East Asia
LATEST ARTICLES
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Shinhan Bank, South Korea’s largest lender by assets and market capitalization, stands head and shoulders above the crowd. Its financials speak to the strength of the Seoul-based lender, which posted a bigger profit than any of its peers in 2016, for the seventh year in a row, thanks to a sharp rise in interest and non-interest income.
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Japan has been slow to embrace financial technology. While services like Alipay and Paytm have spread throughout Asia, Japan remains a largely cash-based society. Some of the country’s biggest banks are making efforts to change that.
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When Asiamoney asked one bank executive to name the best private bank in Japan, his response was telling: there is only one. In truth, some of the world’s biggest private banks offer services to Japanese clients. But Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley PB Securities, led by Satoru Adachi, stands out from the crowd.
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Morgan Stanley has an enviable position in Japan, being the only international bank to have a joint venture with a large local player.
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Corporate social responsibility still does not appear to be a big priority for Japanese financial institutions. On a recent trip to Japan, Asiamoney was struck by how many bankers shrugged when asked how much their institution was doing to promote CSR, or about the related priorities of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.
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Japan is a country where small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can too often be overlooked. The gargantuan balance sheets of the country’s three biggest banks, which hold more than $6 trillion of assets between them, ensure only the biggest corporate clients can make a dent on revenues.
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Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) has been far and away the most aggressive of Japan’s megabanks when it comes to expanding overseas.
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Japanese banks are facing a difficult future, being forced to choose between a domestic market that offers few obvious sources of growth and an international market that is cluttered with competition.
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Does China have a national dress? A national colour? Increasingly, the preferred garb is the gauze facemask, the colour not the vibrant vermillion of the national flag but dull beige, the shade of the film of filth that settles on surfaces – and in lungs – across the nation.