Japan Airlines Set for Bankruptcy

Japan Airlines Corp. is preparing for what may be the country’s sixth-largest bankruptcy as Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama breaks with predecessors who bailed out the carrier three times in the past nine years.

A final decision on the future of Asia’s largest carrier, founded in 1951, may be made this week, and a bankruptcy filing will follow next week, according to three people familiar with the situation. The finance ministry and the Tokyo-based carrier’s biggest lenders all favor a court restructuring, according to people familiar with the matter.

Hatoyama ended half a century of near-continuous rule by the Liberal Democratic Party in September on a pledge to cut “wasteful” government spending and he is set to push through a bankruptcy rather than granting unrestricted loans to a carrier with at least 1.5 trillion yen ($16 billion) of liabilities. The yield on JAL’s 2013 notes tripled last week and shares slumped to a record low in Tokyo trading on speculation the carrier would seek court protection.

“It’s impossible that JAL would have gone bankrupt in the LDP era,” said Satoshi Yuzaki, an analyst at Takagi Securities Co. in Tokyo. “The quick decision-making by Hatoyama’s government is commendable.”

The carrier, headed by Chief ****utive Officer Haruka Nishimatsu, 62, previously won emergency loans from a state- owned bank under LDP governments following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the 2003 SARS outbreak and again last year as Japan suffered its worst postwar recession.

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