Japan Public Debt is Keeping BNP's Chief Credit Analyst Awake at Night

For most of her career, Mana Nakazora has taken a pre-dawn train to work regardless of whether she arrived home just hours earlier.

Her colleagues describe BNP Paribas SA’s Tokyo head of investment research as a powerhouse, and she was Japan’s No. 1 bond picker from 2010 to 2012 and No. 2 for the last two years in Nikkei Veritas newspaper polls. Even now, investors thank her for warning against getting into Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. before the investment bank collapsed in September 2008.