Japan

Is there anything MUFG’s dynamic joint venture with Morgan Stanley in Japan doesn’t do? The short answer appears to be not much.

From muck comes brass, as the saying goes, and the MUFG-Morgan Stanley joint venture in Japan proves that axiom better than most.

MUFG & Morgan StanleyFrom muck comes brass, as the saying goes, and the MUFG-Morgan Stanley joint venture in Japan proves that axiom better than most.

Nobuyuki Hirano’s MUFG is a powerhouse, achieving superlative after superlative: Japan’s biggest bank; its second-largest company (after Toyota); the world’s leading provider of project finance; etcetera etcetera. The list goes on and on.

CTBC is trying to do what foreign banks have rarely done in Japan – own a successful local firm… Good luck with that.

Both Japan and China are competing for the right to finance and build new infrastructure worth trillions of dollars in the Philippines and other parts of southeast Asia.

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.