United Managers Japan Inc (“UMJ”) was founded in December 2004 with the goal of providing the best operational environment for highly capable fund managers to manage funds and to supply to Japanese domestic and foreign investors with the best investment opportunities.
Our corporate objective is to provide high risk-adjusted returns exhibiting high investment management skills starting with Japanese equities, using various investment management styles in various asset classes to meet the needs of our investors.
UMJ is the very first company in Japan to launch a Hedge Fund incubation platform and so far during the first 10 years, we have launched various funds. We have mainly focused on Japanese long short funds, but also, long only products and private equity funds.
We have invited leading professionals from those areas to manage our funds, and we provide our unique investment opportunities to mainly institutional investors in Japan and Overseas.
Up to now looking at our investor base, it is composed of Banks, Insurance Companies, Securities Companies, Pension Funds, University Endowments and High Net Worth Individuals in Japan. Outside of Japan, our investors include Private Banks, Fund of Hedge Funds, and Family Offices in Europe, Asia and the US.
Looking to our front office staff, all of the fund managers, advisors, traders, and securities analysts posses at least 7 years experience at large investment firms or other financial firms in Japan and Overseas and have an average of 20 years experience in their roles. We have gathered the top-class of experienced Fund Managers, Traders, and Analysts in the market. Also, the staff who support the implementation of the investment environment such as the fund marketers, administrator, compliance officer, relationship managers and others all have long experience in their specialty and a high ability for working on various types of fund launches and operations.
Post World War II, the Japanese Financial Market was developed under a so-called convoy system, focusing on indirect financial relationships. For that reason, the asset management business in Japan was not been regarded as an industry onto itself. Asset Management firms were mainly set-up under the distributor firms owned by banks, insurance companies and brokerages, and were only subsidiaries of those distributors. This is unlike in the US or the UK, where the asset management business has been cultivated and is one of the big industries in the country. Even though Japan holds the second (to the US) largest amount of financial assets in the world, most of them are just held in bank savings accounts with the extremely low interest rates and low return models. The huge financial assets that were generated from the economic growth after World War II have been managed in a very inefficient way for a long time. If the Japanese asset management community could manage to average around 5% return annually for the US$1.3 trillion in individual financial assets, it will generate US$650 billion in returns and we can calculate that tax revenue from those activities will generate 20% (US$130billion). This tax revenue is around 30% of the current tax revenue in Japan and with Japanese fiscal issues, this issue will be in focus. Such is the situation in Japan of having nowhere to lend money to and assets just being maintained on bank balance sheets , where it will be used to digest the government bonds being issued. The situation won’t change if assets continue to be managed in such an unconstructive manner. We can say that these individual financial assets which are precious resources of Japan have not been utilized properly as a growth driver for the Japanese economy.
Under these circumstances, UMJ as an independent asset management firm who is in the business of launching/managing high risk high return funds would like to contribute to Japanese growth as a Japanese asset manager so that Japan can continue to grow in the future.
Masahiro Koshiba
Chief Executive Officer
United Managers Japan Inc.