Japan's corporate bankruptcies fall 14.1% in Oct.

The number of corporate failures in Japan in October dropped 14.1 percent to 976 companies, Tokyo Shoko Research Ltd. said in a report on Wednesday. The research agency said that the amount of outstanding debts left by bankrupt companies in October totaled 155.88 billion yen ( 1.99 billion U.S. dollars), down 70.0 percent, due to a significant drop in failures of big firms with a large capitalization. Tokyo Shoko also said that October's figure marked the lowest for the recording month since the same month in 1992 Bankruptcies involving outstanding debts of more than 1 billion yen (12.8 million U.S. dollars) retreated 33.3 percent to 30 firs in the recording period, while there were no firms declaring bankruptcy involving debts of more than 10 billion yen, Tokyo Shoko confirmed. The agency added that it was the first time that no failures had occurred with large outstanding debts since August 2010. Bancruptcies attributable to the adverse affects of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami totaled 45 in October, marking he first time the reading has come in below 50 in six months. Since the disasters the collective total of failures reached 425 in October, Tokyo Shoko said. Separate data released by Teikoku Databank Ltd. showed Wednesday that 906 businesses failed in October, decreasing 5.6 percent from a year earlier, with liabilities of 132.92 billion yen (1.70 billion U.S. dollars), a drop of 73.5 percent from the same time a year earlier.