It will not be too long before the term “Abenomics” will join “Cool Britannia”, “the end of history” and “Brics” in the cupboard of cast-offs: ideas that once had thrilling, zeitgeisty chic, but are now too threadbare to be worn in public.
Abenomics — encapsulating the now sputtering economic revival programme of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — may well deserve that fate. But it will at least depart having catalysed a defining shift in the country’s corporate thinking and the creation of a new generation of outward-looking dealmakers.
Abenomics is nearly five years old. So, too, is the country’s record run of more than $350bn in overseas acquisitions — the first time, say JPMorgan bankers, that the outbound grab has been “meaningful”. According to Mergermarket, Japan’s outbound deal count of 145 in the first half of 2017 was only a handful short of the record set in 2015, and mergers & acquisitions bankers are already hinting at big deals in the insurance, pharmaceutical and chemical sectors later this year. Outbound acquisitions accounted for 70 per cent of the value of all M&A activity in Japan last year. By value, Japan closed nearly three times more outbound deals in 2016 — about $100bn worth according to Dealogic — than it did during the whole of the 1980s, the decade where it became infamous for “buying the world”. Inflation explains only part of that; the scale of ambition is what has really changed.