Japan’s Topix stock benchmark climbed to a three-decade high on Monday, drawing even more attention to its future amid plans for a sweeping market reform.
The Tokyo Stock Exchange is set to undergo a once-in-a-generation shakeup in little over a year. Japan Exchange Group Inc., which owns the bourse, plans to cut the number of market segments, apply new listing criteria and turn five confusing, overlapping divisions into three simpler sections: blue-chips, startups and the rest.
A key goal seemed to have been to overhaul the Topix, whose membership has almost doubled since the 1990s to over 2,000 companies and includes more than half of Japan’s listed firms, into a much slimmer benchmark of top-performing, well-governed firms. But some are already voicing concern that the changes may not result in the dramatic transformation that had been hoped for.