Hedge funds size up to Japanese demand

TWELVE MILLION JAPANESE play golf. Makoto Kikuchi is no longer one of them. In 2003, he set up a hedge fund, Myojo Asset Management, named after the first star to appear in the night sky. Since then free time has become a thing of the past. “Over the last 12 months, the pace of money flowing into the fund has suddenly accelerated,” he says. The Japanese long/short equity fund has attracted more than $100 million in assets, and the closing level of $400 million could well be reached by the end of this year.