Japan may see its busiest year for initial public offerings since the global financial crisis, with Japan Airlines Corp., social network providers and manufacturers preparing to issue shares.

As many as 50 domestic companies will offer shares to the public for the first time in 2012, Toshio Isohashi, head of IPOs at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co., said Wednesday in Tokyo.

That would be the highest number since 2007, the year before Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s bankruptcy triggered the deepest postwar global recession.