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Japanese Equities

Japanese Equities

Japan is the third-largest economy in the world. It offers a large pool of more than 3,000 stocks to invest in and fast-improving corporate governance, – fertile ground for experienced stock pickers for the years to come, provided they have an active and selective investment approach.


Japan’s former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, implemented a raft of new policies known collectively as "Abenomics". This broad range of reforms has vastly improved the country’s economy, particularly in the areas of sentiment, domestic demand, labour and governance. As the Japanese equity market remains inefficient, managers with a long-term approach can benefit from its discrepancies. The outlook for this asset class is highly favourable as Japanese equities are currently attractively priced, on both a relative and an absolute basis.

Opportunities:

  • Governance and more broadly ESG are becoming important driving forces
  • Valuations are not demanding
  • Government support remains very strong
  • “Abenomics” is a broad range of reforms designed to improve the country’s economy
  • Japan is at the heart of a fast-growing Asian region

Nominal GDP back on a positive trend (in JPY tn) and forecast

Japanese_Equities_graph_EN.jpg

What solutions do we offer on Japanese equities?

Responsible Japanese equity solution

This strategy is a concentrated portfolio of undervalued stocks, based on mid- to long-term normalised profit. With no sector or size constraints, the portfolio manager invests within an ESG universe using a proprietary screening methodology. Investments are made in the team’s best value-biased investment ideas, capturing either cyclical catalysts such as production & inventory cycles, or one-off catalysts such as restructuring, mergers & acquisitions, and share buybacks.

Our long/short corporate governance solution

This Japanese equity strategy is a concentrated portfolio of undervalued stocks, based on normalised mid- to long-term profits. The adoption of the Stewardship Code (2014) and the Corporate Governance Code (2015) provides a fertile ground for long and short investment opportunities for the years to come. The move towards global standards could boost leading companies’ returns, offering a clear potential to make money out of long opportunities. Improvements have not happened uniformly across companies. This has resulted in large differences between governance structures, creating the opportunity for shorting many laggard companies as well.

Investing in Japanese small caps

There are many investment opportunities in Japanese smaller companies across all industries. These opportunities are set to be further enhanced by selecting Japanese companies that show long-term growth and competitiveness. The Angel Japan Asset Management team sees the stock market as reasonably inefficient but emotional enough to provide opportunities for disciplined and experienced investors. They believe that opportunities in this complex market are best exploited with a work-intensive process and uses classical investment thinking and analysis, including meeting with companies to assess their forward 5-year earnings growth.

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Get in touch with our experts

L/S Corporate Governance

Zuhair Khan, CFA

Zuhair Khan has more than 20 years of experience in the Asian financial industry in different leading research and portfolio management roles with a focus on corporate governance reform, shareholder activism and event-driven strategies.

Responsible Equities

Kenji Ueno, CMA, CIIA

Kenji Ueno (Lead PM) has more than 25 years of experience, including in the analysis and management of Japanese equities. He joined SNAM in 1997 and is the longest-tenured member of Japan Value Equity, with extensive experience in the coverage of nearly all Japanese equity sectors.

President of Angel Japan Asset Management

Hirotaki Usami

Hirotaki Usami is leading the investment team consisting of five people. He has more than 40 years of experience in the Japanese financial industry acquired at different international asset management and research institutions.

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Institutional clients

With a team of more than 200 people, UBP Asset Management has built an on-the-ground presence in the world’s major markets through organic growth and selected partnerships.

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