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Panasonic’s January-March losses ballooned 10-fold to 438 billion yen ($5 billion), completing a year of record red ink at the Japanese electronics maker battered by natural disasters and an ailing TV business. Panasonic Corp. had racked up a 40.7 billion yen loss the same period the previous year. The Osaka-based maker of Viera TVs and Lumix digital cameras reported Friday a record loss of 772.2 billion yen ($9.6 billion), a reversal from the 74 billion yen profit a year ago and among the biggest in Japan’s manufacturing history.

For three years, Akio Toyoda has had to steer Toyota Motor Corp through one crisis after another, from a damaging safety recall that took up to 10 million cars off the road to last year's devastating earthquake and tsunami. Now, the 56-year-old grandson of the automaker's founder is ready to go on the offensive. With Toyota's U.S. dealerships humming again, Toyoda and his aides have sketched out a strategy in recent weeks aimed at stripping costs from everything - from production lines in Japan to Mississippi to the years of design and engineering that go into producing new vehicles and parts. The goal is to push up profit margins even as Toyota rides a wave of recovering demand while tapping into its tradition of incremental improvement - or "kaizen" - the corporate creed that once made it the world's most feared and studied manufacturing enterprise.

Fueled by the strong yen, cheap borrowing and ample cash, Japanese firms are going after everything from trading houses to pharmaceutical companies to technology companies. Toshiba Corp.’s $850 million purchase of International Business Machines Corp.’s point-of-sale systems used in retail stores, announced Tuesday, brings the amount spent on outbound deals to $23 billion this year, according to data provider Dealogic. That’s a jump of more than 30% from a year earlier. Bankers say there may be more in the pipeline, even after a record $85 billion spent overseas last year. Smaller firms that have long focused on the home market are also exploring mergers and acquisitions overseas.

Toyota Motor Corp. has announced the introduction of a new vehicle development system that will standardize major auto parts in an effort to cut costs. The system is intended to develop various models--in particular vehicles aimed at emerging countries--faster and more inexpensively. Nissan Motor Co. and Germany's Volkswagen AG are also taking similar steps. However, such systems can negatively affect auto parts makers and other related companies. Under the Toyota New Global Architecture announced Monday, the automaker intends to standardize half its 4,000 to 5,000 major vehicle parts in the next few years. Parts to be standardized include engines and transmissions. "This will be a way to make better cars," Toyota President Akio Toyoda said during a press conference at the company's headquarters in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture.

In another sign of China’s manufacturing ascent as Japan struggles, the Taiwanese giant Foxconn Technology will become the largest shareholder in Sharp, a former exemplar of Japan’s electronics empire that has fallen on hard times. Besides giving Sharp an injection of cash, the Foxconn deal, announced here Tuesday, will aim to help the Japanese company restore profitability to its TV manufacturing and liquid-crystal display businesses. Sharp is a big maker of flat-panel television sets, and is still considered an innovator in liquid-crystal display, or LCD technology. But the company is hemorrhaging money. And, like its compatriots Sony and Panasonic, Sharp has lost ground to more nimble South Korean companies like Samsung and LG.