Nikko AM Japan Value fund's Aoyagi eyes Nikkei's 'growth transition'

Hope for ESG to help market turn around

The Japanese market is poised to benefit from a reversion to value and the shift to green industries, according to manager of the Nikko AM Japan Value fund Shigeru Aoyagi, who argued the mature, cyclical Nikkei is in a transition period to a growth market.

Speaking to Investment Week via a translator, the manager of the ¥10.4bn (£68m) fund explained that ever since Japan's asset bubble in the late 1980s, the Nikkei 225 has experienced "30 years of underperformance" and remained a pure value market. However, Aoyagi predicted that over the coming decade the market would shift its focus from the end products of green industries, such as electric vehicles, to the infrastructure that supports these products and enables them to be built, an area in which he said the Japanese market "leads the world". UK investors turn to US, Japan and China i...