Asahi's cyberattack bill: a 30.9% profit hit and a September do-over

Kakaku.com's board has stopped recommending shareholders tender into the ¥3,000-a-share buyout led by EQT and Digital Garage, even though it still supports the deal itself. The reversal, disclosed July 8, 2026, followed a rival proposal at ¥3,232 a share that surfaced in early June and never went away.

The move: A Bain Capital vehicle has locked up 19.52% of Kakaku.com's stock under a tender agreement dated July 1, 2026, as it lines up a competing offer.

Why it matters: A ¥232-a-share gap between rival bids for a listed comparison-shopping platform is now playing out through board maneuvering rather than a straight vote, leaving shareholders holding stock in a company whose own board can no longer tell them how to answer the tender.

Medipal Holdings has finished buying its way to full control of PALTAC, the cosmetics-and-daily-sundries wholesaler it already ran as a listed subsidiary. A tender offer that closed July 7, 2026 at ¥6,650 a share drew far more stock than Medipal needed, lifting its stake to 92.64% from 52.40% and confirmed the next day.

Why it matters: The result clears the way for a squeeze-out that will delist PALTAC from the Tokyo Stock Exchange's Prime Market, folding one of Japan's larger wholesale-distribution names fully into its parent.

Toyota sold 53.68mn KDDI shares back to the company at ¥2,325 each, trimming its stake to 7.73% from 9.07% while keeping the remainder as a policy investment.

The Development Bank of Japan is funding Qantas Group's full exit from Jetstar Japan's shareholder register, and the budget carrier will retire the Jetstar name by June 2027 while Japan Airlines' own stake stays untouched.

A July 1 share exchange lifted the combined holding of individual investor Masanori Kino and X-mobile Inc. in Tokyo-listed Taiyo Bussan (9941) to 32.41% from 17.17%, but a six-month lock-up keeps the new shares off the market until early next year.

ABC-Mart's operating profit rose 8.3% to ¥20.3bn in the quarter to May 31, 2026, as a South Korea business recovering from last year's political turmoil offset softer per-visit spending at home. Consolidated net sales climbed 8.0% to ¥105.5bn and net income rose 10.4% to ¥14.3bn, with South Korea sales up 13.1%.

The catch: The full-year forecast is unchanged, which means management isn't yet ready to bank the rebound as a trend.

Life Corporation grew quarterly revenue 3.2% in the three months to May 2026, but operating profit fell 6.9% after personnel costs rose 5.1% — the third straight year of 5%-plus wage increases plus expanded staff holidays.

Bottom line: The Osaka- and Tokyo-based supermarket chain is sticking with its full-year profit target regardless, betting volume and pricing catch up to what it now pays staff.

TIER IV set ¥862.75 as the price for its overseas share offering, unlocking part of an ¥8.7bn budget for autonomous-driving AI and custom semiconductors through the year to September 2028.

Mitsubishi Materials will pay bondholders no interest on roughly ¥70bn of new debt. The board approved a two-tranche Euro-yen convertible bond issue on July 8, 2026 — one maturing in 2030, one in 2032 — sold to investors in Europe and Asia but not the US, with a conversion price set above today's share price to limit dilution.

Why it matters: The proceeds fund a shift away from mined ore toward recycled copper and tungsten, a bet that scrap is cheaper to finance than it looks on paper.

Japan Process turned a board resolution into a done deal within a day, buying back 883,000 shares (98% of a 9.28%-of-stock authorization) for ¥1.59bn through a single ToSTNeT-3 off-auction trade on July 8.

TAKARA & CO is scrapping its stable-dividend policy for a 50% to 100% payout range with a new 7.5% dividend-on-equity floor, and is forecasting a 50% dividend increase to ¥180 a share for the year ending May 2027.

Japan's transport ministry has opened public comment on tightening the seatbelt briefing airlines give passengers on aircraft with more than 30 seats. The draft would require crew to instruct passengers to wear belts low on the hips and pulled tight, make clear that belts must stay fastened at all times while seated — not only during turbulence warnings — and add guidance for passengers caught away from their seats when turbulence hits.

What to watch: Public comments are due by August 7, 2026, following turbulence injuries reported since 2022 and a fatal 2024 accident abroad.

Japan's Financial Services Agency has formally written a new accounting rule into official Japanese GAAP: ASBJ Statement No. 41, the Accounting Standard for Subsequent Events, and its companion Implementation Guidance No. 35, through an amendment to the ministerial ordinances governing financial-statement terminology and format.

The catch: Companies with statutory auditors keep a carve-out on restating late-breaking financial events. The FSA confirmed the carve-out stays in implementation guidance rather than the main standard, despite a public comment asking for the fix, saying the ASBJ followed due process.