Recently been seeing news on Bloomberg saying some IB including MS and Barclays are increasing their size in the Japan office. Any idea? Is it possible for Tokyo to be the new center of APAC alongside with HK/Singapore?
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bump
Interested
Bumping this, also interested!
Could be wrong but Tokyo is very Japanese centric. Idk if it will ever change. If anyone been to Tokyo the place is not as international as u might think it is. Looks very hard for any outsider to establish themselves
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China growth expectations from the 2000s died as the "Chinese miracle" plateau, and because there is less enthusiasm around Chinas as a whole and HK is somewhat an extension of China + constant uncertainty between US-China commercial relationships, then banks decided to build a safety net in APAC with Japan. But for the moment there is no need to withdraw from HK because business is still going; Tokyo is just a safety net to have some operations if things go South with China in the next years/decade.
Not very likely. HK and Singapore are both much more international than Tokyo. Singapore is just a more compelling HK backup plan than Tokyo.
It’s true that Tokyo is much less international than HK&Singapore. But how about business over there?
Japan as a whole has taken the global inflation as an opportunity to “reinflate” their economy. I assume their central banking policies are allowing the Yen to recover in its value thus bolstering their currency/balance sheets. I could also imagine that the current “anti-globalization” wave that were seeing, on top of a recovering currency means their economy could be nearing a nice internal boom with motives to bring manufacturing and production back into their country.
TLDR: Economy doing better -> more action for financing/IB
Source: GS 2024 Macro Outlook Reports
Japan spent quite some time in stagnation, so big players are betting on local Japanese investor sentiments to take on more risks and move trillion dollars of cash from under the mattress to market.
I work at a leading Japanese bank and, and as other users have commented, I strongly think it'll be HK but more likely Singapore to be the "APAC" hub. Japan is, both culturally and economically, incredibley insular.
There's a case for being long on the economy and maybe that's a reason to expand local presence, but to serve the rest of APAC something would need to change meaningfully - the language barrier, migration hurdles, and lack of an existing expat community of scale just makes Singapore the most likely option.
Thank you!
Bump... Fwiw, I hear the battle as a hub for APAC has always been between HK & Singapore, though with the China situation for Hong Kong & resultant uncertainty, Singapore is looking more appealing as a hub these days
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