Japan Rising

As you will have seen by now, Nomura Holdings Inc. (8604.TO), Japan's largest brokerage house, has bought the Asian operations of Lehman, and Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. (8306.TO) has agreed to purchase a stake in Morgan Stanley. This raises quite a lot of interesting questions including what does Japanese investment in the US financial services market mean about Wall Street's competitiveness, how will these storied firms integrate considering the cultural clash between American independence and Japanese teamwork, and of course, will the Japanese be able to keep these assets down the road or be focused to sell when the crisis hits home in Asia? Stay tuned to find out who might be next, and what the proposed integration plans are. Some of our clients will certainly be in the press commenting on these topics.