On December 23, 2020, as part of the International Financial Center Initiative – an initiative to further revitalizing the investment funds industry in Japan – the Working Group Committee of the Financial Services Agency of Japan (the “JFSA”) published proposed amendments to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act of Japan (the “FIEA”) to introduce new exemptions: (1) the Foreign Investor Article 63 Exemption ; and (2) the Foreign Investment Manager Transition Exemption. The background of the two exemptions were discussed in the previous article Promotion of the Investment Management Industry of Japan: A Discussion on the Proposed New Exemptions by the JFSA Working Group Committee.
On May 19, 2021, the National Diet of Japan enacted amendments to the FIEA to implement these two exemptions (the “Amendments”) and on August 6, 2021, the JFSA released the draft language of the proposed regulations, which set forth further details to the Amendments that are anticipated to take effect later this year.
While further clarification is anticipated to be forthcoming from the JFSA through the release of its public comments, for the purposes of this Client Alert, we will provide a general overview of the two new exemptions based on publicly available information and discuss how these exemptions may impact the investment funds industry in Japan. Please kindly click here for the overview.
