Delivering the opening remarks at the JAMF gathering was JAMF cochair Koike Hiroyasu, the president and CEO of Nomura Asset Management. Following his remarks was a keynote speech by Japan’s Financial Services Agency (JFSA) commissioner Ito Yutaka.

Ito declared that promoting Japan as a leading asset management center is a continued strategic priority for his agency. He offered a generally upbeat account of progress in nudging Japanese away from savings to investment. Ito reported that one in four Japanese older than 18 now participate in the Nippon Individual Savings Account (NISA) program. NISA assets have nearly doubled, he revealed, to about ¥63 trillion, from ¥35 trillion in December 2023, just before a sweeping NISA reform.

The NISA program, launched in 2014, operates under JFSA administration. It exemplifies the potential, Ito suggested, for “nurturing a virtuous circle” of expanded investment in companies and heightened corporate value. And he called for asset management firms to step up their contribution to nurturing that virtuous circle.

An organizational move is underway in the JFSA, Ito added, to promote the sound development of Japan’s asset management industry. That move will position asset management alongside banking, securities, and insurance as a fourth focus for the agency. The JFSA aims to reorganize its Supervisory Bureau into a two-bureau structure: one responsible for asset management and insurance, the other responsible for banking and securities.

Ito’s keynote speech segued into the first of four sessions devoted to the material handled by the working groups: Enhancing the value of Japanese companies and promoting investment in Japan, including regional areas. The session began with video remarks from David Rubenstein, a cofounder and cochairman of the Carlyle Group. He highlighted the potential for private equity in maximizing corporate value in Japan.

“Private equity, venture capital, and similar asset classes that focused on investments in private companies or assets,” Rubenstein recalled, “were [formerly] labeled as ‘alternatives.’ But that description is no longer the case. Today, the asset class is recognized in the US as both a significant driver of economic growth and is seen as a core allocation to a diversified asset portfolio. Over the past two decades, the number of publicly traded companies in the United States has declined by nearly 50%. Embracing private capital not as an alternative but as a mainstream driver of growth will enable Japan to enhance corporate competitiveness, revitalize entire industries, and unlock the potential of its regional champions.”

Next to address the forum audience was Joseph Bae, a co-CEO of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. “We meet,” declared Bae, “at a transformative moment for Japan. “For global investors, Japan today stands out as one of the most stable and attractive destinations for capital in a highly uncertain and volatile world. After years of reform and revitalization, Japan has shed decades of deflation and has entered a new era of sustained growth, with rising wages, stronger private investment, and renewed economic vitality. In many ways, [this transformation] represents a true regime shift, one where growth and inflation are now self-reinforcing, supported by ongoing reform efforts and the policy consistency that has strengthened investor confidence.”

Bae echoed Rubenstein’s reference to the value of private capital in mobilizing regional potential. “We have been investing aggressively in Japan to help create regional jobs, support innovation, and strengthen communities. One good example of that is our investment in Kokusai Electric, a leading Japanese semiconductor equipment manufacturer. Last year, we opened a ¥25 billion semiconductor facility in Toyama. This was the first semiconductor facility built in Japan by Kokusai in 35 years.”

Following the remarks from Rubenstein and Bae was a panel discussion among Ao Katsumi, a Tokyo Stock Exchange director and senior executive officer; Kobayashi Izumi, a nonexecutive director at Omron Corporation and Fujitsu; and Yanagawa Noriyuki, a professor in the Graduate School of Economics at the University of Tokyo. Moderating the discussion was Nakayama Takahiro, the chief investment officer and an executive officer at Nomura Asset Management. The panelists brought different perspectives to the session’s themes of enhancing corporate value and promoting investment. Their comments included the suggestions that investor engagement could help steer managements toward optimizing business portfolios, that companies should put forth convincing long-term visions, and that managements should position their companies to cope resiliently with change in the business environment.

Delivering talks on digital transformation in asset management were Robert Goldstein, the chief operating officer of BlackRock, and Norman Tweeboom, the Japan enterprise sales director at Bloomberg. Both expressed the view that asset management companies in Japan needed to rework their business models to assert global competitiveness.

The forum attendees heard addresses about evolving notions of “alternative” from Bill Huffman, the CEO of Nuveen, the asset management arm of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA); Marc Rowan, a co-founder and the CEO and chairman of Apollo Global Management; and Stephen Schwarzman, a co-founder and the CEO and chairman of Blackstone. Each speaker expressed high regard for the Japanese market and voiced a distinctive perspective on possibilities for expanding the role of private capital there.

Salim Samaha, a partner at the BlackRock subsidiary Global Infrastructure Partners, delivered a talk at the sustainable finance session. Among the session panelists was Arita Hiroyuki, the representative chairman of BlackRock Japan and a cochair of the Japan Asset Management Forum. They discussed issues encountered in deploying sustainable finance and offered examples of overcoming those issues in successful projects. The discussion included mention of the importance of long-term perspective in mobilizing private-sector funding.

Katayama took the stage at the aforementioned Japan Weeks event hosted by Japanese Bankers Association just two days after taking office as minister. She emphasized her career-long engagement in financial and economic reforms and in efforts to connect Japan more closely to the global economy. That included, she stressed, participating in the initiative to promote Japan as a leading asset management center, which began under the Kishida administration. And Katayama affirmed her commitment as the minister of state for financial services to promoting Japan’s asset management industry. “I am committed,” Katayama emphasized, “to creating an environment where global asset managers, other financial institutions, investors, and corporations can do business confidently and smoothly in Japan.”

The Japan Weeks events manifest important value through their openness as a platform for presentations by authorities on different aspects of financial services. They resonate with the rising expectations of Japan’s asset management industry. And the events fuel productive discussion among stakeholders worldwide about how to fulfill those expectations.