Japan

(July 4): Selling everyday items to bargain hunters has made the founder of Japan’s biggest discount store a billionaire.

SINGAPORE (June 30): Mapletree Logistics Trust’s (MLT) Japan-incorporated special purpose entity has entered into a sale and purchase agreement to divest two 4-storey warehouses in Japan for a total consideration of 13.5 billion yen ($165.4 million).

SINGAPORE (June 29): Keong Hong Holdings announced Thursday that indirect wholly-owned subsidiary Grandwood (Japan) has entered into a sale and purchase agreement to acquire a commercial building in Osaka, Japan for 950 million yen ($11.8 million).

(June 12): Impressed by the so-called FANG shares’ performance? Japan has a similar group that’s doing even better.

(June 2): KKR & Co. has raised US$9.3 billion ($12.8 billion) for its third Asia fund, amassing the biggest ever pool by a private equity firm in the region, as the firm steps up investment in Japan.

MUMBAI (May 30): Japan and Germany may be sitting on a ticking demographic time bomb where aging populations begin to drag down economic growth. Good thing they’re also prime candidates for robot revolutions.

SINGAPORE (May 23): GLP, the global provider of modern logistics facilities, has signed 2 million sf of new leases in Japan and China over the past two months.

MANILA (May 19): Melco Crown Philippines Resorts Corp. is the best-performing casino stock in the world this year. To punters playing baccarat at the company’s City of Dreams venue in Manila, that’s no surprise.

TOKYO (April 5): Corporate Japan achieved a rare feat in the fiscal year that ended last week. Not one of its almost 4,000 publicly-traded firms filed for bankruptcy protection.

TOKYO (March 23): Don’t believe Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s global fund manager survey, which shows that Japan is the second-most popular equity market, says Jonathan Allum, a strategist at SMBC Nikko Capital Markets Ltd.