The Japanese Government as a Portfolio Manager: Managing the Nation's Wealth

The Program on Alternative Investments of the Center on Japanese Economy and Business (CJEB) at Columbia Business School hosted a conference in Tokyo, Japan, titled "The Japanese Government as a Portfolio Manager: Managing the Nation's Wealth." One hundred sixty-seven people attended the conference to hear the views of seventeen distinguished speakers on the topic of a Japanese sovereign wealth fund (SWF). This report summarizes the presentations of the conference

Investing in private equity: The Japan Roundtable on Alternative Investments

Although Japanese institutional investors continue to favor hedge funds and funds of hedge funds over other alternative investments, more and more Japanese pensions, banks, and insurance companies are now seriously exploring opportunities in private equity. How can Japanese investors effectively identify and conduct due diligence on promising private equity funds? If such funds prove attractive, how can they obtain access in cases where capacity is limited? Once invested, what methods are available to these investors to accurately value the private equity portfolios and monitor the ongoing operations of their fund managers? And how should they measure these managers' performance? To examine these and related questions, the Program on Alternative Investments hosted its second seminar and roundtable in Tokyo on March 11, 2005. Organized and moderated by Dr. Mark Mason, Program Director, the seminar and roundtable featured as principal speakers Andrew Golden, President of the Princeton University Investment Company (Princo); John Alouf, Senior Investment Officer, Private Equity, at the Virginia Retirement System (VRS); Toru Masuda, Senior Manager in the Global Credit Investment Management Department of Sumitomo Trust & Banking; and Akihiro Nakamura of the Pension Fund Association of Japan. These proceedings were divided into two main sessions. The first session was in the form of a seminar with participants drawn from the Japanese public and private pension fund communities, and the second session was in the form of a roundtable discussion with representatives from the Japanese banking and insurance communities. This report covers the initial presentations by the featured speakers together with the subsequent question and answer periods that followed

U.S.-Japan Pension Fund Alternative Investment Conference: The current status of alternative investing and future directions

A new category of institutional investor has entered the world of alternative investments: the Japanese corporate pension plan. Long discouraged from entering the field due to domestic government regulations and other factors, since the late 1990s a growing number of such plans have made financial commitments to one or more categories of alternative investments

Lessons from the Japanese Bubble for the U.S.

The Program on Alternative Investments at the Center on Japanese Economy and Business (CJEB) of Columbia Business School and Columbia University's Program for Economic Research and Weatherhead East Asian Institute cosponsored the symposium "Lessons from the Japanese Bubble for the U.S." Amidst a deepening U.S. financial crisis, 260 people attended to hear three specialists on the Japanese economy discuss what can be learned from the Japanese experience to help U.S. policymakers avoid a systemic crisis and the "lost decade" that Japan went through following the bursting of its asset bubble in the early 1990s. The speakers were Takeo Hoshi, Pacific Economic Cooperation Professor of International Economic Relations, University of California, San Diego; Paul Sheard, global chief economist and head of economic research, Nomura Securities International; and Michael Woodford, John Bates Clark Professor of Political Economy, Columbia University. Alicia Ogawa, director of the Program on Alternative Investments, CJEB, commenced the symposium with introductory remarks, and David Weinstein, associate director for research, CJEB, and Carl S. Shoup Professor of the Japanese Economy, Columbia University, served as moderator. This report is a summary of the speakers' presentations