TLTP
\nTOKYO
\nJapanese robo-advisor WealthNavi debuted on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Tuesday in one of the biggest initial public offerings on the bourse this year.
\nThe wealth management platform jumped about 50 per cent at the open from its IPO price of 1,150 yen. The firm raised 17.9 billion yen ($173 million). With a market value of 52bn yen, it is among the largest of the nearly 100 listings in Tokyo in 2020, despite being just five years old.
\nThe stellar first-day pop followed a slew of well-performing debuts in Asia and the US in recent weeks as investors rushed in to load up on some of the high-flying tech names. Home-rental platform Airbnb Inc. closed 113 per cent above its IPO price in its debut earlier this month. JD Health International surged 56 per cent while DoorDash soared 86 per cent on their first day of trading.
\nWealthNavi is banking on providing an inexpensive asset management platform with a low barrier of entry in a market where retail investment is growing. Authorities have been promoting personal investment to make up for feared shortfalls in pension funds, with vast numbers of the population set to retire over the coming decades.
\nWealthNavi has about 320bn yen under management and 350,000 accounts as of December 7. The firm offers a simple approach to investing: by answering six questions related to income and risk appetite, the platform generates a portfolio in one of five different risk levels, allocating money into a combination of exchange-traded funds.
\nThe firm was founded in 2015 by Kazuhisa Shibayama, a former finance ministry official who later worked at McKinsey. Mr Shibayama was struck by what he called the \u201cfinancial disparity\u201d between his relatives in Japan and the US.
\nDuring a holiday with his wife\u2019s American parents, Mr Shibayama was asked by his mother-in-law to check the assets they had tasked a private bank with managing. He found they had several millions of dollars in assets, largely ETFs, while his own parents in Japan had left much of their assets in cash deposits.
\n\u201cI thought my family was well off,\u201d he wrote on the company\u2019s website, \u201cbut there was a 10-fold difference between their assets and my in-laws\u2019.\u201d
\nThe analogy is typical of investments in the two countries. A regular survey by the Bank of Japan found that cash and deposits made up more than half of household assets in Japan, with less than 10 per cent invested in stocks. In the US almost 33 per cent of assets were in equities.
\nBut WealthNavi is debuting at a time when amateur investment in Japan is heating up. Online brokerage accounts have surged in 2020, while retail investors made up an average of 21 per cent of total trading value on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in the past six months, versus just 16 per cent the year earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TLTP TOKYO Japanese robo-advisor WealthNavi debuted on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Tuesday in one of the biggest initial public offerings on the bourse this year. The wealth management platform jumped about 50 per cent at the open from its IPO price of 1,150 yen. The firm raised 17.9 billion yen ($173 million). With a market […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-163765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-business"},"yoast_head":"\n