Sovereign wealth funds: Ex Japan

Unless Japan gets more involved in international capital markets, perhaps through a sovereign wealth fund, it is likely to become increasingly irrelevant in Asian finance.

Take a round trip from Tokyo to Hong Kong and you get a sense of where the balance of power in Asia is headed before you even reach your hotel. Contrast the 90-minute plus grind out to Tokyo’s Narita international, 60 kilometres from the city centre and several decades away from the present, with the 24-minute rail ride into the sleek, 24-hour Hong Kong International.

Protected by its isolationist tendency from the worst of the financial crisis, Japan nonetheless faces a more insidious, slow-acting threat: irrelevance.

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