The top of the capital markets pecking order includes not just banks and asset managers, but stock-exchange companies. Quiet and unassuming compared with the traditional masters of the universe, they are no less powerful. Nowhere is this more apparent than Japan.
First off, stock-exchange companies operate many of the indexes that increasingly drive global capital flows. London Stock Exchange Group Plc, for instance, owns and manages the UK’s FTSE gauges alongside a suite of other benchmarks under the Russell brand. While the Japanese exchange’s best-known index is owned by local newspaper group Nikkei Inc., it has the more useful market cap-weighted Topix, which is tracked by over ¥83 trillion of assets ($560 billion).
