Japan: The teacher who invested $15 billion

The world's big borrowers have found a new source of super-cheap funding. In the past year, a group of small, hitherto almost unheard of Japanese institutions ­ most famously the Teachers' Pension Fund ­ have bought as much as $100 billion of structured Euro-MTNs. So desperate are these investors for certain types of securities that a top-rated borrower can raise funds via a private placement in Japan for as little as Libor minus 60 basis points. Garry Evans explains how