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Small businesses in Ino, a town in Kochi Prefecture known for its paper industry, show how a labor shortage is a growing threat to smaller companies that provide seven out of every 10 jobs in Japan.
BUSINESS / Economy
Dec 24, 2024

Small businesses with low wages struggle to tackle labor shortages

A worker shortage is threatening firms that are otherwise robust, including those that have invested in automation and creative hiring.
Bulk food dispensers at a new 7-Eleven store in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture. Opened a year ago, Seven & I Holdings conceived it as a prototype to test the synergies between the company’s retail supermarket chain and its more-successful convenience-store business.
BUSINESS / Companies / FOCUS
Feb 10, 2025

Blended 7-Eleven-and-supermarket concept proves a tough sell

It is unclear if higher customer numbers have been sustained, and Seven & I has no plans right now to open more such outlets.
SBI Holdings CEO Yoshitaka Kitao speaks during a news conference on Thursday in Tokyo.
BUSINESS / Companies
Apr 17, 2025

SBI Holdings CEO to 'fight to the end' if Fuji Media resists leadership rethink

Yoshitaka Kitao said he will increase SBI Holdings’ stake in Fuji Media Holdings depending on how the TV network responds.
Nomura is looking to deepen its foothold in its traditional Wall Street businesses by weighing a return to offering cash prime-brokerage services in the United States and Europe.
BUSINESS / Companies
Apr 25, 2025

Nomura weighs return to prime brokerage four years after Archegos

Prime brokerage, which involves banks lending cash and securities to hedge funds, has become an increasing money maker for Wall Street in recent years due to high equities prices.
Seven & I hopes to focus more on its 7-Eleven convenience stores.
BUSINESS / Companies / FOCUS
May 28, 2025

Seven & I’s move away from banking leaves market wondering

7-Eleven's ATMs are an important part of the convenience store operator's business.
Nomura is in expansion mode in U.S. markets despite wider sentiments that are more worried about U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade policies overshadowing global growth prospects.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 30, 2025

Nomura sees great opportunities to grow in U.S. despite turmoil

The firm plans to advance targets for its investment management and wholesale banking businesses by pursuing long-term growth in the Americas.
Goldman Sachs Asset Management Japan is expanding its business as Japanese institutional investors are increasingly willing to hire third parties to help oversee their trillions of dollars in assets.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 9, 2025

Goldman CIO service suddenly catches on in Japan after 10 years

The return of inflation after two decades has added pressure on Japan’s pensions and insurance companies to seek higher returns.
Nomura Holdings shuffles its leadership in its currencies and emerging markets trading business following the departure of the unit’s co-head Nagaraj Pangal.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 11, 2025

Nomura shuffles leadership in trading units after second exit in nine months

The business has been suffering from a series of high-profile exits, and on one team as of January at least eight traders had left or gone on leave in the prior 12 months.
Mitsubishi Estate is one of Japan’s largest property companies and the firm has been growing its investment management business.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 13, 2025

Mitsubishi buys stake in private equity real estate firm Patron

The deal will see Mitsubishi commit about €600 million of equity to Patron’s funds to help it build out new strategies including its nascent credit business.
A worker installs part of a business-class aircraft seat at the factory of Safran Seats GB in Cwmbran, South Wales, Britain, on Feb. 20.
BUSINESS / FOCUS
Jul 3, 2025

Airline seat industry crisis delaying jet deliveries

Certification bottlenecks and growing demand for bespoke features make it hard for the fragmented sector to achieve economies of scale after the pandemic.
Isao Taniguchi (center), chief of the National Institute of Technology, and Yuto Kashihara (left), who founded D-yorozu, promote a tie-up with BizReach in Tokyo last week.
BUSINESS
Aug 3, 2025

'Kōsen' tech colleges and HR firm tie up for student entrepreneurs

The National Institute of Technology, which oversees the 51 national kōsen across Japan, signed a partnership agreement with BizReach last month.
Chef and restaurant owner Rikuo Morimoto, who runs the restaurant Andante in Tokyo, on May 1. A 2019 government report estimated that about 1.27 million small business owners would be 70 or older by 2025 and have no successors.
BUSINESS / Economy
Aug 6, 2023

'Era of mass closures': The Japanese firms with no successors

A 2019 government report estimated that about 1.27 million small business owners would be 70 or older by 2025 and have no successors.
Hiroshi Mikitani, co-chief executive officer of Rakuten Medical, speaks at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's meeting in Yokohama on Thursday.
BUSINESS
Aug 7, 2023

Rakuten’s Mikitani spends a fifth of his time on biotech startup

Rakuten Medical, based in San Diego, employs about 200 people and specializes in a therapy that uses light and immunotherapy drugs to fight cancer.
Russian businessman and co-founder of Alfa Group Mikhail Fridman (left) attends a conference in Moscow in September 2019.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 24, 2023

