Local News

The Fukuoka City branch of Tokyo Shoko Research released figures for bankruptcies in the Kyushu-Okinawa region with liabilities of at least 10 million yen for the first half of the current calendar year. A total of 707 enterprises shut their doors, an 11.8% rise from the year-before period and the second consecutive rise for the first half of the year. It is also the first time that bankruptcies exceeded 700 in the January-June period in five years. The credit rating company attributed this to the impact of the American sub-prime mortgage problem on the local real estate market and soaring commodity prices.