-- Booming markets in Japan have swelled the workload for international bankers in Tokyo but one thing hasn’t changed — stubbornly low pay.Boeing CEO to Step Down in Overhaul Sparked by Safety Crisis
Revenue from Japan fixed-income trading at Wall Street and European firms rose by more than a third from a year earlier to $2.6 billion in 2023, according to Coalition Greenwich. The data tracks the top 12 international banks in the US and Europe. “There was an uplift in M&A transactions in late 2023, but that was too late,” to help lift pay for bankers for that year, said Masuo Fukuda, Citigroup Inc.’s top investment banker in Japan.
In a series of speeches, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has pledged to overhaul the asset management industry in Japan by introducing more competition, and requiring transparency from pension funds and insurers. He has also promised deregulation to make the country more attractive to financial firms. One outlier in Japan has been pay in the specific niche of rates traders who deal in government bonds and other securities linked to interest rates. On average, top performers saw a doubling in compensation in 2023 to about $1.5 million, and in a rare case as high as $3 million, according to people familiar with the matter.
Even with Beijing’s tightening control over Hong Kong and the escalating cost of living in Singapore, financiers still prefer those cities over Tokyo, making it difficult to bring bankers to the country and keeping them from leaving.