Sympathy for the oligarch

As private actors sought to navigate the collapse of the Soviet economy, they ended up shaping it into something far more functional and prosperous.
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 28, 2023

Sogo & Seibu labor union plans strike over possible sale

If the strike goes ahead on Thursday, it would be the first in Japan’s department store industry in about 60 years.
Load and haul operations at Thungela's thermal coal mining operation, Isibonelo Colliery (formerly Anglo American), in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa, in March 2019
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 1, 2023

Coal miners forced to insure themselves amid climate concerns

Dozens of insurers have announced restrictions on their cover for the coal industry, particularly for new projects
A woman walks past surveillance cameras in Shanghai. China’s Ministry of State Security has called for a "whole of society mobilization,” urging the public to watch for what it considers foreign-backed subversion.
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 20, 2023

Burner laptops and smaller profits: Firms face China challenges

Beijing has doubled down on policies emphasizing security and self-reliance that make it harder to do business.
Disney said its parks, experiences and products segment has expanded at a combined annual growth rate of 6% since fiscal 2017, and generated $32.3 billion in operating income over the last 12 months.
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 21, 2023

Disney to nearly double parks spending to $60 billion

Disney CEO Bob Iger and Josh D'Amaro, the company's parks chief, announced the accelerated pace of investment at a gathering of Wall Street analysts.
Shell CEO Wael Sawan attends the China Development Forum 2023 in Beijing on March 25. At an investor day in June, Sawan outlined plans to slow investment in renewables and low-carbon business as part of a strategy to boost returns.
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 28, 2023

Shell CEO faces pressure from within over renewables commitment

Employees have issued a rare open letter to Wael Sawan after he outlined plans to slow investment in renewables in a strategy to boost returns.
The Singapore skyline
BUSINESS / Economy
Oct 6, 2023

The rich are flocking to Singapore as bankers stick with Hong Kong

From Singapore’s earliest years as an independent state, it has aimed to be one of the key locales through which the world’s money flows.
When COVID-19 first emerged, companies across the health care industry raced to reconfigure themselves. That transformation is now unraveling.
BUSINESS / Companies
Oct 18, 2023

Life after COVID turns rocky for reshaped health care businesses

When the coronavirus first emerged, companies across the health care industry raced to reconfigure themselves. That transformation is now unraveling.
People use smartphones on the street in Tokyo in January 2019.
BUSINESS / Companies / FOCUS
Nov 20, 2023

The NTT Law — a guard against monopoly, or barrier to innovation?

Some say the law regulating the telecom giant stops it from competing against the likes of Google, but others say it contains vital market protections.
A man walks through the Central Business District on a rainy day, in Beijing.
BUSINESS / Economy
Nov 28, 2023

West's de-risking starts to bite China's prospects

China is outwardly confident about growth despite a global economic slowdown
Disney CEO Bob Iger
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 29, 2023

Disney CEO Bob Iger says company is ready to start building

CEO Bob Iger said the company is poised to begin building its business again, after a year of restructuring.
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group CEO Hironori Kamezawa
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 22, 2023

Japan banks scramble to beef up asset management businesses

Asset management has emerged as an area of focus for the banks this year amid signs decades of deflation is ending.
Data center development is time-consuming and complex — requiring a mix of expertise around real estate, technology, local regulations and environmental requirements. Asia’s highly fragmented market makes navigating these factors even more onerous.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 15, 2024

Global investors plow into Asia data centers on AI boom

Asia is becoming the latest hunting ground for investors in data centers, as companies bet on the region’s growing computing and data storage needs.
Nomura Holdings plans a buyback of up to ¥100 billion.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 1, 2024

Nomura’s trading overhaul advances as CEO plans buyback

Nomura Holdings plans a buyback of up to ¥100 billion.
Prolonged factory deflation is threatening the survival of smaller Chinese exporters, who are locked in relentless price wars for shrinking business as higher interest rates abroad and rising trade protectionism squeeze demand.
BUSINESS / Economy / ANALYSIS
Feb 5, 2024

China's small exporters threatened amid price wars and low demand

Producer prices have been falling for 15 straight months, crushing profit margins to the point where industrial output and jobs are now at risk.
Donald Trump, who made a fortune in construction over the years, has assets he can sell to pay the $355 million financial penalty recently imposed on him in civil fraud case filed in New York, but it will strain his available cash reserves.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 20, 2024

Trump loved New York. Now it's giving him the boot.

The place that made Trump who he is has turned on him. The former president is being fined millions and banned from doing business in New York.
Phytochemical Products CEO Makiko Kato (second from right) and Chief Technology Officer and professor Naomi Kitakawa (right) at the startup's laboratory in Sendai
BUSINESS / Companies / Regional Voices: Tohoku
Mar 18, 2024

Tohoku University startup opens path to waste oil recycling

Its proprietary technology allows it to extract useful compounds from waste oil to produce biofuel and other products.

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Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear