Deep Dive: Japanese corporate governance reforms finally start bearing fruit for investors

Increased foreign fund flows

After a decade of reforms, ‘Abenomics’ and a push towards fairer corporate governance, investors have started to feel the Japanese market is turning a corner.

The country was historically seen as a "value trap", argued Hosking Partners portfolio manager Omar Malik, as the interests of minority shareholders were "subordinate to those of other stakeholders", alongside decades of "poor aggregate returns". This resulted in the declining representation of Japanese equities in global benchmarks. Japanese index suffers worst ever fall as traders rattled by potential US recession For instance, Japan represents a mere 6.1% of the MSCI All Country World index (ACWI), falling 1.3 percentage points between March 2023 and March 2024. By contrast, ...