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CLSA has been forced to scale back its flagship Tokyo investor forum because of the sensitivities of its state-backed Chinese parent.
The institutional broker and investment group has held the event annually since the early 2000s but it will not be taking place in Tokyo this year in its usual form, say people familiar with the matter.
CLSA, which is owned by Citic Securities, China’s largest investment bank, has been forced to make the decision, according to the people, due to a diplomatic spat between Beijing and Tokyo which has escalated since last year.
Although investors will gather at Tokyo’s Grand Hyatt hotel for presentations and pre-arranged company meetings in May, say the people familiar with the matter, CLSA is no longer allowed to associate Citic with the curtailed event and staff are forbidden to call it a forum.
Having made plans earlier in the year, investors are still expected to arrive in Tokyo but for a downsized event. One such investor questioned whether it was “still worth” travelling to Japan for the limited get-together.
As a measure of CLSA’s ongoing interest in Asia, the brokerage is still planning a large-scale event in South Korea in June which is now billed as the organisation’s “first Northeast Asia Forum”.
The row between the two countries was triggered by comments from Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last November about how Japan could respond to a hypothetical invasion by China of Taiwan.
Beijing has since put in place travel advisories against visiting Japan, prompting a sharp decline in tourism from China and forcing state-owned institutions such as Citic to change their own policies and plans.
CLSA said clients could still find an event called “Access Japan 2026” in Tokyo on its website, but otherwise declined to comment.
Since 2004, the CLSA Tokyo Forum has been a highlight of the investor calendar, drawing hundreds of fund managers to the Japanese capital and helping to revive interest in a market whose weighting had, since the 1990s, been steadily dropping in global portfolios.
The events, usually held in the early part of the year, pulled in international investors and were centred around a combination of meetings and presentations with listed Japanese companies and a series of keynote speakers ranging from the country’s prime ministers and demographic experts to rock stars and robotics engineers.
The CLSA Tokyo forum was the first venue at which Alan Greenspan spoke in public after stepping down as chair of the Federal Reserve in 2006.
In pre-global financial crisis days, the CLSA forums set themselves apart from similar events organised by rival investment banks with the lavishness of their evening entertainments, including performances by pop acts such as Duran Duran, Macy Gray and the Black Eyed Peas.
CLSA, which was founded in 1986 by journalists in Hong Kong, was acquired by Citic Securities for $1.2bn in 2013. It was the first time a Chinese brokerage acquired a global financial institution.
Many former and current CLSA staff say it has shifted the character of the once independent, freewheeling brokerage.
Additional reporting by Cheng Leng in Beijing
