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LATEST ARTICLES
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The Korean banking sector faces many obstacles, but a single, powerful catalyst is driving change.
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Stock market reform has not only revitalized the country's capital markets but has also permeated the real economy. Countries like Korea are quickly following suit. Interestingly, China also seems to be drawing inspiration.
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As Japan puts an end to the global negative interest rate era, its central bank's QE programme remains in place and may be a model for peers. Investors maintain a bullish outlook on the stock market.
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Many factors explain Japan’s renewed allure to global corporate and financial institutions. Inbound FDI is rising, with local stock prices regularly hitting record highs. Is the economy’s long-awaited renaissance a passing phase or here to stay?
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Rakuten needs money – and lots of it – as its mobile telecommunications arm continues to burn cash. But it is running out of things to sell, while its debt profile is miserable.
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Pressure is growing on Japan’s self-imposed caps on government bond yields. Positive rates must be around the corner, but what will that mean for banks and public debt?
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MUFG’s vast balance sheet has the potential to make a considerable difference to Japan’s net-zero ambitions. But the bank won’t be pulling back from polluters, arguing that money needs to flow to where emissions are, not away from them.
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The enormous re-listing of Arm Holdings is unrepresentative in many ways, but it still contains a valuable lesson for those coming down the pipe.
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Outbound Chinese M&A deal-flow has slowed to a crawl even as inbound activity remains steady. So focus in the region is moving elsewhere: to rising India, steady-and-lucrative Australia and even Japan, where once-bloated conglomerates are streamlining portfolios under intense pressure from activist shareholders.
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Analysts are looking beyond China for clues as to where the main Asian currencies will go over the remainder of 2023 as they try to second-guess Japan’s monetary policy plans.
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Japan is the first major market to put a regulatory environment around stablecoins into law.
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How on earth, in this environment, did the bank deliver one of its best-ever quarters in Asia?
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Tech-related bank deals can still get away, but investors call the shots now.
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With the advent of its strategic alliance with Japan’s Mizuho Financial, Lombard Odier now has wealth management tie-ups in seven Asia countries, with the promise of more to come.
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Inflation has returned to the country for the first time in 30 years. As it does so, there is a new face at the helm of the Bank of Japan. What does it mean for the megabanks?
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Don’t expect a flood of IPOs, but there are still placements across Asia Pacific.
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Yet another multi-billion-dollar loss on investments in SoftBank’s Vision Funds speaks to a malaise that is hurting the tech teams of investment banks in Asia.
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The purchase of Home Credit’s businesses in the Philippines and Indonesia fits with a trend to seek growth outside Japan.
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Last week’s financial summit aimed to show investors Hong Kong is open for business. While well attended, it also served as a reminder of how closed off the financial hub has become and how much of its lustre has been lost.
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For one, it brings power to its digital operations, for the other a much-needed injection of funds. But it doesn’t change a grim operating environment.
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The recent multi-decade lows experienced by the pound and the yen may have different origins, but they are also a reminder that history has a habit of repeating itself.
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Rakuten’s adventures in mobile have given the Japanese e-commerce group a rabid thirst for capital. So much so that it is prepared to list the group’s digital bank at the worst possible time.
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Few could understand the reasoning when Berkshire Hathaway bought into Japan’s five creaking, antiquated trading houses in 2020. But a spate of record results has vindicated Warren Buffett’s decision.
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Toshiba has unveiled a new restructuring format, but its roster of activist shareholders would much prefer the business be taken private.
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Ravi Raju has hired some seasoned names and is extending the bank’s reach into south Asia and the Middle East.
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MUFG reaps benefits from releases and Morgan Stanley but needs do the same from its core businesses.
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The Japanese currency continues to slide as traders anticipate interest-rate movement in the US, but even the Fed's hawkish tilt does not guarantee that this direction of travel will be sustained.
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A new pledge to use foreign reserves to buy ESG assets is one of many institutional measures in Japan. But the country has still not realized its green potential at the corporate level.
