About Us

Best Mix Investment Co., Ltd. is a Tokyo based asset management company focusing on investing in overseas/domestic funds that we believe help our clients to achieve their objectives. We also offer several services to overseas asset management companies and investment advisory firms exploring business opportunities in the Japanese market.

Best Mix Investment was founded by Chiharu Furukawa, former Managing Director of Morgan Stanley Investment Management (Japan Office was formerly known as Morgan Stanley Asset and Investment Trust Management Co., Ltd.) with his ex-colleagues at Morgan Stanley and Nikko Securities.

Since its establishment in 2011, Best Mix Investment has been working to provide pension funds and financial institutional investors with opportunities to invest in non-traditional, absolute return oriented funds that help them diversify their portfolios and obtain more stable performance　 based on the expected return in Japan pension industry.

Besides his professional career in the financial business, Chiharu Furukawa devoted himself to extending his support to those affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake when it struck Japan on March 11, 2011. After a while, he left Morgan Stanley in August, and established Best Mix Investment on October 1, 2011, which was successfully registered as a discretionary investment manager as well as an investment advisor on January 16, 2012, having cleared the registration process in a shorter period of time than ever before. Through volunteer activities for disaster victims, he recognized the importance of disaster risk management, which led to his decision to select a CAT bond fund as the first product to invest in for the pension funds.

During his tenure at Nikko Securities, Japan-US Financial Negotiations opened the door for asset management companies to manage public pension funds in December, 1994. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Chiharu Furukawa encouraged public pensions to employ a passive management approach as a core portfolio, and Nikko Group including Wells Fargo Nikko Global Investors succeeded in winning mandates to manage JPY1.2 trillion in total.

In 2000, he moved to Morgan Stanley Investment Management to take the position of the head of a pension marketing team. He contributed to the increase of AUM by JPY3 trillion in five years, which placed the company among the top three in terms of AUM in the Japanese asset management league table.

Best Mix Investment will leverage his more than 30-year experience in the pension marketing business to support overseas asset managers and investment advisors seeking business opportunities in Japan.

Getting registered as a discretionary investment manager in Japan requires an office with proper staffs in Japan, which incurs significant costs, and it would likely take time to get the business on track. However, foreign-based asset management companies and investment advisory firms, even without Japanese registration/licenses, can offer their services to Japanese investment managers and trust banks as long as they are registered or have proper licenses for their business in their home countries.

Best Mix Investment is more than happy to share our expertise accumulated over decades in the Japanese market.