Shinzo Abe

Shinzo Abe served as Japan's longest-serving Prime Minister and was one of the most consequential figures for Japanese financial markets in decades. His "Abenomics" policy program had three "arrows": aggressive monetary easing (by the Bank of Japan under Haruhiko Kuroda), fiscal stimulus, and structural reforms including corporate governance improvements. The BOJ's aggressive asset purchases and negative interest rate policy drove a dramatic weakening of the yen and re-rating of Japanese equities. Corporate governance reforms, including the Stewardship Code and new shareholder return requirements for low-ROE companies, began a multi-year improvement in Japanese corporate profitability. Abe was assassinated in July 2022. His political longevity — he served two separate stints as Prime Minister, with the second lasting from 2012 to 2020 — gave him unusual policy continuity and enabled the sustained multi-year monetary experiment that defined his economic legacy. The governance reforms he championed continued bearing fruit years after his departure, with Japanese equities staging a major revaluation in 2023-2024.