A proposed merger between Iyogin Holdings Inc. and Ehime Bank Ltd. adds to a series of recent M&A activity between Japanese regional lenders as an aging and shrinking population weighs on their business.

Creditors across Japan are trying to claw back more than $700 million from a payments firm suspected to have faked its financial statement for at least 20 years and abruptly collapsed into bankruptcy this week.

The bankruptcy of Zentoshin Co., an Osaka-based credit card payment processor, threatens both the regional banks which funded it as well as the small and medium-sized restaurants that relied on its services.

The Japanese regional bank with the best recent record for trading bonds has started buying Japanese government debt for the first time in a decade.

Nippon Life Insurance Co. booked an impairment loss on its Japanese government bonds, signaling that some of the paper losses on the debt holdings have climbed to levels that require writedowns.

Japan’s financial regulator is urging the country’s listed companies to spend more of their cash piles on long-term business investment instead of rewarding shareholders with buybacks and higher dividends.

Rakuten Bank Ltd. shares surged after Mizuho Financial Group Inc. said it is considering investing in the firm as one of the options for Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Group Inc.’s planned reorganization of its financial businesses.

Japan’s Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said she will meet the country’s biggest banks to discuss Anthropic PBC’s latest AI model Mythos on Friday, as authorities around the world express concerns about the technology.

MUFG Bank Ltd. is looking for opportunities to make further acquisitions or investments in Asia and elsewhere, according to the new head of the lending unit at Japan’s largest banking group.

North Korea launched ballistic missiles toward waters off its east coast, authorities in South Korea and Japan said.

Many Japanese banks in the countryside are struggling due to a shrinking population, but at a tiny credit union in the northernmost tip of the country, the situation is extreme.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. shares tumbled the most in almost a year after its banking subsidiary was reported to have a big exposure to Market Financial Solutions Ltd., whose collapse in the UK has hit several financial firms.

One of Japan’s largest regional banks is testing the country’s choppy bond market by investing in shorter-term notes to secure higher returns, while avoiding longer-dated securities as interest rates rise.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. plans to hire bankers to arrange financing deals for data centers as Japan’s biggest bank jumps on the artificial intelligence boom.

Japan’s second-biggest bank plans to aggressively rebuild its local sovereign debt holdings once a wild surge in yields runs its course.

Japan’s second-biggest bank plans to aggressively rebuild its local sovereign debt holdings once a wild surge in yields runs its course.

The selling in Japan’s $7.6 trillion bond market began slowly, then seemed to hit all at once.

Mizuho Financial Group Inc. is bolstering efforts to expand its corporate and institutional banking business in Europe and Asia, pursuing a growth strategy that’s diverging from its Japanese peers.

Junichi Hanzawa, the next chief executive officer of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., will take the reins of Japan’s largest bank as it rakes in record profits. His challenge will be sustaining that growth beyond the windfall of rising interest rates.

Mizuho Financial Group Inc.’s chief executive officer expressed optimism that momentum in investment banking will continue both at home and in the US, where Japan’s third-biggest lender has been expanding.