U.S. says Okada's Universal is target of criminal bribery probe

Japanese billionaire Kazuo Okada and his companies are being investigated in the United States for potential violations of anti-bribery laws in relation to a $2 billion casino project in the Philippines, according to a court filing.

In a Nevada state court filing, U.S. federal prosecutors sought permission to intervene in a lawsuit brought by Wynn Resorts Ltd against Okada to prevent disrupting an ongoing criminal probe into the bribery allegations.

It was the first time U.S. authorities publicly acknowledged a criminal investigation of Okada and his companies - Japan's Universal Entertainment Corp and Nevada-based Aruze USA Inc - for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an anti-bribery statute dating to the 1970s.

The government also noted in the filing that it has been conducting a criminal investigation into Wynn's donation in 2011 to the University of Macau Development Foundation. Okada has said Wynn's board turned against him for opposing the donation.

For more than a year Okada has been locked in a legal battle with Wynn Resorts CEO Steve Wynn, during which the former business partners have exchanged allegations of illegal conduct.

Shares of Universal Entertainment, which generates the bulk of its profits from making pachinko gaming machines for the Japanese market, tumbled 15.7 percent to 1,666 yen on Wednesday - their biggest one-day drop in almost 14 months.

The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking a temporary stay on discovery in the civil proceedings to allow for the criminal case to be developed. Wynn would consent to the motion while Okada would likely oppose it, according to the filing.

"Universal is cooperating fully with all investigations," said Eric Andrus, a spokesman for the Japanese company at RLM Finsbury. Kim Sinatra, general counsel for Wynn Resorts, said the company would continue to cooperate with the government.

Reuters has reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was probing $40 million in payments from Universal to a close associate of the former head of the Philippine gaming authority in 2010 around the time the company was granted concessions for its Manila Bay casino.

Universal said in December it filed a defamation suit against Reuters in Tokyo for its reporting on the payments.


http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/10/us-casinos-universal-usa-idUSBRE93907P20130410

March - Supermarket sales register first rebound in 13 months

Japan’s supermarket sales marked the first year-on-year rise in 13 months in March on a same-store basis, backed partly by spirited closing sales, an industry body said Monday.

Total sales at 7,947 stores operated by 57 supermarket chains stood at ¥1,044.65 billion, the Japan Chain Stores Association said. Clothing sales, which accounted for 10.5 percent of overall sales, increased 7.1 percent, while food sales, which made up 61.8 percent of the total, sagged 0.3 percent, the association said.

It traced the overall sales increase to robust sales of spring clothing amid warm temperatures as well as good sales of merchandise to tackle hay fever.

Meanwhile, the Japan Franchise Association said on Monday that sales at convenience stores in Japan in March fell 0.4 percent from a year earlier to ¥700.3 billion on a same-store basis, down for the 10th straight month.

The drop partly resulted from sluggish tobacco sales, the industry group said.


http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/04/23/business/supermarket-sales-register-first-rebound-in-13-months/

Buddhist sect from Japan loses big on Aussie dollar bets

Koyasan Shingon Buddhism, the Japanese owner of a cluster of World Heritage Site temples founded in the 9th century, reported losses equal to about a quarter of its assets after bets in the Australian dollar and structured bonds soured.

The group had unregistered losses of 1.53 billion yen (US$15 million) on financial assets of 5.79 billion yen for the year ended March 31, according to an April 23 report commissioned by the organization, based in Wakayama prefecture in western Japan. The head of the organization, Kosho Shono, resigned today to take responsibility, Kyodo News reported.

Koyasan Shingon, whose flagship Kongobu-ji temple in Mount Koya is listed as a National Treasure of Japan, started investing in 2002 in an Australian dollar fund through Nomura Securities Co., using money from member temples and followers. The association later expanded its portfolio to products including Nikkei index-linked debt, according to the report.

Holding the association’s fund managers responsible for the losses “wasn’t appropriate,” because it would have been difficult to predict the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., according to the report.

The report was commissioned in February after the organization’s governing council asked for more transparency about its investments.

“It was a difficult period of investing that led to attempts at higher returns. Such movements were seen everywhere,” said Hiroyuki Nakai, chief strategist at Tokai Tokyo Research Center.


http://business.financialpost.com/2013/04/25/australian-dollar-buddhist-sect/

March - Consumer prices fall for 5th month in a row

Japan's key retail-price gauge deflated in March from a year earlier, even as the index rose compared to February's levels, the Finance Ministry reported Friday.

The core consumer price index, which strips out volatile fresh-food prices, was 0.5% lower than for March of last year, the fifth straight monthly drop, with the result coming in slightly worse than the 0.4% decline expected in separate Dow Jones Newswires and Reuters surveys of economists.

However, the core CPI rose 0.3% compared with the previous month. In February, Japan's core CPI fell 0.3% from the year-earlier period. The April core CPI for metropolitan Tokyo, used a leading indicator of price trends in Japan, registered a 0.3% year-on-year drop, though it too was up 0.3% from February.

On a national level, March prices for furniture, culture and recreation, and food showed the largest drops.

