mind: beer, and then more beer — more than $20 billion worth of it in the past four years, to be precise. Never mind that people around the globe are drinking less, with ...

Tadashi Yanai, Fast Retailing Co.’s 70-year-old billionaire founder, said he would prefer to be succeeded by a woman, adding it would be better for Asia’s largest retailer. "The job is more suitable for a woman," Yanai, the chief executive officer behind clothing giant Uniqlo, said ...

Shingo Katori commanded the adoration of millions of fans across Asia as a member of SMAP, one of Japan's most successful boy bands. After decades as a ubiquitous TV presence, he finally decided in November it was time to get an Instagram account. A small ...

Asatsu-DK Inc.'s chief executive officer said he is determined to sever an alliance with top stockholder WPP PLC, seven months after the world's largest advertising agency called on share owners to vote him out. CEO and President Shinichi Ueno said in an interview that the ...

Asahi Group Holdings Ltd. will ramp up sales of its top-selling Super Dry beer in Europe with local production aided by faster integration of last year's $11 billion purchase of brands from Anheuser-Busch InBev NV. Japan's largest brewer will produce Super Dry in Padua, Italy, ...

McDonald's Japan took a series of hits starting in 2014 that threatened to crack its golden arches: a supplier was selling expired chicken, a human tooth was found in french fries and a child was injured by a plastic shard in a sundae. Sales plummeted ...

Selling everyday items to bargain hunters has made the founder of Japan's biggest discount store a billionaire. Hirotake Yano, founder and president of closely held Daiso Sangyo Corp., the self-described "Japanese shopping wonderland," was one of the country's first vendors to adopt a single-price model ...

A childhood New Year's holiday spent playing cards with his family planted the seeds of a gambling compulsion that ravaged decades of one man's life. Now 67, the former salesman from western Japan fell into debt time and time again as his addiction drew ...

Embarrassed by the recall of thousands of kitchenware pots after they appeared to leach lead when heated, discount-furniture king Akio Nitori took an unusual step. He hired a team of auto industry engineers to revamp the quality assurance and testing division. Ten years later, every ...