IT IS not every day that the opening of a shopping centre attracts a prime minister, but then Aeon Mall in Phnom Penh is not any old shopping centre. The Japanese-built complex is Cambodia’s biggest, complete with an ice rink, television studio and bowling alley. For Hun Sen, the attending prime minister, it is a symbol of Japanese investment. Governments across South-East Asia are courting Japanese firms, and a torrent of yen is surging their way.Japanese investment in the region doubled to 2.3 trillion yen ($24 billion) last year, the latest in a series of sizeable increases (see chart). Part of that is mergers and acquisitions by Japanese firms, which have skimped on investment at home and so have a cash hoard of some ¥229 trillion. SoftBank, a Japanese mobile carrier, just led a $100m investment in Tokopedia, an Indonesian e-commerce firm; Toshiba, a conglomerate, has pledged to invest $1 billion in South-East Asia over five years. A year ago Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Japan’s biggest bank, spent ¥536 billion to buy 72% of Thailand’s Bank of Ayudhya....
from The Economist: Finance and economics http://ift.tt/1p6kG9v
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