July 10, 2025 • 13 mins
Japan’s hottest banking talent is in high demand as Wall Street goes all out to woo new hires with fancy dinners, strong-arm tactics and higher salaries.
On today’s Big Take Asia Podcast, Bloomberg’s Lisa Du talks to host K. Oanh Ha about why firms are resorting to extreme measures and the problems they face in hiring top talent.
Further listening:
Can’t Get Enough of Matcha? Too Bad – Japan Is Running Low
South Korea Has Plenty of Botox But Not Enough Doctors
Why China’s Investment Bankers Are Breaking Up With Capitalism
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Last year, a recent graduate from one of Japan's top
universities was weighing job offers from a few international banks.
One offer was from a Wall Street firm, which he
decided to pass on.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
He had turned down the offer on the phone, but
then they called him and asked him to come in
for a meeting. So he showed up and was greeted
in a room by three managing directors.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Bloomberg's Lisa du covers finance and Investing out of Tokyo.
She says the young man's story caught her eye in
part because of what happened next. The managing directors kept
him inside the room and gave their young candidate the
hard sell.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
They basically spent two hours trying to convince him to
change his mind and take that offer, and at one point,
you know, telling him, don't take this company lightly, just
don't mess with us. You should take this offer, and
just like really given a lot of pressure, wow, to
take this job.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
The man told Lisa that when the directors finally let
him go, he was exhausted and a little traumatized, and
even more confident that he'd made the right choice by
not taking the job. It sounds like a crazy story,
but Lisa says these hardball recruitment tactics aren't unusual in
Japan right now.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
We did hear several instances where young candidates were either
forced to stay in a room for hours or were
just heavily courted by being taken to really fancy restaurants
in private rooms.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
That's because right now Japan has one of the world's
tightest labor markets. In many ways, it's the opposite of
what's happening in the rest of the financial world. Bankers
from Hong Kong to London have been hit by pay
cuts and layoff as the global economy contracts, But in
Japan there's a hiring boom.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So I think several factors are coming together at the
same time to create this perfect storm. The Japanese market
is interesting again because inflation is back, money is very
easy to borrow. There's a week end leading now to
a surge in trading for Japanese growing bonds, Japanese stocks,
and also a burst in foreign investment. And this is
(02:25):
coming after years of you know, Japan kind of playing
second fiddle in Asia to China, and so these banks
haven't really looked at Japan for many years and are
now realizing the need to build up the business. So
now international banks, while Street banks included, are all kind
of racing in Japan to take advantage of the market
renaissance that's happening.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Wanha.
Every week we take you inside some of the world's
biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons and
businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today, in the
show Wall Street's talent War in Japan and why a
pivot there could be a bumpy road ahead, Bloomberg's Lisa
(03:17):
du started taking note of the intense competition for finance
talent in Japan last year. There are a couple of drivers. Inflation,
corporate reforms and low borrowing costs have made Japan a
more lucrative environment for investors. Then there's a slew of
mega deals also putting Japan in the spotlight.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Right now, Toyota Industries is about to be taken private
for about thirty three billion dollars. The operator of seven
to eleven seven and I Holdings is facing a bid
from a Canadian firm to Buya for about fifty to
two billion dollars and from Bloomberg data that we crunched. Actually,
I think the value of announced deals in the past
(03:57):
twelve months is up about the seventy percent in Japan.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Even before this renewed interest in Japan, its labor market
was already challenging for employers.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
There's been a chronic and acute labor shortage in Japan
for many, many years, and this is due to the
aging demographics. And at the same time, they have this
younger workforce that's more mobile, more vibrant, has different ideas
about what they want from their jobs, and may not
be as attracted to a job in finance as they
were in the past.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Banks and money managers looking to hire face an even
smaller talent pool. Japan's unemployment rate sits at just two
point five percent, roughly half of the US level, and
by the numbers, that means for every applicant there are
often multiple jobs available. Lisa says it's not uncommon for
rising stars to receive five or six offers. Lisa, how
(04:53):
many jobs are waiting to be filled now in Japan's
banking sector, I mean, how big of a problem are
we talking about.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
It's hard to get exact data on this, but most
banks and financial executives that we're speaking to, you know,
have always mentioned they need to add headcount, that this
is something that's on top of their mind all time.
