December 2021
14Dec

Japan’s Lesson for the World: Robots Won’t Save Us

Japan affords a preview of what the future of the United States, Australia, and Western Europe will become unless meaningful steps are taken to ensure that a nation’s relevance is measured by how it creates lives of dignity for its citizenry. But seeing this relevance has become difficult as much of the luster has gone from Japan studies. Wistful comments about heady days during the 1980s, when scholars of Japan were in demand, are still heard. But China now...

December 14, 2021
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November 2021
10Nov

Tech for aging society can be Japan’s ‘advantage’: Google executive

Google Japan aims to focus on developing and offering technology that supports the country's aging society, its top executive said at a Nikkei event on Wednesday. "It is our responsibility to enable elderly people to maintain good health and access necessary information or jobs through our technology," President Shinji Okuyama said at Nikkei's Global Management Forum. Google's Japanese unit hopes to turn the challenge of aging into opportunities. This includes providing digital skill training to seniors, as well as utilizing the...

November 10, 2021
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October 2021
13Oct

Reconciling population and social expectations in Japan

Japan has been declared the world’s first ‘super-aged’ society and a ‘pioneer shrinking society’, rapidly inverting the demographic pyramid upon which the modern state has been built. Since 1989, when the low fertility rate of 1.57 became a major social concern, numbers have continued to trend downward. In June 2020, the Japanese government announced the preliminary results of the 2020 census revealing that the number of births in that year was the lowest on record. Government efforts since the mid-1990s...

October 13, 2021
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September 2021
30Sep

Japan’s GPIF won’t buy China’s sovereign debt

Japan's Government Pension Investment Fund, the world's largest pension fund, said it won't include yuan-denominated Chinese sovereign debt in its portfolio. The decision comes as FTSE Russell is set to start adding Chinese debt to its benchmark global bond index, which the GPIF follows, starting in October. The pension fund will instead use a version of the World Government Bond index that excludes Chinese government bonds, Hiroshi Nagaoka, an official at the pension fund, told Bloomberg News. Minutes from a July...

September 30, 2021
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20Sep

Japan’s older population hits record high

The estimated number of people aged 65 or older in Japan stood at a record high of 36.4 million as of Wednesday, an increase of 220,000 from a year before, the internal affairs ministry said Sunday. Read also Saving govt pensions by encouraging citizens’ savings The share of those aged adults in the nation’s total population rose to a record 29.1%, the highest among 201 countries and regions across the world. Read also Changing energy landscape fuels infrastructure investing Older men totaled 15.83...

September 20, 2021
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13Sep

New U.S. Hedge Fund Taps Japan Pension Cash to Bet on Stocks

U.S. investment advisory firm GSB Capital LLC has started a hedge fund focusing on Japanese stocks, using seed money provided by a corporate pension fund in the Asian nation. The GSB Japan Equity Long Short Fund targets mid- and large-cap Japanese shares, buying equity of companies with attractive fundamentals while shorting those with a poor outlook, a statement showed Monday. It aims to raise a maximum of $650 million, the firm said, without naming the seed-capital provider. Pressured by rock-bottom interest...

September 13, 2021
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August 2021
09Aug

World’s Largest Pension Fund GPIF Now Holds Record $1.75 Trillion in Assets

Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund posted a fifth consecutive quarterly gain in its investments as returns from overseas assets helped make up for losses on domestic equities. Read also Nigeria. N12trn pension assets investment sidelines infrastructure The world’s biggest pension fund gained 2.7% for the quarter ended in June, boosting assets under management by 4.98 trillion yen ($45.4 billion) to a record 191.6 trillion yen, it announced on Friday. Overseas stocks were its best-performing investment, returning 8.6%, while domestic shares lost...

August 9, 2021
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03Aug

World’s biggest pension fund makes record cut to U.S. bond weighting

The Government Pension Investment Fund made a record cut to the weighting of Treasuries in its portfolio last fiscal year as the world’s safest asset led a global debt selloff. Read also US. Pandemic not stopping workers from contributing to retirement plans GPIF, as the world’s biggest pension fund is known, lowered U.S. government bonds and bills to 35% of its foreign debt holdings in the 12 months ended March, from 47% previously, according to an analysis by Bloomberg of the...

August 3, 2021
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July 2021
02Jul

World’s Top Pension Fund Books ‘Historic’ $339 Billion Gain

The world’s biggest pension fund posted a record return for the fiscal year ended March, boosting its assets to a new high and beating its benchmark for the first time in seven years. Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund booked a gain on its investments of 25%, or 37.8 trillion yen ($339 billion), in the 12 months ended March, the most since the fund started managing the nation’s pension reserves in 2001. Overseas stocks were its best-performing asset in the period, returning...

July 2, 2021
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June 2021
15Jun

APAC pensions industry and recent trends in Japan

Pension assets across the largest pensions’ markets increased 11% in 2020, according to the Global Pensions Assets Study 2021 by Willis Towers Watson. Asia Pacific pension funds beat their peers in asset value growth in 2019, according to a report on the world’s top 300 pension funds by the Thinking Ahead Institute. Assets under management (AUM) of the top 20 pension funds grew 8.1% year-on-year in 2019, led by a 10.6% growth in the assets of Asia Pacific funds. Read...

June 15, 2021
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