A Veteran Investor on What Outsiders Don’t Yet Understand About Japanese Stocks
Janus Henderson’s Junichi Inoue says that the country’s equity culture has fundamentally changed in the past decade.
Junichi Inoue of Janus Henderson Investors.
Photographer: Ben Weller for Bloomberg Markets
Junichi Inoue has guided foreign investors into Japan for most of the past three decades. A native of Fukuoka, the largest city on the southern island of Kyushu, he managed money first at Mercury Asset Management, the London-based shop that Merrill Lynch acquired in 1997. Now head of Japanese equities at Janus Henderson Investors, the $457 billion investment manager, Inoue oversees $205 million in three European-domiciled vehicles, including an exchange-traded fund that was started in October 2024. The €7 million ($8.3 million) Janus Henderson Tabula Japan High Conviction Equity UCITS ETF, which trades on Xetra in Frankfurt, returned 7.5% this year through Sept. 10, 1 percentage point ahead of the MSCI Japan Net Return Index. His conversation with Investing & FFM Editor Jon Asmundsson in late August has been edited for clarity and length.
JON ASMUNDSSON : Why should global investors allocate to Japanese stocks now?