So City Group had told us that they were expanding
their investment banking team by about fifteen percent. JP Morgan
Chase was saying they needed to add to their capital
raising and financing teams. Carlisle Group, the big private equity firm.
(05:22):
They've just raised a giant Japan buyout fund and they
said they need to hire ten more investment professionals to
deploy that money.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
So even if the scale isn't like thousands and thousands
of jobs, it sounds like these are pretty critical jobs
for these international firms.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Yes, and I think timing is very key. Is they
really want these job candidates now to take advantage of
this moment because there is this demand, and what are these.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Banks doing to attract talent?
Speaker 1 (05:48):
I mean, this is you know banks. While she were
talking about so of course money, Yeah, one investment banking
partner we had spoken to said they had raised the
offers they made for investment banking by about ten percent
every year in the last three years. You know, we
had heard that younger associate analyst level bankers in Japan
(06:10):
will make about one hundred and forty thousand US dollars
per year, and that will compare to New York, where
these associo bankers will make about two hundred thousand US
dollars a year. Japan historically has had slightly lower pay
in the financial sector than most other places in the world,
so these are quite big pay bumps for these young
bankers in Japan.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Besides showering candidates with cash, banks are adopting other more
creative ways to woo talent.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
One thing we heard they were doing was holding these
parties where they invite people that left the firm to
kind of common network again to try to get them
to come back. Some are being more serious about setting
up an alumni network so that they then have basically
a contact list of people they can reach out to
if they want to hire them back, and they're whining
and dining them as well and try to get them on.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
And it's not just young graduates that banks are finding
difficult to recruit. Lisa says the shortage for finance staff
is across the board.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
There is also a great need for mid level to
senior bankers. One interesting phenomenon we've also been tracking is
obviously the Japanese government bond market has come back to
life because Japan has exit negative rates, and so some
brokerages are trying to leer back. Workers have retired because
these guys know what a world with interest rates was. Like,
(07:35):
traders who were in their twenties and thirties have never
experienced a market with interest rates, and so some ways,
like being an old timer is now kind of a benefit.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
After the break. Why is it so hard to hire
bankers in Japan? Besides having a limited talent pool, Japan
presents unique challenges for global firms looking to expand. The
(08:12):
language barrier is at the top of the list. Unlike
in Hong Kong or Shanghai, traders and bankers can't get
by with just English. Lisa, how important is it to
be able to speak Japanese in these jobs?
Speaker 1 (08:27):
I think it's very important and quite job specific, you know,
like Japanese government bond traders, that's a very domestic job
that requires like specialization. I think that one you really
would need Japanese. Ideally, I think what ims in banking
jobs or investment firms like private equity would like is
someone who is just bilingual and able to seamlessly move
between kind of Japanese culture and more of international Western culture,
(08:50):
so that then they can work across teams globally. And
that is the ideal, the perfect Canada, someone who can
just really do both.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
So you're saying, for the bankers listening in New York London,
there's no need for them to hop on a plane
and try to land one of these jobs.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I think that might be hard. I think they would
prefer that you, you know, have some understanding of Japanese
and Japanese culture and Japanese business practices.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
At the beginning of the story, you mentioned how this
one young graduate turned down a Wall Street firm after
they tried to pressure him to join them, And I
wonder for these young candidates, do big Wall Street names
half cachet does working for Goldman Sachs or an international
firm carry a lot of weight with him.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Well, he turned down a Wall Street firm for another
international one that was European, So I think, you know,
these big ones do have cachet, but it probably isn't
worth as much as they are in the US, it
would be just as good to work for a trading
house like me to be Shi or Sumitomo here to
working at Goldman Sachs. Japan is home to some of
(09:53):
the biggest banks in the world, the megabanks, and large
brokerages like Nomura and Daiwa which have international operations. So
you know, if you are a young grad in Japan,
it would be equally attractive to go work for these
firms and also make a lot of good money and
have a very international experience.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
On top of that, Wall Street firms are also up
against a culture that prizes loyalty. Workers in Japan often
stay at the same company for their entire career, and
poaching employees from rival firms is frowned upon.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
One aspect is Japanese workers historically tend to be very
loyal to where they're working, and back in the days,
like your parents, who probably stayed the same company for life,
that was very common. Your company took care of you,
and when we retire, they also took care of you.
