ABSTRACT
The past three decades have seen the expansion of Japanese financial institutions in the City of London and their subsequent withdrawal. Since the abolition of fixed exchange rates for the yen in the early 1970s, Japanese bankers and financiers have needed to develop international business to support Japanese factories built abroad, and to take part in internationally-syndicated loans. In Europe, especially, Japanese financiers began to raise capital in newly-emerged Euro-dollar markets. After the Plaza Agreement in 1985, which resulted in the rapid appreciation of the yen, they began to invest their excess capital, spiritedly joining new financial businesses with which they were not familiar.