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How much right does a bank have to instruct your behaviour when working from home? At Nomura in Japan, plenty, it seems – though the bank has only concern for your health at heart.
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SMBC’s tie-up with Jefferies is only the latest in a series of acquisitions, partnerships and initiatives it has undertaken from India to Vietnam to Wall Street. Now, says president and chief executive Jun Ohta, it is time to make them work.
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There’s a clear role model for US-Japan tie-ups in New York investment banking. Can the new partnership between Jefferies and SMBC follow it?
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No Japanese bank has had a shot at Indian retail before now. Could this be the first of several attempts?
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It is showtime. One year after Toshiba’s AGM triggered 12 months of shareholder revolt and the departure of the CEO and several other key figures, it is time for the next meeting. They will have plenty to discuss.
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Upstart Jarden has fine people; Nomura has network and balance sheet. Will a partnership work?
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Kentaro Okuda had been delivering. Nomura was reporting strong and sustainable profits, with a streamlined international business driven by trading in the Americas. Then came Archegos.
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The Japanese bank has spent big money to hire a wealth management team, but spiralling costs and a lack of name recognition in key markets leave many asking: how realistic are its ambitions?
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Activist investor victory may open the floodgates for shareholder challenges against Japanese corporate management.
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To have one of your leading shareholders demand an extraordinary general meeting is unfortunate – two looks like a pattern. Japanese corporate giant Toshiba is facing a messy situation.
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International business bails out the domestic struggle for MUFG.
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Japanese conglomerates have woken up to the need to divest non-core assets; international private equity houses have plenty of dry powder with which to buy them. This happy alignment appears to have survived Covid-19, unlike other forms of cross-border M&A.
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Aggressive buying of technology stock call options by SoftBank and others is distorting prices but also creating opportunities for more measured investors – along with trading revenue for banks.
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Euromoney Country RiskThere is seemingly no easing of risk for the two countries, despite the anticipated third-quarter economic improvement.
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Transaction is part of a trend for divestment from conglomerates to private equity.
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A complex investment in Wirecard by Deutsche Bank veterans now working at SoftBank has effectively compounded the eventual embarrassment for Germany Inc from the failure of the online payments firm.
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A successful international strategy offers relief from stagnant domestic markets.
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No large financial institution in Japan attracts more doubts about its long-term sustainability than Daiwa, but as its CEO says: 'People on the outside don't know us.'
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Squeezed by negative rates on one side and an ageing population on the other, Japan’s banks have never had it so tough. Euromoney examines their potential to break free from these constraints.
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Japan's social environment is said to be transforming, and SMBC's CEO is determined that the bank will take the lead in those changes.
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Local banks believe that reinventing wealth management will supply them with domestic growth in a dismal macro environment. But the challenge is that the bulk of assets are held by elderly people, who aren’t used to investment, aren’t used to paying for it and don’t care much about digital innovation.
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The purchase of Long-Term Credit Bank by JC Flowers and Ripplewood in 2000, creating Shinsei Bank, was a landmark for foreign participation in Japanese banking. Chris Flowers exited most of his holding this year and reflects on what he learned over two decades.
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Japanese banks must go overseas to build sustainable profits, each in their own way. Nomura is streamlining global operations and applying itself in China; Daiwa wants to be a global mid-market M&A house; MUFG has bought Asean banks; Mizuho prefers organic growth; and SMBC is somewhere in between. Who’s ahead?
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Mizuho 'intends to transition to the next generation of financial services' – here the bank's CEO explains what that means.
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MUFG's CEO believes the bank has 'to provide the opportunity to challenge and fail'.
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A generation of bank-funded conglomerates is belatedly discovering corporate governance. The resulting divestment of non-core assets has private equity and foreign investment banks excited. Those that have stayed the course are well placed to benefit.
