How rock-bottom bond yields spread from Japan to the rest of the world

Japan’s impact is felt keenly in American and European corporate-credit markets

Sep 14th 2019

IT WOULD BE hard to think of a business that is on the face of it quite as dull as Norinchukin Bank. A co-operative, it was founded almost a century ago to take deposits from and lend to Japanese farmers. Yet Norinchukin came blinking into the spotlight earlier this year when it emerged that it had been a voracious buyer of collateralised loan obligations (CLOs)—pools of risky business loans used to finance buy-outs by private-equity firms. At the last count, in June, Norinchukin owned $75bn-worth.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “The Japan bid”