Japan's Ministry of Finance convened a committee meeting with the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ), banking and investment industry groups, and the Financial Services Agency to review DBJ’s Specified Investment Operations, including their performance and future direction following a recent legal extension. Discussion focused on the growing need for risk capital as investment opportunities shift toward longer-term and higher-risk areas. Members urged DBJ to strengthen evidence-based analysis of whether its risk money delivers a true priming effect, including by improving visibility on private-sector risk-money trends. While co-investment and loans alongside DBJ have reached 4.2 times the amount executed by DBJ, the distribution of co-investment and loan recipients was described as concentrated, with 50% involving megabanks and 4% involving regional financial institutions. Other points included the suitability of the revised time limits (a five-year investment decision deadline and a ten-year business completion deadline), how to assess appropriate risk and return given exit timing effects, and the use of the DAC six-item method, under which projects rated A or B at exit accounted for around 70% of the total. On disclosure, participants flagged that extensive case-by-case publication could deter firms given confidentiality needs, recommending instead balanced reporting of the programme’s overall picture, including via existing mechanisms such as the Specified Investment Business Monitoring Board. The meeting also referenced a Japan Bankers Association initiative to aggregate private risk-money supply data and asked DBJ to cooperate with discussions in the Working Group on the medium-to-long-term role of financial intermediation.

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