| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : JUNE 14, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| INTERNATIONAL -- ASIAN COVER STORY
Akio Mikuni, Founder, Mikuni & Co., Japan (int'l edition) WHEN AKIO MIKUNI LAUNCHED JAPAN'S FIRST IN-DEPENDENT BOND-RATING AGENCY back in the 1980s, it seemed quixotic. Banks and companies were extended blanket government protection against failure, so did rating corporate debt really matter? Maybe not then, but it does today. The government can no longer afford bailouts, and banks and big companies for the first time are truly competing for capital. That has made Mikuni & Co. a valuable source of information among international investors. Mikuni, 60, argues that the value of money in Japan has been distorted by the ''socialization of risk.'' He long ago saw the dangers of Japan's easy credit--in which companies borrowed themselves into oblivion, figuring the government would bail them out if need be. In the 1960s, as an analyst for Nomura in New York, he learned the value of independent research. Mikuni's foresight has never made him particularly popular with Tokyo officialdom. Yet Japan's decade-long slide has proved him one of the most prescient economy watchers in Japan. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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