Description: A woman with short hair in a white and navy blue patterned blouse starts talking in a chair against a large window overlooking a group of buildings.
Kathy Matsui: So, if you were wondering whether it's a good idea to invest in Japan or not, I'm going to explain why it is.
Caption: Kathy MatsuiGeneral PartnerMPower Partners Fund L.P.
Caption: white background, black letter, INVESTING IN JAPAN, big red letter, EXPERT PERSPECTIVES
Description: The caption disappears. Tokyo skyscrapers on a fine day. Clouds are floating from front to back.
Caption: white letter, 46.2 trillion yen
Narrator: Foreign investment in Japan has continued to increase, and as of the end of 2022, totaled 46.2 trillion yen. In this interview series, we unravel the reasons behind Japan's current allure as an investment destination, exploring the insights of experts from around the world.
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Narrator: Kathy Matsui, General Partner at MPower, has been active as a Japanese stock strategist in the financial industry for over 30 years. She tells us about the attractiveness about of the Japanese market as a destination for foreign Investment and a potential for future growth.
Caption:
Kathy Matsui
General Partner
MPower Partners Fund L.P.
Description: A profile of Kathy Matsui in a bright blue outfit, another in white holding a microphone and speaking, followed by a portrait of her in a white and navy patterned blouse standing against a window reflecting a group of buildings, looking at the camera with her arms crossed.
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Description: Kathy Matsui in a white and navy patterned blouse, sits in a chair against a window reflecting a group of buildings and begins to speak, making hand gestures.
Caption on the top left: What Makes Investing in Japan Attractive?
Kathy: I believe that the Japanese economy as a potential market for investors is highly attractive for a number of reasons. Number one, Japan is buttressed by a very strong foundation of powerful globalized corporations. Number two, a highly skilled workforce. Number three, a very solid legal foundation in the country and this is very important.
Number four, I can say this as an American who's lived in Japan for over three decades. There are very few countries like Japan that are so easy to live in when it comes to social infrastructure, public transportation, arguably the best in the world.
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Caption on the top left: Which Industry Sectors are in the Investment Trend?
Description: Kathy sitting on a chair is talking using hand gestures.
She is talking to several women across a table in a conference room with laptops in front of them, using hand gestures.
Kathy: One area that I think is very so-called hot right now is artificial intelligence. not everybody wants to embrace AI. Why? Because they fear that AI will take away human jobs. Right, replace humans with machines. But if we turn to Japan and we look at Japan's for, for instance, demographic challenges, which are massive.
Japan actually is embracing AI because they know they need that technology, right? Because at the end of the day, they know they don't have enough humans to do all the tests that need to be done.
So, I think this is one example of a real potential opportunity for investors from the outside to collaborate with Japanese parties or Japanese groups to really build very, very interesting and high growth artificial intelligence enterprises.
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Caption on the top left: Attractiveness of the Japanese Business Environment
Description: Kathy sitting on a chair is talking using hand gestures.
She is across a table from several women in a conference room, listening to one of them speaking looking at the laptop.
Kathy: First of all, every major Japanese corporations, five or ten year, in other words, long term business strategy inevitably contains the words innovation, creativity, something like that as part of their overall strategy. Why? Because they know that innovation is the ultimate key to sustainable growth.
At the same time, you see the Japanese government putting a huge emphasis on the need to develop or expand its startup ecosystem. With the government announcing in late 2022, their so-called five-year startup development plan, in which one of the goals is to increase the amount of investment into Japanese startups by tenfold, which is a massive amount of money.
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Caption on the top left: Japan's Potential from an ESG Investment Perspective
Description:
Kathy sitting on a chair is talking using hand gestures.
She is across the table from several women who is placing several laptops open in a conference room, showing paper documents and explaining them with gestures.
Kathy: Yes. So, MPower Partners is Japan's first ESG integrated global venture capital fund. So, what that means is we identify startups that are solving major societal challenges, mostly through technology or technological solutions. But at the same time, each of these companies believes they can grow faster and more sustainably because they're integrating ESG considerations into their core business strategy.
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Caption on the top left: Japan's Future Brought About by Female Breakthroughs and Diversity
Description: Kathy sitting on a chair is talking using hand gestures.
Kathy: So over 20 years ago, in my former career, I researched and wrote quite a lot about a term I called womenomics, which is the combination of women and economics. Essentially was trying to make the case that having more women in the Japanese workforce active in the Japanese workforce was a key to higher economic growth long term. Simple as that.
Now, the caveat of course is that the majority of those women working outside the home in Japan were working part-time rather than full-time jobs. So where is the challenge? The challenge remains that we still do not have enough diverse leaders at the top of both the private sector and Japan, as well as the public sector in Japan.
But this is where I think it is a hidden treasure for foreign investors. Why? Because if these Japanese women aren't fully working in, say, Japanese organizations, but they're very well-educated, highly skilled. Then this is a huge opportunity for foreign companies who want to operate in Japan to tap into this labor pool and take advantage of that.
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Description: A profile shot of Kathy Matsui smiling and talking to the women.
In front of a full-wall lattice of wooden shelves with several houseplants, a man and six women stand on the far left, two women sit on either end of a sofa in front of them, and Kathy Matsui, wearing a white blouse and bright blue pants, sits in the middle of them. They are all looking at the camera with smiles on their faces.
Narrator: Apart from AI and other prominent sectors, the Japanese market shows significant promise in ESG investing and initiatives for women. With global investors entering the market, it will foster greater innovation for the future.
Caption: White background INVEST JAPAN with cherry blossom motif and JETRO logos are placed side by side.
