Mizuho and Rakuten's advisory venture targets $360 million in assets by 2029
TOKYO, April 22 (Reuters) - The financial advisory joint venture of the securities arms of Mizuho Financial Group (8411.T), opens new tab and Rakuten Group (4755.T), opens new tab is aiming to reach 50 billion yen ($357 million) in customer assets in its first five years of operations, its chief executive said.
The venture is tapping into growing demand for wealth management services in Japan as inflation eats into savings and the government encourages investment of household assets, of which around half lie in cash and deposits.
Recent market volatility has also helped attract customers, Mirai Wealth Partners chief executive Masaki Shindo told Reuters in an interview.
Mirai, which was established a year ago with Mizuho Securities holding a 95% stake and Rakuten Securities the remaining 5%, managed 3.5 billion yen of customer assets as of mid-April.
Volatile moves in Japanese assets following the announcement of tariffs by U.S. President Donald Trump this month and in August last year have brought in many clients who until now invested independently through Rakuten Securities' online accounts, Shindo said.
"We're seeing more and more consultations from customers who had been investing in stocks and index funds and are now wondering whether their investments are safe given current trends," he said.
Online consultations make up 70% of the total, and are popular even among customers aged over 60, Shindo said.
Mirai has five financial advisers, up from three last year, and plans to hire more staff over the next year as the assets it manages grow, Shindo said.
($1 = 139.9800 yen)
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TRADING DAY London calling, stocks crawling higher
ORLANDO, Florida, June 9 (Reuters) - TRADING DAY Making sense of the forces driving global markets By Jamie McGeever, Markets Columnist I'm excited to announce that I'm now part of Reuters Open Interest (ROI), an essential new source for data-driven, expert commentary on market and economic trends. You can find ROI on the Reuters website, and you can follow us on LinkedIn and X. Trade tensions, policy uncertainty and shaky economic data continue to cloud the near-term outlook for world growth, but they remain on the back burner for now as investors kick off the week by pushing global stock markets higher. In my column today I look at why the dollar has depreciated significantly this year regardless of how U.S. stocks and bonds have performed. The main reason? Hedging. More on that below, but first, a roundup of the main market moves. If you have more time to read, here are a few articles I recommend to help you make sense of what happened in markets today. Today's Key Market Moves London calling, stocks crawling higher It was a fairly quiet start to the week across global markets on Monday, with strong equity gains in Asia followed by a grind higher on Wall Street which lifted the MSCI World index to a fresh record high. The main areas of focus for investors were China's economic 'data dump' for May, then the high-level U.S.-China trade talks in London. The two are connected - the U.S. is a less important market for China than it used to be, underscored in May's trade figures from Beijing and reflected in the lack of concrete progress from the negotiations in London. China's total exports rose 4.8% in May from a year earlier but this masks a huge split between the U.S. and the rest of the world. Exports to the U.S. plunged 34.4% year-on-year in value terms, the sharpest drop since February 2020 just before the pandemic, while exports to the rest of the world rose 11.4%. 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The difference now is that the risk premium being built into U.S. assets is pushing them – especially equity holders – to hedge their dollar exposure more than they have in the past. Foreign investors have long hedged their bond exposure, with dollar hedge ratios traditionally around 70% to 100%, according to Morgan Stanley, as currency moves can easily wipe out modest bond returns. But non-U.S. equity investors have been much more loath to pay for protection, with dollar hedge ratios averaging between 10% and 30%. This is partly because the dollar was traditionally seen as a 'natural' hedge against stock market exposure, as it would typically rise in 'risk off' periods when stocks fell. The dollar would also normally appreciate when the U.S. economy and markets were thriving – the so-called 'Dollar Smile' – giving an additional boost to U.S. equity returns in good times. 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