{"id":8980,"date":"2010-06-26T20:10:19","date_gmt":"2010-06-26T11:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/?p=8980"},"modified":"2010-06-26T20:10:19","modified_gmt":"2010-06-26T11:10:19","slug":"japanese-venture-capital-investments-take-nosedive-in-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/japanese-venture-capital-investments-take-nosedive-in-2009\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese Venture Capital Investments Take Nosedive in 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Japan&#8217;s venture capital industry is in a very difficult situation. That&#8217;s, in a nutshell, the result of a recent Nikkei survey. According to the paper, investments from the nation&#8217;s top 20 VC firms dropped a whopping 40% in fiscal 2009 to $711 million. Compared to 2007, that&#8217;s even 50% less.<br \/>\nTo be more concrete, the Nikkei says that Japan&#8217;s biggest VC firm, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sbigroup.co.jp\/english\/\">SBI Holdings<\/a>, just invested $300 million last fiscal, down 27% year-on-year. Investments from the number two (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jafco.co.jp\/eng\/home\/index.html\">JAFCO<\/a>) and number three (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mizuho-vc.co.jp\/english_info\/index.html\">Mizuho Capital<\/a>) even fell 44% and 43%, respectively.<br \/>\nIn a separate survey, Japan&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meti.go.jp\/english\/\">Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry<\/a> found out that at $1.1. billion in 2009, total investments of national VCs were the lowest since 1995 (when the ministry began conducting its survey). In fiscal 2006, the number stood at $2.2 billion.<br \/>\nWhat&#8217;s more, IPOs in Japan dropped to just 19 last year &#8211; the lowest number in decades. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tokyo-aim.com\/english\/\">TOKYO AIM<\/a>, a new equity market for startups and a joint venture between the Tokyo and London Stock Exchange established last year, hasn&#8217;t <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tokyo-aim.com\/english\/listed_companies_app\/listed_companies\">listed<\/a> a single company yet.<br \/>\nIPOs can be considered a &#8220;standard&#8221; exit for tech startups in this country and account for up to 90 percent of yearly profits for Japanese VCs &#8211; so that&#8217;s really bad news for everyone involved. The VCs, for one, seem to increasingly set their sights overseas. According to the Nikkei, the top 20 firms have pumped 40% of their investments last year into foreign markets, up from 30% in 2007.<br \/>\nHere&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/accjjournal.com\/little-ventured-little-gained\/\">column I wrote about Japan&#8217;s VC industry<\/a> earlier this year for the <a href=\"http:\/\/accjjournal.com\/\">Journal<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.accj.or.jp\">The American Chamber of Commerce in Japan<\/a>; it might be of interest, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Japan&#8217;s venture capital industry is in a very difficult situation. That&#8217;s, in a nutshell, the result of a recent Nikkei survey. According to the paper, investments from the nation&#8217;s top 20 VC firms dropped a whopping 40% in fiscal 2009 to $711 million. Compared to 2007, that&#8217;s even 50% less. To be more concrete, the&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/japanese-venture-capital-investments-take-nosedive-in-2009\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Japanese Venture Capital Investments Take Nosedive in 2009<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,24],"tags":[1741,1784,2363,3230,3517,3719,3945,3958],"class_list":["post-8980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","category-news","tag-ipo","tag-jafco","tag-mizuho-capital","tag-sbi-holdings","tag-stock-exchange","tag-tokyo-aim","tag-vc","tag-venture-capital","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}