RaymondsIndex

This week the clearest story in global markets wasn't a deal or a default. It was the slow sound of trapped money. Blackstone, alongside EQT and KKR, is openly racing to unlock the roughly $7 trillion of cash parked across Japanese households and balance sheets. Japanese listed companies alone hold around ¥110 trillion in cash and deposits — more than 10% of total assets, against 7–8% in Europe and roughly 6% in the United States. Return on equity has sat below 10% for years. In 2025, activist investors launched a record 56 campaigns in Japan, and they almost all pointed at the same target: capital that has stopped working. This is the signal at the heart of the Capital Efficiency Index, or CEI. CEI is not a measure of how much profit a company reports. It measures whether capital is actually being put to productive use: return on invested capital, asset turnover, and the gap between the cash a company raises and the cash it actually deploys. The distinction matters because cash i...