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.

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.

Here is a firm looking to make opportunities out of some tough trials.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There will be risks as well as rewards on the hunt for growth

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.

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.

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?

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.

Losses from trader error in December should have been reversible, securities house claims.

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?

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.