News

The City of London will survive Brexit. That was the takeaway from another highly informative BCCJ event on March 19th, concerning the home of global capital, the London Stock Exchange (LSE).

BCCJ member ESR Ltd. made Japanese real estate history on 20th March with the start of construction of the country’s largest distribution facility, in Amagasaki City, Hyogo Prefecture.

The Economist Intelligence Unit has come out with their White Paper report “A year to go: how Brexit will affect the UK economy”. The report covers the bases of how Brexit is expected to affect the job industry, regulation processes, and sectors of the economy. There is still a year to go until Brexit is put in the works and a 21 month transitionary phase to make Brexit sustainable. A deal between the EU and Britain is crucial to the sectors of the British economy, including healthcare and life sciences, automotive industries, financial services, consumer goods and retailing, and telecoms and energy.

Gender parity in the workplace can be achieved by transforming policy into practice, setting targets, creating role models and supporting men to be more active at home, according to a panel of experts from BCCJ member firms.

We call upon all BCCJ members with voting rights to vote in our 2018-2019 Executive Committee (Excom) election, which will run from Tuesday, March 27 to Thursday April 12, at 1700.

In autumn of last year, with our 70th anniversary almost upon us, the British Chamber of Commerce in Japan (BCCJ) Executive Committee (Excom) decided to test the fitness of the chamber by conducting a membership review. Led by Iain Ferguson, president and chief operating officer of Lloyd’s Japan, the review assessed the structure of BCCJ membership categories, benefits, fees and services.

Labor Management (Raising Statutory Employment Rate for Persons with Disabilities)

The government has announced that the statutory employment rate for persons with disabilities will be raised from 2.0% to 2.2% effective April 1, 2018.

TransferWise has some great news.
Launched in 2011, TransferWise is a UK based peer-to-peer money transfer service. Sending money around the world is expensive, but using Transferwise allows people to send their money abroad at the lowest possible cost. It supports more than 300 currencies and multi-currency accounts.
On March 15th, fees on all transfers from JPY to GBP will be going down.

In a win for good governance, in 2012 we moved to a fully open and democratic system for electing our Executive Committee (Excom) members.

On February 28, the EBC was pleased to host an event, in cooperation with the Delegation to Japan and the EU-Japan for Industrial Cooperation, called Mission Accomplished – The EU-Japan EPA Agreement: A Time to Celebrate.

March 8 marks this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD), a global day celebrating women’s achievements in cultural, social, economic, and political advancements.

On February 21 the BCCJ hosted “Responsible Luxury” an event that brought together some of the best of British luxury brands to discuss successes and challenges in the Japanese market.