Japan

Nomura hopes a more efficient structure can help it win private banking business and investment banking mandates on the global stage.

The bank's international strategy is on a global scale, but its expansion plan in Asia is the one to watch, as it aims to reshape the region's financial system.

With its lack of drive and direction, shareholders of the Japanese financial institution look on nervously as the investment bank faces questions about its future.

The Republic of the Philippines returned to the samurai bond market in August, becoming the latest sovereign issuer to tap a yen investor base desperate for yield.

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The 29th annual Asiamoney Brokers Poll invited chief investment officers, fund managers and investment analysts to take part. Voters represented fund management houses, insurance companies, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds and wealth managers from around the world. A total of 6,540 valid individual responses from 3,100 different institutions, including 411 hedge funds, were received.

Community and social responsibility as the ideal is understood – and practiced – elsewhere isn’t much of a thing in Japan. More nationalistically inclined Japanese bankers argue that such ideals are inbuilt into normal banking and business practice in the country: helping each other is just what Japanese banks do. But many shrug or draw a blank when asked about it, not entirely sure what it is, explaining that it is something for other countries where wealth is less evenly spread than Japan, where 90% of the people identify as middle class.

Arrive in any medium-sized Japanese town during April and there’s every chance you will be able to join a party. That would be MUFG’s ‘Rise up festa’ initiative – a celebration of and for Japan’s small and medium-sized businesses. It is all about unlocking Japanese creative spirit – and monetizing it.

Rakuten Bank is the big Japanese bank you may not have heard of. That may be because Rakuten – Japanese for ‘optimism’ – is better known as an e-commerce play, a 20-year-old site widely regarded as Japan’s equivalent of Amazon. But unlike Rakuten’s Hiroshi Mikitani, Jeff Bezos doesn’t (yet) own a bank.