Yoshiaki Murakami

Yoshiaki Murakami, a corporate raider in a country that has few of them, was arrested Monday on suspicion of insider stock trading, the second major strike this year by securities regulators against Japan's new generation of hypercapitalists.

Yoshiaki Murakami, a corporate raider in a country that has few of them, was arrested Monday on suspicion of insider stock trading, the second major strike this year by securities regulators against Japan's new generation of hypercapitalists.

Japan's best-known shareholder activist, fund manager Yoshiaki Murakami, said today that he expected to be charged with insider trading and would resign immediately from his fund. Murakami said that after discussions with prosecutors he had decided that his actions in connection with a high-profile takeover battle last year initiated by Livedoor Co., a scandal-hit Internet firm, could be interpreted as having violated securities trading laws.

Once an icon for a new generation of Japanese go-go capitalists, fallen Internet mogul Takafumi Horie on Monday declared himself not guilty of accusations that he masterminded a scheme to falsify corporate earnings and inflate stock prices. Speaking on the opening day of his trial, the brash entrepreneur called the case against him "full of malicious intent from the beginning" and said, "I have not carried out or instructed such crimes as were mentioned.

Japan's canine superstar, Ku-chan the Chihuahua, is out of work. Until last month, Ku-chan was the white-whiskered poster dog for Aiful Corp., a consumer loan company that used the Chihuahua's cuteness to tap the Japanese soft spot for saccharine characters. In TV ads that charmed evening audiences, the dog's beleaguered, middle-aged owner used Aiful's easy-to-borrow cash to indulge Ku-chan's whims for everything from snowboards to beach vacations.