The GPIF, or Government Pension Investment Fund has just selected its next president, according to a spokesman on Tuesday at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Currently, the president is Norihiro Takahashi, but from April 1 (the start of FY2020), Miyazono Masataka will become the new GPIF president. Previously, Mr. Miyazono was the president of the Pension Fund Association, Tokyo, meaning that he certainly has experience in that area. Pension Fund Association, Tokyo controls...
COVID-19 has wrought havoc on stock markets worldwide, having resulted in a drop of over 29% in the S&P 500 in less than a month (meanwhile, real estate investors are sitting pretty; the values of their investment property and the rents they receive have been largely unchanged). It’s getting to the point in which central banks around the world are trying to bail out the economic victims of COVID-19 (also known as “novel coronavirus”). Some...
Japan’s current account surplus reached ¥20.1 trillion (over $187.1 billion) in 2019. For two years, it hadn’t been growing, but in 2019, it increased. This is thanks to the tourist trade, which generated high positive ROI (return on investment) for investors. Officials from the Finance Ministry announced that the current account surplus was up $7.6 billion from 2018. They explained that the “primary-income account added most to the surplus.” Some elements were negative, and others...
Could this be a good time to buy Japanese investments such as Japanese real estate? With a weak yen, your US dollars, Euros (€), etc. will now buy several percent more here than they did just a month or so ago. The yen is considered a “safe haven” currency. How long will this period of cheap yen last? The dollar/yen exchange rate was even weaker on Thursday, the 20th. It rose to 112.23 yen to...
Yūsaku Maezawa, the 43-year-old Japanese businessman who’s worth US$2 billion and is known by the Twitter name “yousuck2020,” is offering ¥1 billion (US$9.11 million) to entrepreneurs (not just one entrepreneur, but many of them). He’s the founder of the online retailer ZOZOTOWN, and in addition to that, is famous for writing the most-retweeted post of all time on Twitter (with no qualifiers). He’s a social media master. This time, also on Twitter, he tweeted to...
Toyota is investing $400,000,000 in Joby Aviation. Joby Aviation is a company that already has a helicopter-like electric vehicle with several rotors and VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) technology, that can carry four passengers. Now, they are working on commercializing flying cars, and these flying cars are planned to be electric, so not only will they fly, they’ll be carbon-neutral, as well. ↑Joby Aviation’s Website Now that both companies are working together, with Toyota investing...
During the period 2009-2019, non-oil trade between Japan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) reached over $131 billion. To be precise, it totaled 481.34 billion UAE Dirhams. This was not even counting the oil trade. The UAE is in Japan’s top five oil trading partners (having delivered 32.24 million barrels of crude oil between January and October of last year according to Tokyo’s Agency of Energy and Natural Resources), yet none of that trade even...
The Japanese state minister for foreign affairs, Keisuke Suzuki and the Moroccan minister delegate to the minister of foreign affairs, Mohcine Jazouli, sat down and inked a deal. It is called the “Agreement Between Japan And The Kingdom Of Morocco For The Promotion And Protection Of Investment” (shorthand: The Japan-Morocco Investment Agreement). It will protect and promote investment between Japan and Morocco even more so than in the past. It deals with how one signatory...
Until December, economists believed that Japan’s economy had only grown an annualized 0.2% during the period of July-September, 2019. However, good news for investors: now, they are revising their estimates. They now believe that it grew by an annualized 1.8%. Reuters in Tokyo reported the remarks of the Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso, which he made on Tuesday. According to Aso, the economic situation in Japan continues to improve and get back on track, though...
The ruling coalition, composed of the Liberal Democratic Party and the Komeito, officially decided tax reform guidelines for 2020, on Thursday afternoon. The government will create a preferential tax regime for large companies investing in startups for business innovation. The small investment tax exemption system (called “NISA,” which was implemented in 2012) will be replaced by a new system, and NISA will continue to be funded. The government will emphasize tax cuts so that companies...
