Japan lawmakers getting poorer?

Japan’s prime minister may also be the country’s richest politician, but parliament is no longer the preserve of the wealthy, according to an analysis published by broadcaster NHK.

Lawmakers from the country’s lower house of parliament declared an average of 31.5 million yen (around $350,000) in assets, down more than 18 million yen on a previous declaration four years earlier.

That’s partly because of the large  number of new lawmakers who made it to parliament in the Democratic Party of Japan’s historic election victory last year.  Seventy lawmakers, most of them newcomers, said they had no assets whatsoever, almost double the number in the previous announcement.

Ozawa’s image headache

Shadow Shogun, The Destroyer and Backroom Fixer.

Japan’s ruling party kingpin, Ichiro Ozawa, has earned several less-than-flattering nicknames for an approach to politics that has seen him shaking up government in the country for decades, culminating in his party’s historic election victory last August.

Ozawa’s tough, combative image was reinforced when he vowed in public to fight against prosecutors after three of his current and former aides were arrested on suspicion of misreporting political funds. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and said he would stay in his key position as the Democratic Party’s secretary-general.

from MacroScope:

Growth is not enough for Africa

Lots of talk at the moment about how Africa's economy is looking up.  The International Monetary Fund, for one, reckons sub-Saharan growth will be 1 percentage point above the world average this year and it has put eight African countries in its top 20 fastest growing economies list for 2010.

Reuters has written a special report on the subject as part of its Davos coverage. You can read it here.

But before taking its place alongside Asia and Latin America, the continent has quite a lot of work to do with investors. It could start by giving them something to buy (beyond commodities that is).

Polls of leading institutional investors conducted by Reuters asked a new question about allocations to Africa and the Middle East. The results were a bit grim. On average 44 large firms in the United States, Japan, continental Europe and Britain had less than 1 percent of their equities allocated to the region and the bond allocation was 0.1 percent.

Date therapy for Japan bureaucrats

If there is one thing you can be sure of when it comes to Japanese bureaucrats, it is that they work long hours. When parliament is in session, they’re handling urgent questions or requests from lawmakers all the time, and I’ve heard some say they hardly remember seeing the sun when parliament is sitting.

But new Finance Minister Naoto Kan has come up with a plan to review the work styles of sleep-deprived bureaucrats, saying he wants to make it possible for finance ministry staff to go on dates on weeknights.

Government ministries have tried before to get bureaucrats to go home sooner. Wednesdays are “leave the office on time” day for all ministries and an announcement encourages everyone to get out at 6:15 P.M. At the finance ministry, senior officials are encouraged to tell younger team members to leave early if it’s not busy.

Suzuki CEO: 80, going on 56

When Toyota and Honda replaced their retirement-age CEOs with executives in their 50s last year, they said the tough times called for young blood and a fresh start.

Not so at Suzuki Motor.

Nine days short of his 80th birthday and after 31 years heading the company that his wife’s grandfather founded, CEO Osamu Suzuki says his best days are ahead of him. If Suzuki is weary of the recurring question about succession plans — a question he’s probably fielded for the past two decades in his ripe age — he masks it well, coming up with a different analogy every so often. His latest favourite response? “100 is the new 70.”

JAL’s zen pilot

 The next boss of beleagured Japan Airlines is a 77-year-old ordained zen monk who founded multi-billion dollar tech and telecoms companies, and – unlike most Japanese corporate peers – actually backed the current ruling party.

Kazuo Inamori, honorary chairman of electronics parts maker Kyocera and critic of many modern CEOs as well as capitalism’s excesses (think an older Michael Moore at Kyoto’s Ginkakuji), says he will take the job for no salary, working only three to four days a week.

Long hours and zen resolve may be needed, though, as JAL shares slipped to 7 yen in value Wednesday, making its market capitalisation at about $200 million less than a single Boeing 747-8 aircraft.

from Left field:

Japan: key to a truly global World Series?

The story goes that shortly after baseball great Babe Ruth had settled into the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo while touring Japan in 1934, there was a knock on the door. He opened it to see a Japanese man in a kimono. ''Sign baseball,'' the man said.

As soon as the Babe autographed that baseball, the man pulled another out of his kimono. Then another. And another. And another.

Going for broke?

“Another love so true That once turned all my gray skies blue But you disappeared Now my eyes are filled with tears” K. Sakamoto

Japan Airlines appears set to enter the hangar of court protection with $16 billion in debt, equal to a one-way Tokyo-Sapporo ticket for every citizen. The move would not be the most momentous  for Japan or for a global carrier in the age of deregulation, but it would be one of the most well-telegraphed.

JAL shares were toxic and untraded early on Tuesday, after a state-backed fund in charge of restructuring said it was leaning towards delisting after a bankruptcy. A source at the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp of Japan told Reuters it intends to hold shareholders accountable, but with losses of over 45 percent since Friday and over 80 percent since Jan. 5 last year, many would contend they’ve already felt the carrier’s pain.

from MacroScope:

What can Kan do?

Mixed reaction from major European banks to appointment of Naoto Kan as new Japanese finance minister. ING is pretty scathing, saying the appointment sidesteps a process of change Japan must undertake to avoid further stagnation or a fate far worse.

"PM Hatoyama has appointed someone with no experience in economic management... Mr. Kan takes on the finance minister role without a well documented, deeply considered policy agenda. Here we rely on reports of positions he has taken in the Cabinet, and from public statements on economic management. These suggest his instincts are to pursue a stimulus strategy involving higher government spending; a weaker yen and ultra-loose monetary policy. Mr. Kan appears tone deaf to microeconomic reform or to the threats to financial stability posed by high public debt."

The implication, ING says, confirms its worries about Japanese government bonds.

Kan's first big foray onto the stage in his new role, meanwhile, was to talk down the yen. He said many Japanese firms were in favour of dollar/yen around 95 yen, which is a weaker rate for the yen than recently. Barclays Capital found something positive in this.

SMFG banking on Asia?

The bulk of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group’s  up to $9.7 billion share issue will go to meet stricter capital requirements, but sources say the bank will use some money to hunt for more opportunities in Asia.

Asian expansion is increasingly important for Japanese lenders, saddled with low profit margins and few opportunities for growth at home. Sumitomo Mitsui already has stakes in Vietnam’s Eximbank, South Korea’s KB Financial and Hong Kong’s Bank of East Asia, and wants to benefit more from the region’s growing economies.

Less than 15 percent of Sumitomo Mitsui’s gross profit comes from overseas now, but it wants to raise that to as much as 30 percent in the next few years by focusing on Asia.