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A few weeks before being appointed as its new CEO, Nomura's Kentaro Okuda outlined his vision for the firm to Euromoney.
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There were times in the late 1970s and 1980s when Japan dominated entire editions of Euromoney. We have seen it rise, fall and stagnate, with plenty of banking adventures and misadventures along the way. Here are some of the highlights of our 50 years of coverage.
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SoftBank and its roughly $100 billion Vision Fund face growing questions about their use of leverage and the size of stakes built in technology-related companies.
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Here is a firm looking to make opportunities out of some tough trials.
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Nobuyuki Hirano is the world’s most recognized and most respected Japanese banker – and the chief executive of MUFG is an articulate voice on the demographic challenges facing Japanese banking and society. He believes he has charted a path through those challenges and is an internationalist in outlook. His aim is to make MUFG the world’s most trusted financial institution. Can he succeed?
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Cut in the teeth of the financial crisis, MUFG’s stake in Morgan Stanley might well be the best deal of the last 10 years. Much of the success is down to the strong personal relationship between the firms’ leaders.
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It is 10 years since Rajeev Misra left his position as head of credit and commodities at Deutsche Bank in a move that came a couple of months ahead of the failure of Lehman Brothers and a global financial crisis.
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Daiwa has to do something – and everybody knows it; a bold ambition to become a global advisory mid-market leader leapt forward with the recent acquisition and merger of two leading US M&A boutiques, but can Daiwa really deliver globally?
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An investment of around $10 billion in shares of a reinsurance firm does not seem like an obvious move for a technology conglomerate like SoftBank, but its founder Masayoshi Son relishes any opportunity to surprise the markets.
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Outsiders struggling to make sense of the investing tactics of SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son can take some comfort: his own directors often seem just as puzzled.
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With the acquisition of Indonesia’s Bank Danamon, MUFG has built a network of southeast Asia bank stakes to go with its presence in the US. Now comes the hard part: persuading them to work together. CFO Aki Tokunari explains MUFG’s international strategy.
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The Coincheck cryptocurrency fraud has rocked Japan, which had been the first country in the world to build a regulatory environment for crypto exchanges. The FSA regulator briefs Euromoney on how it built its rules and what Coincheck means for the future.
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The region is a vital part of the world crypto community, mostly as investor and miner. But Korea and China have turned against virtual currencies, though Japan, despite recent setbacks, may have the answer.
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There will be risks as well as rewards on the hunt for growth
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The bank has come a long way in the GTS business in a short time – it took the top spot in Japan last year, and the last 12 months have been about establishing itself in the rest of Asia.
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As Singapore reinforces its position as the leading FX trading centre in the Asia Pacific region, Euromoney looks at the prospects for other regional hubs.
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Morgan Stanley’s joint venture with MUFG in Japan makes sense on paper, combining international reach with domestic Japanese corporate and retail strength. But cultural differences meant few gave it much of a chance when it was announced. Six years on, it is proving the doubters wrong. How?
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All the hard work of Abenomics has been undermined by weeks of frantic trading that has seen the yen appreciate dramatically on safe-haven flows, with QE and even an announcement on negative rates having little impact. The market is now waiting to see if the Bank of Japan has any more tricks up its sleeve.
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Losses from trader error in December should have been reversible, securities house claims.
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A three-way merger has created Mizuho, Japan’s and the world’s biggest bank by assets. If the deal works – and legal issues will postpone full integration for some time – the new leviathan may be a powerhouse. But is management up to the task? And will Japan’s notoriously difficult market let them do what they want?
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The soaring Tokyo Stock Exchange prevented Japan's Ministry of Finance from realising its ambition to restructure the country's smaller banks and securities houses. So, in concert with the Bank of Japan, it engineered the crash that sent the Nikkei plummeting. To outsiders, Japan's financial regulators appeared to be in open conflict. And the lack of clear guidance caused the jitters that greased the skids under the TSE. Tony Shale reports on the plot that fooled the world.