Japan’s two largest securities firms expect the country’s stock market rally to extend well into 2027, even as a potential reversal in artificial intelligence investment looms as the primary threat.

Japan’s Financial Services Agency is stepping up its scrutiny of financing for AI data centers by the country’s biggest banks and life insurers, as major financial institutions increase their exposure to the rapidly expanding sector.

Japan’s Financial Services Agency is stepping up its scrutiny of financing for AI data centers by the country’s biggest banks and life insurers, as major financial institutions increase their exposure to the rapidly expanding sector.

Mizuho Financial Group Inc. expects the Bank of Japan to pick up the pace of interest-rate hikes, with the next one coming as soon as next month, as the weak yen and inflation prompt the central bank to act more quickly.

Japan’s defense minister visited a shrine seen by Japan’s neighbors as a symbol of its wartime militarism, drawing condemnation from China following months of tension between the countries.

Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co. is examining an industrywide increase in policy cancellations as rising interest rates prompt customers to shift into other financial products, its Deputy President Atsushi Nakamura said in an interview.

Daiichi Life Group Inc. has been stepping into bankers’ shoes and contacting companies directly to see if they want to issue bonds, in an unusual investment tactic for an insurer.

LGT, a private bank owned by the Princely House of Liechtenstein, is looking to expand in Japan, betting that it can capture a share of the rising wealth in a market that has historically proved difficult for foreign private banks.

Japan’s Orix Corp. has agreed to buy AerFin Ltd., a UK-based airplane parts company, in a deal worth about ¥100 billion ($640 million) including debt, people familiar with the matter said.

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.