See AXA, UBS, Alyssa and Norges at Mingtiandi’s Tokyo Forum Tuesday on MTD TV

Mingtiandi’s first-ever Japan event starts early Tuesday with top leaders from AXA IM Alts Real Assets, UBS Asset Management, Alyssa Partners and Norges Bank Asset Management taking the stage in a programme which starts at 9:00 AM local time (8:00 AM Hong Kong time).

In a keynote panel which takes a look at the biggest issues facing real estate investors in Japan and around Asia, Taiyo Taimi, head of Asia unlisted real estate with Norges Bank Investment Management, will take the stage alongside Hajime Watanabe, president and representative director with UBS Japan Advisors; Chedli Boujellabia, founder, managing partner and CEO of Alyssa Partners and Laurent Jacquemin, head of Asia Pacific for the real assets division of AXA IM Alts.

That lead panel will be followed by an interview on opportunities in life science and R&D real estate in Japan, and around Asia Pacific, featuring Warburg Pincus principal, Tag Yuxiang along with Lendlease Japan chairman and executive director for development partnerships, Andrew Gauci and Shigeko Mizutani, a managing director with the property consultancy’s valuation advisory and consulting services division for Japan.

Both sessions will be streamed live on MTD TV starting from 9:05 AM Hong Kong time, and you may watch free of charge here. With the Tokyo Forum wrapping up Mingtiandi’s event programming for this year, online forums on residential, logistics and data centres are already scheduled for next year, in addition to on-location events in Singapore and Tokyo. A full 2025 event calendar is available here.

Japan in Focus

Attendees at the event, which is sponsored in part by Yardi, include senior representatives of Brookfield Asset Management, JP Morgan Asset Management, Japan Development Bank, Mizuho Bank and Mitsui & Co. More than 230 industry executives have now registered to join the forum in person at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Tokyo, with tickets still available online at the link above or at the door.

The event takes place after Japan ranked as Asia’s most active real estate investment market in the first half of 2024, with $19.3 billion in income-earning properties changing hands in the period, according to MSCI.

The country’s hospitality market has become the target of some of the world’s largest fund managers, with TPG Angelo Gordon having teamed up with Kenedix earlier this month to buy the Grand Nikko Tokyo Daiba hotel in Tokyo for $692 million, after a nearly $500 million deal for a Hilton in Fukuoka set that property up for an acquisition by SC Capital Partners-sponsored Japan Hotel REIT.

That hospitality market will be the focus of a panel discussion at the forum featuring David Cheong, a managing director with KKR who is co-head of acquisitions for the company’s Asia real estate team; Malcolm MacLean, co-founder and managing partner with Tokyo-based investment manager Star Asia Group; Seth Sulkin, president and chief executive of Pacifica Capital KK and Gary Kwok, chief executive of Axe Management.

Also on the programme are interviews with senior executives from Deloitte Tohmatsu, Warburg Pincus, ESR and GLP Capital Partners, as these in-depth talks provide first-hand insight into opportunities in Japan and the personalities behind some of Asia’s largest real estate investors.

2025 Event Calendar Published

With Japan’s office market continuing to show world-leading levels of occupancy and rising construction costs restricting supply, the forum will also have a look at opportunities in the commercial sector.

The commercial panel features Takashi Imanaga, general manager for real estate finance at Mizuho Bank; Christopher Handte, chief executive officer with Tokyo Trust Capital; Yukihiko Ito, CEO of ESG software startup GOYOH and Taku Yamaumi, partner and head of Japan with LVMH-affiliated L Catterton Real Estate.

A panel on Japan’s region-leading rental residential market includes Abrdn head of Japan real estate Harumi Kadono; Chedli Boujellabia, managing partner and CEO of Alyssa Partners and Aaron Lee, founder and chief executive of Dash Living.

For a look at Japan’s evolving industrial real estate market Mingtiandi is glad to welcome to its Tokyo forum Pierre-Alexandre Humblot, a managing director with the fund management and capital division of ESR, Tetsuya Fujita, managing director and country manager for Japan at CBRE Investment Management; Unified Industrial co-founder Ross Antoci and Joseph Gagnon, co-head of real estate investment manager Rava Partners.

Mingtiandi’s 2025 event calendar features our fifth annual MTD TV residential forum in March, followed by a return to the physical stage in Singapore during May. Next up are online forums on logistics in June and on data centres in September.

Mingtiandi will return to Tokyo in November 2025 for our second annual forum in Japan.