FinanceAsia Japan Achievement Awards

BEST BANK

MUFG

With lending margins under pressure in the zero-rate domestic market, Japan’s big banks have been increasingly looking overseas, none more successfully so than the country’s biggest, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, our winner for Best Bank.

MUFG, led by president and CEO Nobuyuki Hirano was able to post an 18% rise in net income for the first three quarters of its financial year, powered in part, unsurprisingly, by its 22% stake in Japan partner Morgan Stanley. But that was not the only bright spot. Subsidiaries MUFG Union Bank in the US and Bank of Ayudhya, Thailand’s fifth-largest bank, also contributed...