Even as Japanese stocks drifted lower over the past 13 years, remarkably few international asset managers gave up on the market. Finally, their resolve is being rewarded.
The $5 trillion Japanese economy is on the mend, with GDP up 6.1 percent in the first quarter. In July, despite second-quarter growth slowing because of higher oil prices, the Japanese government raised its GDP growth forecast for the fiscal year ended March 2005 from 1.5 percent to 3.5 percent. The Nikkei 225 index rose 15.8 percent, to 11,326, in the 12 months through July 31, still a far cry from the 1989 high of 39,000 but an important step in the right direction.
Overall, total assets of the Asia 100, Institutional Investor's annual ranking of the region's biggest money managers, increased from $6.3 trillion to $7.3 trillion, a 15.9 percent jump. Japan, which claims about 75 percent of all institutional and retail assets in the region, once again led the Asia 100. The top 25 Japanese money managers increased assets under management by 11.9 percent, to $4.7 trillion, as of March 2004. No. 1 Kampo (Japan's Postal Life Insurance Service), dipped again over the past year, from ¥111,106 trillion ($1,052 trillion) to ¥108,478 trillion as of March 31, 2004, largely because it had so little invested in equities. But in U.S. dollars, Kampo's assets increased from $927 billion to nearly $1.03 trillion as the yen strengthened by 12 percent during the year ended March 31, 2004. No. 2
How the rankings were compiled Institutional Investor's tenth annual ranking of Asia's largest institutional investors includes banks, insurance companies, pension funds, independent fund managers and firms domiciled in 12 Asian countries, as well as 20 international managers with significant investments in the region, though their assets are not necessarily managed in Asia. Subsidiaries with substantial assets under management have generally been listed separately.
New York-based Senior Associate Editor Tucker Ewing, with the assistance of Researcher Katsuko Usami in Japan and Contributing Editor Donald Kirk in South Korea, compiled the rankings from a variety of sources, including questionnaires filled out by the institutions themselves. II refined this data through follow-up faxes, e-mails and telephone calls. Researchers also culled information from annual reports, company Web sites, local regulatory agencies and other public sources. When no official data were available, II obtained figures from actuaries, brokerages and consulting firms. Estimates, which are footnoted, account for the remaining numbers. When possible, figures are broken into regional and asset categories.
II seeks to present numbers that are as comparable as possible, given the different levels of disclosure and varying accounting practices in use across Asia. Inevitably, there is double counting of assets in some countries because of the lack of disclosure standards and the variety of sources needed to reach an approximate total figure for some money managers.
Because of currency conversion and rounding, breakdown figures may not add up to the sum of total assets. All figures are in millions of dollars and are as of December 31, 2003, unless otherwise noted. Figures were converted to dollars using year-end 2003 exchange rates. For Japan and South Korea, all figures and exchange rates are as of March 31, 2004, unless otherwise noted.