For Shingo Kawamoto's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Takahiro Hayashi won his first nationwide title in shogi while still in high school and by the age of 22 he was the world amateur champion. His coaches were urging him to turn pro. But Hayashi wanted to be an entrepreneur, not a shogi player. ...
Andrew Mitola had never heard of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. until he met recruiters for the bank during his junior year of college. Now the New Jersey native is among the first to join Japan's biggest lender under an overseas graduate hiring program it ...
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc.'s trust banking arm is seeking acquisitions abroad and has ¥1 trillion to spend as it seeks to become one of the 15 biggest asset managers worldwide. "We're going to make acquisitions on a scale we never have before," Mitsubishi UFJ ...
Hiroshi Iwama and Mitsunori Watanabe used to joke about merging their banks in central Japan. When the Bank of Japan introduced negative interest rates last year, things got serious. The two golfing buddies run Mie Bank Ltd. and Daisan Bank Ltd., two of Japan's roughly ...
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. are in a neck-and-neck race to be the biggest lead arrangers of lending to the renewable energy industry in the first half of the year, highlighting the more active financing role for Japanese banks ...
Japan's biggest bank is set to undergo the most dramatic reduction in head count since it was formed after the nation's banking crisis shook the industry almost 20 years ago. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. is considering eliminating about 10,000 positions — about 7 percent ...
Japan's biggest banks have navigated through a year of negative interest rates and choppy financial markets with their profits intact, thanks at least in part to Donald Trump. When the Bank of Japan announced the policy on Jan. 29 last year, shareholders, analysts and executives ...
Like their peers overseas, Japan's millennials aren't known for squirreling away their money. Kazuhisa Shibayama is trying to change that, one coin at a time. The founder and chief executive officer of WealthNavi Inc., a startup backed by Japan's three biggest banks, is developing an ...
Apple Inc.'s plan to allow Japanese customers to use iPhones to pay for their daily commute underscores the potential for digital payments to grow in a nation where people still prefer to hold cash. Japanese have for years been using rail passes that double as ...
Japan Post Holdings Co. will shift more of its $2.6 trillion investment portfolio to riskier assets to boost profitability as negative interest rates shrink income from government bonds. The newly privatized postal and financial giant, which has about ¥205.5 trillion ($1.9 trillion) managed by its ...
