Japan's listed companies were bankruptcy-free in the past year: research firm

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan had no bankruptcies among listed companies in the just-ended fiscal year for the first time in 26 years, a research firm said on Friday.

Tokyo Shoko Research, which tracks Japanese bankruptcies, credited the weaken yen, for helping boost corporate earnings, and the low interest rate policy that made borrowing cheaper.

"The environment for listed companies has improved since various measures were taken under Abenomics," said Masashi Seki, the firm's manager.

"Overall the environment for fund raising has got better," said Seki.

After Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in 2012, he introduced strong measures to seek to raise the value of assets and to end deflation.

In the year that ended in March 2009, when the economy was hit by the global financial crisis, 45 public firms went bankrupt, the research firm said.

The number was only one in the year ended March 2015, and two the following year, it added.

According to Tokyo Shoko, overall there were 8,684 bankruptcies in the year ended in March 2016 - mostly of small, privately-owned firms - and that number likely fell in the year that ended on Friday.

"The decline in the number of bankruptcies among smaller firms was led by strategic incentives such as rescheduling loan-payment deadlines," said Seki.