And some of that mindset is still there, but it's
slowly changing.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Lisa says. What's changing is how young people think about
work and their careers in general, and that means working
for big finance corporations might not be as attractive as
it once was.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Which saw this really in the mindsets of younger workers
we spoke to. They want better work life balance, They
want to do work that they think is more meaningful
and more impactful, and sometimes the salary doesn't even sway them. Actually,
one former investment banker I spoke to who opted to
go into venture capital said he didn't need that much money.
(11:19):
He found being able to help build up businesses way
more rewarding.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Lisa, what do you think this story tells us about Japan.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
I think what's interesting about the story is that I
think it captures a moment in time, and we're telling
it through financial firms, but it could probably apply to
other industries as well. Where Japan is having a kind
of financial renaissance. It's become very interesting again global investors
for global banks, and as they rush back in to
(11:50):
try to take advantage of this, they're running up against
a problem that has always been there and is actually
getting much worse. I'm not sure we can make any
big hypothesis about the future from this tale, but I
think kind of painting this picture of what it's like
in Japan right now is quite interesting.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And how long do you think this intense competition for
talent will last.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
I think that will go on for as long as
the Japanese markets are sexy. I think it all ties
back to attractiveness of the Japanese market. And this is
a question that investors' financiers all ask all the time.
Is this moment for real? Is Japan like really back
for the long run? And all the factors I described
(12:37):
before about easy borrowing, week yen driving all this activity.
As long as that continues, this will also go on.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
This is The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm wanha.
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
to all of Bloomberg dot Com, subscribe to at Bloomberg
dot com slash podcast offer. If you like the episode,
make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take Asia
wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps people find
(13:11):
the show. Thanks for listening, See you next time.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Last year, a recent graduate from one of Japan's top
universities was weighing job offers from a few international banks.
One offer was from a Wall Street firm, which he
decided to pass on.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
He had turned down the offer on the phone, but
then they called him and asked him to come in
for a meeting. So he showed up and was greeted
in a room by three managing directors.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Bloomberg's Lisa du covers finance and Investing out of Tokyo.
She says the young man's story caught her eye in
part because of what happened next. The managing directors kept
him inside the room and gave their young candidate the
hard sell.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
They basically spent two hours trying to convince him to
change his mind and take that offer, and at one point,
you know, telling him, don't take this company lightly, just
don't mess with us. You should take this offer, and
just like really given a lot of pressure, wow, to
take this job.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
The man told Lisa that when the directors finally let
him go, he was exhausted and a little traumatized, and
even more confident that he'd made the right choice by
not taking the job. It sounds like a crazy story,
but Lisa says these hardball recruitment tactics aren't unusual in
Japan right now.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
We did hear several instances where young candidates were either
forced to stay in a room for hours or were
just heavily courted by being taken to really fancy restaurants
in private rooms.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
That's because right now Japan has one of the world's
tightest labor markets. In many ways, it's the opposite of
what's happening in the rest of the financial world. Bankers
from Hong Kong to London have been hit by pay
cuts and layoff as the global economy contracts, But in
Japan there's a hiring boom.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So I think several factors are coming together at the
same time to create this perfect storm. The Japanese market
is interesting again because inflation is back, money is very
easy to borrow. There's a week end leading now to
a surge in trading for Japanese growing bonds, Japanese stocks,
and also a burst in foreign investment. And this is
(02:25):
coming after years of you know, Japan kind of playing
second fiddle in Asia to China, and so these banks
haven't really looked at Japan for many years and are
now realizing the need to build up the business. So
now international banks, while Street banks included, are all kind
of racing in Japan to take advantage of the market
renaissance that's happening.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Wanha.
