Japan's latest business succession and M&A subsidy round opened on June 19 with an unusually blunt administrative message: file at least five business days before the deadline. The secretariat says applications tend to bunch up in the final days, and this round's review schedule may not allow repeated deficiency notices and resubmissions. If errors remain unresolved, an application may be rejected.
The program is also more segmented than one headline suggests. The Business Succession Promotion track is capped at ¥10mn. A separate Abandonment and Re-challenge track is capped at ¥3mn. Expert Utilization support is split between a small-scale seller support type capped at ¥4.5mn and a buyer/seller support type capped at ¥8mn.
| Track | Max subsidy | Filing or structure note |
|---|---|---|
| Business Succession Promotion | ¥10mn | Use this form if combined with Abandonment and Re-challenge |
| Abandonment and Re-challenge | ¥3mn | When combined with other listed tracks, apply under those tracks instead |
| Expert Utilization, small-scale seller support | ¥4.5mn | Separate small-scale seller support type |
| Expert Utilization, buyer/seller support | ¥8mn | Covers buyer and seller support types |
There is a filing wrinkle, too. The succession notice says applications that combine succession promotion with the Abandonment and Re-challenge track should be filed under the succession form, while the closure-track notice says combined cases with succession, expert-utilization or PMI promotion tracks should instead be filed under those main categories, not as a separate closure filing.
For owners and advisers, this is not the moment for heroic last-day uploads. The call runs through July 24, but the point of filing early is to preserve time to fix defects, not to test the secretariat's queue at the very end.