Bye Bye Tokyo, Hello Bangkok

Here is the farewell letter that Richard Cayne sent to his clients before moving away to Bangkok:

I would like to thank you for patronizing our services over the past 10 years. This notice serves as an announcement that Meyer Asset Management Ltd has closed operations in Japan due to several regulatory changes with the Japanese Financial Services Agency. Meyer Asset Management Ltd has been registered as a “licensed investment advisory agency” in Japan under the jurisdiction from the Kanto Local Finance Bureau as a Financial Supervisory Authority (hereafter the FSA).

Over the past 10 years we have been pioneers in advising clients on a range of over 200 top global fund companies each offering several lines of investment products and therefore Meyer wanting to keep a very open architecture advisory business where we can genuinely help advise our client to create portfolios of investments from the very best of investments around the globe have decided in an effort to be completely compliant with local laws and regulations cannot do this business in Japan. 

In order for a firm in Japan to introduce overseas products to Japanese residents the introducing firm must be appropriately licensed and such products would have to be registered with the Financial services Agency and therefore to offer such a broad range of products would be impractical and cost prohibitive to register each one. In addition to which a securities or advisory firm in Japan is subject to information requests by the FSA or Japanese tax bureau at any time and would be required to release investors confidential information on demand.

Therefore due to client driven demand for more confidentiality and even wider range of services and products from our advisory service it has been decided to shut the Japan operations and clients will be serviced by Meyer International offices from Bangkok, Thailand operations center. We are pleased to advise that being based in Bangkok will give us the flexibility and strategic positioning to be very central to our clients all over Asia and allow us to offer clients even more global investment choices with a much higher degree of confidentiality. 

In order to achieve ones financial objectives, investors need professional advice and need to receive support from an independent position at all times. We believe that having choices from a wide variety of investments products from all over the world in order to achieve such financial objectives is paramount.

Our consultants will explain to you regarding future business plans should you have any questions.

Thank you very much for your continuous support and understanding.

Sincerely yours,

Richard M. Cayne
Managing Director
Meyer Asset Management Ltd

And here is a bit of reading between the lines about what the message might really mean:

So, according to Cayne, registering investment vehicles with the FSA in Japan is "impractical" (translation: not subject to approval) and "cost prohibitive" (for the business offering them). And the FSA can gather private details about clients through their investment broker (translation: the FSA can investigate to see if the broker is complying with Japanese law). Finally, Cayne suggests Thailand is more "confidential" than Japan (translation: the Japanese authorities will be more likely to investigate dodgy businesses than Than authorities). Finally, a "consultant" will not contact you because there are no consultants. The 'consultant" will likely to be Cayne or a flavor-of-the-month associate. 

Let the buyer beware.

Wait! There's more! Check it out:

Looks like the parasite ran away from Japan when the authorities decided to enforce regulation. They really don't like being registered and licenced do they? Too difficult to stitch up the unsuspecting punters with their useless managed funds and assorted ponzi scams.
What's the next best location - Thailand of course! Join the rest of the unlicenced unregulated and unscrupulous financial conmen preying on gullible expats.
Is it just a coincidence or do all conmen hide behind the sham of supposedly keeping their investors confidential information, only as a pretext to hide their own dodgy dealing?