Every week we take you inside some of the world's
biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons and
businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today, in the
show Wall Street's talent War in Japan and why a
pivot there could be a bumpy road ahead, Bloomberg's Lisa
(03:17):
du started taking note of the intense competition for finance
talent in Japan last year. There are a couple of drivers. Inflation,
corporate reforms and low borrowing costs have made Japan a
more lucrative environment for investors. Then there's a slew of
mega deals also putting Japan in the spotlight.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Right now, Toyota Industries is about to be taken private
for about thirty three billion dollars. The operator of seven
to eleven seven and I Holdings is facing a bid
from a Canadian firm to Buya for about fifty to
two billion dollars and from Bloomberg data that we crunched. Actually,
I think the value of announced deals in the past
(03:57):
twelve months is up about the seventy percent in Japan.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Even before this renewed interest in Japan, its labor market
was already challenging for employers.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
There's been a chronic and acute labor shortage in Japan
for many, many years, and this is due to the
aging demographics. And at the same time, they have this
younger workforce that's more mobile, more vibrant, has different ideas
about what they want from their jobs, and may not
be as attracted to a job in finance as they
were in the past.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Banks and money managers looking to hire face an even
smaller talent pool. Japan's unemployment rate sits at just two
point five percent, roughly half of the US level, and
by the numbers, that means for every applicant there are
often multiple jobs available. Lisa says it's not uncommon for
rising stars to receive five or six offers. Lisa, how
(04:53):
many jobs are waiting to be filled now in Japan's
banking sector, I mean, how big of a problem are
we talking about.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
It's hard to get exact data on this, but most
banks and financial executives that we're speaking to, you know,
have always mentioned they need to add headcount, that this
is something that's on top of their mind all time.
So City Group had told us that they were expanding
their investment banking team by about fifteen percent. JP Morgan
Chase was saying they needed to add to their capital
raising and financing teams. Carlisle Group, the big private equity firm.
(05:22):
They've just raised a giant Japan buyout fund and they
said they need to hire ten more investment professionals to
deploy that money.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
So even if the scale isn't like thousands and thousands
of jobs, it sounds like these are pretty critical jobs
for these international firms.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Yes, and I think timing is very key. Is they
really want these job candidates now to take advantage of
this moment because there is this demand, and what are these.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Banks doing to attract talent?
Speaker 1 (05:48):
I mean, this is you know banks. While she were
talking about so of course money, Yeah, one investment banking
partner we had spoken to said they had raised the
offers they made for investment banking by about ten percent
every year in the last three years. You know, we
had heard that younger associate analyst level bankers in Japan
(06:10):
will make about one hundred and forty thousand US dollars
per year, and that will compare to New York, where
these associo bankers will make about two hundred thousand US
dollars a year. Japan historically has had slightly lower pay
in the financial sector than most other places in the world,
so these are quite big pay bumps for these young
bankers in Japan.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Besides showering candidates with cash, banks are adopting other more
creative ways to woo talent.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
One thing we heard they were doing was holding these
parties where they invite people that left the firm to
kind of common network again to try to get them
to come back. Some are being more serious about setting
up an alumni network so that they then have basically
a contact list of people they can reach out to
if they want to hire them back, and they're whining
and dining them as well and try to get them on.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
And it's not just young graduates that banks are finding
difficult to recruit. Lisa says the shortage for finance staff
is across the board.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
There is also a great need for mid level to
senior bankers. One interesting phenomenon we've also been tracking is
obviously the Japanese government bond market has come back to
life because Japan has exit negative rates, and so some
brokerages are trying to leer back. Workers have retired because
these guys know what a world with interest rates was. Like,
(07:35):
traders who were in their twenties and thirties have never
experienced a market with interest rates, and so some ways,
like being an old timer is now kind of a benefit.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
After the break. Why is it so hard to hire
bankers in Japan? Besides having a limited talent pool, Japan
presents unique challenges for global firms looking to expand. The
(08:12):
language barrier is at the top of the list. Unlike
in Hong Kong or Shanghai, traders and bankers can't get
by with just English. Lisa, how important is it to
be able to speak Japanese in these jobs?
