, Columnist
Buffett and Other Billionaires Agree: Tokyo’s Worth Revisiting
Interest in Japan from some of the US’s richest investors is reviving talk of the capital as a financial center. It’s a good start.
Green shoots?
Photographer: Shoko Takayasu/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Tokyo has struggled for years to pitch itself again as a major financial hub, but its ambitions might be saved by what Homer Simpson once called the two sweetest words in the English language: “De fault.”
The city’s been trying to recover from a reputation that’s taken a battering. Having once been a capital of the financial world, last month it tumbled out of the top 20 in one ranking of banking centers, behind the likes of Asian rivals Seoul and Beijing. Shenzhen, barely a dot on the financial map when Tokyo’s markets were at their peak three decades ago, now ranks nine places1 higher.