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Dressing up a new economic model
 Japan may have been a liberal democracy for nearly half a decade, but its commitment to free-market capitalism has been, at best, cursory. Rather, the country's post-war economic miracle has been based on a system of corporatist capitalism whereby capital was directed by bureaucrats from banks into strategic industries ...more
KEIRETSU:
Great asset now being derided as liability
The academic literature on Japan's famous keiretsu system is copious and daunting. Just five years ago, it was required reading for anybody attempting to understand the competitive strength of Japan's corporations. But it now looks increasingly irrelevant ...more
BANK LENDING:
Pressures for change building
When Industrial Bank of Japan, Dai-Ichi Kangyo, and Fuji announced in the summer that they planned to merge by 2002, their plans included a detail which sent ripples through Japan's corporate world: one step would be to unite their corporate ratings departments to create a joint credit approach ...more
VENTURE CAPITAL:
Now younger companies can benefit
When Masatoshi Kumagai was 20 years old he was a high school drop-out working by day and taking correspondence courses by night. Now, at 36, he is the millionaire president of InterQ, an internet company that listed its shares in Japan at the end of August ...more
NEW MARKETS:
Mothers planning to be nimble
A battle is raging among Japan's stock markets. The old-line Tokyo stock exchange is facing off against Nasdaq-Japan, a joint venture between Softbank, Japan's leading internet investment company, and the US-based National Association of Securities Dealers ...more
BOND MARKETS:
Appetite for Samurais grows
Croatia made a spectacular debut on the Japanese capital markets last month when it launched its first Samurai bond, a yen-denominated bond offered by a non-resident issuer. Japanese investors rushed to buy these bonds, and the original issue size of Y10bn was hurriedly increased to Y25bn ...more
M&A:
Learning importance of speed
In July, Hitachi - Japan's largest electronics group - set up its first business development division, which is charged with searching out new business oppor-tunities and partners around the world. The move underlined some significant changes in Japanese corporate behaviour ...more
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