Japan

Lloyds has become the third UK bank to soak up strong demand for holding company level senior debt in the Samurai market this year, though the lack of clarity around risk-weightings continues to limit bank treasury involvement.

Derivatives exchanges are making a push on natural gas with three new initiatives unveiled, amid expectations that demand to trade such products across global markets is set to grow.

Nissan has done the UK a favour. By playing hardball about wanting assurances from the UK government about Brexit, it has opened the debate into one where real investments are discussed, and tough choices become apparent. The City should follow its lead.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s Tokyo branch sold a Rmb500m ($73.8m) dim sum bond on Tuesday — the first offshore renminbi Pro-Bond to be sold in Japan. The transaction was a successful attempt at drawing attention from Japanese investors, with the issuer managing to save costs compared to its dollar funding, according to bankers.

Citic Group has become the first Chinese issuer to tap the Japanese yen market in 16 years, opening the door for borrowers from the mainland to access liquidity in the Samurai market.

In this round-up, The BRICS bank announces its lending target for the next year, two US banks compete for RMB clearing role in New York, and China Construction Bank Tokyo gets admitted to the onshore foreign exchange market. Plus, a recap of our coverage this week.

Japanese technology giant SoftBank and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia have agreed to set up a UK-based technology fund for up to $100bn and have employed former bankers from Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs to help with the project.

Eisuke Sakakibara, the former Japanese politician who earned the nickname Mr Yen for his aggressive control of the exchange rate, says he is worried that the appreciation of the yen is a sign that the impacts of the expansionary policies known as Abenomics are wearing off

Tullett Prebon is set to lose its European chief executive, who becomes the second senior departure in the past week from a planned Tullett-ICAP combined group as the two interdealer brokers look to merge by the end of this year.

Given the scale of the task at hand, few should begrudge Prime Minister Abe more time to meet the objectives of his courageous programme to rejuvenate Japan’s moribund economy.

In theory, the Bank of Japan’s gargantuan asset buying programme, which forms a central pillar of its quantitative and qualitative easing policy, should transform international capital markets by forcing Japanese investors overseas en masse. But as so often is the case in Japan, theory and practice are very different things.

Given the low cost of debt, sluggish domestic growth and poor demographic trends, it is inevitable that international M&A will continue to increase as Japanese corporations’ management looks for growth beyond Japan to boost returns and growth prospects. This is good news for debt markets, which have also been boosted by an increase in the amount of share buy-backs.