The 3,240 yen ($31) of cash framed on Hideto Fujino’s desk is a constant reminder of his greatest humiliation.
The money, barely enough for dinner at the Thai restaurant downstairs from his office, was Fujino’s payout from a 2009 fire sale of the asset management firm he built from scratch.
As clients fled during the global financial crisis, Fujino was forced to unload his stake in Rheos Capital Works Inc., give up his role as president and go back to being an employee for the first time in almost six years.
Like the famous Japanese shogun who carried a portrait of himself after losing an important battle, Fujino wants to never forget.
“This is my version,” he said in an interview at Rheos’s headquarters, overlooking Tokyo Station in the center of Japan’s capital.
Today, the framed memento is one of the few vestiges of Fujino’s darkest period. Rheos Capital’s flagship Hifumi fund is beating 97 percent of peers, the firm’s assets under management just surpassed 200 billion yen and Fujino has reclaimed his title as president and chief executive officer.
He bought back 25 percent of the company with other directors and staff in December, and they plan to eventually purchase the rest.
Fujino, a former high-flier at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, was already a standout in risk-averse Japan after he left a comfortable career to strike out on his own.
But the 50-year-old’s road to redemption has made him something of a legend in a money management industry still struggling to reclaim its glory days almost three decades after the nation’s stock bubble deflated