Speaker 1 (08:27):
I think it's very important and quite job specific, you know,
like Japanese government bond traders, that's a very domestic job
that requires like specialization. I think that one you really
would need Japanese. Ideally, I think what ims in banking
jobs or investment firms like private equity would like is
someone who is just bilingual and able to seamlessly move
between kind of Japanese culture and more of international Western culture,
(08:50):
so that then they can work across teams globally. And
that is the ideal, the perfect Canada, someone who can
just really do both.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
So you're saying, for the bankers listening in New York London,
there's no need for them to hop on a plane
and try to land one of these jobs.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I think that might be hard. I think they would
prefer that you, you know, have some understanding of Japanese
and Japanese culture and Japanese business practices.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
At the beginning of the story, you mentioned how this
one young graduate turned down a Wall Street firm after
they tried to pressure him to join them, And I
wonder for these young candidates, do big Wall Street names
half cachet does working for Goldman Sachs or an international
firm carry a lot of weight with him.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Well, he turned down a Wall Street firm for another
international one that was European, So I think, you know,
these big ones do have cachet, but it probably isn't
worth as much as they are in the US, it
would be just as good to work for a trading
house like me to be Shi or Sumitomo here to
working at Goldman Sachs. Japan is home to some of
(09:53):
the biggest banks in the world, the megabanks, and large
brokerages like Nomura and Daiwa which have international operations. So
you know, if you are a young grad in Japan,
it would be equally attractive to go work for these
firms and also make a lot of good money and
have a very international experience.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
On top of that, Wall Street firms are also up
against a culture that prizes loyalty. Workers in Japan often
stay at the same company for their entire career, and
poaching employees from rival firms is frowned upon.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
One aspect is Japanese workers historically tend to be very
loyal to where they're working, and back in the days,
like your parents, who probably stayed the same company for life,
that was very common. Your company took care of you,
and when we retire, they also took care of you.
And some of that mindset is still there, but it's
slowly changing.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Lisa says. What's changing is how young people think about
work and their careers in general, and that means working
for big finance corporations might not be as attractive as
it once was.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Which saw this really in the mindsets of younger workers
we spoke to. They want better work life balance, They
want to do work that they think is more meaningful
and more impactful, and sometimes the salary doesn't even sway them. Actually,
one former investment banker I spoke to who opted to
go into venture capital said he didn't need that much money.
(11:19):
He found being able to help build up businesses way
more rewarding.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Lisa, what do you think this story tells us about Japan.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
I think what's interesting about the story is that I
think it captures a moment in time, and we're telling
it through financial firms, but it could probably apply to
other industries as well. Where Japan is having a kind
of financial renaissance. It's become very interesting again global investors
for global banks, and as they rush back in to
(11:50):
try to take advantage of this, they're running up against
a problem that has always been there and is actually
getting much worse. I'm not sure we can make any
big hypothesis about the future from this tale, but I
think kind of painting this picture of what it's like
in Japan right now is quite interesting.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And how long do you think this intense competition for
talent will last.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
I think that will go on for as long as
the Japanese markets are sexy. I think it all ties
back to attractiveness of the Japanese market. And this is
a question that investors' financiers all ask all the time.
Is this moment for real? Is Japan like really back
for the long run? And all the factors I described
(12:37):
before about easy borrowing, week yen driving all this activity.
As long as that continues, this will also go on.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
This is The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm wanha.
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
to all of Bloomberg dot Com, subscribe to at Bloomberg
dot com slash podcast offer. If you like the episode,
make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take Asia
wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps people find
(13:11):
the show. Thanks for listening, See you next time.
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
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