The yen rose slightly following the data, with the dollar USDJPY -1.2119% slipping from ¥99.38 ahead of the numbers to ¥99.33. The consumer price report preceded a policy decision due later in the day from the Bank of Japan, which hopes to meet a 2% consumer-inflation target within the coming two years.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/japan-consumer-prices-fall-for-5th-month-in-a-row-2013-04-25

Consumer Prices Fall for Third Month as Deflation Lingers

Japan’s consumer prices fell for the eighth time in nine months, highlighting the challenges facing the Bank of Japan (8301) in reaching a 2 percent inflation target.

Consumer prices excluding fresh food fell 0.2 percent in January from a year earlier, the third-straight decline, the statistics bureau said in Tokyo today. The result matched the median estimate in a survey of 26 economists by Bloomberg News.

While a weaker yen improves the outlook for exporters and pushes up the prices of imported energy and commodities, continued price falls show the scale of the BOJ’s challenge in achieving 2 percent inflation. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday nominated Asian Development Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda to lead the BOJ, with the prospective governor saying last month that more easing is justified for 2013.


Japan’s economy will grow 1.8% this quarter according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, after contracting in April-to-December last year. Goldman Sachs Inc. in January raised its GDP forecast for the fiscal year starting in April to 2 percent.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-28/japan-consumer-prices-fall-for-third-month-as-deflation-lingers.html

Q4 - Economy Still Contracting

Japan's economy unexpectedly contracted in the fourth quarter, failing to escape a mild recession and playing into the hands of a government pushing for more aggressive monetary expansion that's drawn international criticism.

While a 0.1 percent drop in output defied expectations of a slight uptick after two quarters of contraction, economists expect the economy will slowly recover this year with the help of bolder monetary and fiscal stimulus and an improving global economy.

The Bank of Japan also struck a more positive note on the economy while keeping its policy on hold after it boosted its monetary stimulus and doubled its inflation target to 2 percent a month ago.

Markets, however, have no doubt that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will keep pushing the central bank for more, given the still fragile state of the economy. A return to rising prices also appears far off after nearly two decades of low-grade deflation.

Those expectations for further easing have sent the yen into retreat, driving it down nearly 20 percent against the dollar since November and stirring an international debate over whether Japan was effectively using aggressive money printing to steer the yen lower.

Tokyo has defended its action, saying its policies are aimed at pulling the country out of deflation, not at nudging down the yen, and Governor Masaaki Shirakawa is expected to reinforce that argument when he will attend his last Group of 20 finance leaders' meeting in Moscow this weekend.

Japan has said the Group of Seven rich nations accepted Tokyo's view when it declared in a statement on Tuesday that fiscal and monetary policies would not be directed at devaluing currencies.

But remarks from former BOJ governor Kazumasa Iwata on Thursday are likely to rekindle the international debate on Tokyo's true motives.

The yen is still overvalued from a trade perspective and the reversal of the currency's strength is essential for the Bank of Japan to achieve its 2-percent inflation target, Iwata was quoted as saying by a Japanese ruling party official.

Iwata, considered one of the leading candidates to replace Shirakawa when he leaves his post in March, said the dollar at 95 yen was appropriate. Iwata heads a private economics think-tank and now has no policymaking role.

Abe and his cabinet have the right to fill three top BOJ posts when Shirakawa and his two deputies leave on March 19 and is widely expected to pick advocates of more aggressive central bank action than the cautious outgoing chief, keeping downward pressure on the yen.

The dollar traded around 93.50 yen on Thursday after hitting a 33-month high of about 94.47 yen on Monday.

South Korea's central bank warned on Thursday that Japan's expansionary monetary policy could affect that country's future growth as a weak yen could undercut Korean exporters' competitiveness.

ECONOMY BOTTOMING?

As widely expected, the central bank maintained its overnight call rate target at a range of zero to 0.1 percent by a unanimous vote, and held off expanding its asset buying and lending program, while offering a rosier view of the economy than just a month ago.

"Japan's economy appears to be bottoming out," it said. In January the BOJ said the economy was weakening.

The world's third-largest economy contracted for the third consecutive quarter in October-December, showing Japan was taking longer to escape from a mild recession. Economists had expected a very modest expansion of 0.1 percent from the previous quarter.

However, more recent sentiment surveys and leading indicators such as machinery orders point to a gradual recovery.

"The economy is still on the recovery track, and there is a stimulus package that will help from the spring. The Bank of Japan is also likely to continue monetary easing," said Shuji Tonouchi, senior fixed income strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.

Economics Minister Akira Amari said that while the economy was still showing some weakness, it was likely to resume moderate recovery, helped by monetary easing, stimulus spending and an expected pick-up in global growth.

On an annualized basis, the economy contracted 0.4 percent, Cabinet Office data showed on Thursday. Economists had expected a 0.5 percent annualized increase.


http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/14/us-japan-economy-gdp-idUSBRE91D00Z20130214

April - Japanese Real Estate Prices Surge

The below chart shows the surge of Japanese real estate prices (at least for REITs) in the last month; with a 30% surge in prices since March 2013

Seems to be a combination of the weakening Yen and "Abenomics" leading to real estate prices surging

http://quote.tse.or.jp/tse/quote.cgi?F=histidx/EHistIndex&basequote=352_2013&begin=2013/1/22&end=2013/04/22&mode=D&histtype=CSV