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Invited to Seminar by Japan’s 1st Social Lending “Maneo”

A Tokyo-based serial entrepreneur C. Jeffrey Char read my stories featuring social lending that I contributed to the newspaper and posted on my blog, and he invited me to a seminar prior to launching the service of “maneo”.

Prosper coming here to Tokyo from US, Zopa from UK, both cannot reach launching their services so far, and Japan’s maneo is now the first one to start here.

Social lending may create the third category of financing industry, beside direct financing (private equities) and indirect financing (banks).   In terms of brief understanding, it can be counted in a form of priviate equities as well.

Mr. Tadatoshi Senoo leads maneo as its president, who was formerly working for the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi-UFJ.   I drank some cans of beer after the seminar there, and I forgot to take his picture unfortunately.   Sorry for that.

He’s hot guy, from Kyushu island or southern part of Japan.   He will be featured many times on TV and newspapers from now on, there I need not take his picture with my poor camera skill this time. 

Japan’s financial laws are defined without any view of social lending, and it seems hard for them to clear laws and various regulations and to persuade conservative bureaucrats for approval.

But now, finally they got understanding of the monetary authority, and they can start the service around coming October.

I think it would be better not used only as a new one of financial services, but for example, elderly people can use it as a bridge to share the dreams with youngers by lending(investing) money, and I hope such a new way of lending or investing is going well.