Three Japanese market veterans ruminating in Tokyo, over beer, about whether Chinese debt is the deal of the century or the road to ruin sum up the dilemma global investors face in deciding to play in the world’s second-largest bond market.
Akira Takei, Tatsuya Higuchi and Hideo Shimomura manage money for three fund management firms in the Japanese capital with a combined $640 billion (¥89.5 trillion) in assets. While they’ve been friends for at least a decade and share interests including talking finance over drinks, their take on trading China bonds couldn’t be more diametrically opposed.
Higuchi, a three-decade finance veteran at Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management, sees China as the top destination for bond investors as interest rates climb ever higher almost everywhere.