Due to the Japanese stock market boom... Companies with a market cap of 10 trillion yen doubled in half a year

Last Year-End 10 to Recently 19
Toyota Motor 52 Trillion Yen 1st Place
Positive Evaluation Including Shareholder Profit Return

As Japan's major stock indices hit record highs, the number of Japanese companies with a market capitalization exceeding 10 trillion yen (approximately 86 trillion won) has nearly doubled in just half a year.

A pedestrian in Tokyo, Japan, is looking at a stock market ticker board installed in the city.
[Photo by AP Yonhap News]

According to a report by Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) on the 6th (local time), the number of Japanese companies with a market capitalization over 10 trillion yen was 10 at the end of last year, but increased to 19 as of the previous day.

The company with the largest market capitalization in Japan is Toyota Motor Corporation. Its market capitalization reached 52.4 trillion yen (approximately 450.6 trillion won), surpassing the previous record of 48.672 trillion yen (approximately 418.5 trillion won) set by NTT in May 1987. Following Toyota were Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (22.4 trillion yen), Keyence (17.6 trillion yen), Sony Group (17.4 trillion yen), and Hitachi Ltd. (17.1 trillion yen).

Nikkei reported that although stock prices were high at the end of 1989 during the bubble economy period and at the end of 2000 when IT companies stood out, there were only three companies exceeding 10 trillion yen in market capitalization at each of those times. It analyzed that "the significant increase in companies with market capitalization over 10 trillion yen is the result of stronger profit-generating capabilities through business portfolio restructuring and favorable evaluations from overseas investors due to profit returns to shareholders."

The Nikkei 225 average stock price index steadily rose from January this year, reaching a record high of 40,088 in March, and then broke the closing price record again on the 4th with 40,913. The TOPIX index, which includes a larger number of stocks, also closed at 2,898, up 0.92% from the previous session, marking its highest level in 34 and a half years.

However, the number of small businesses going bankrupt due to reasons such as labor shortages is also increasing. Tokyo Shoko Research, a corporate credit research firm, announced that the number of bankruptcies in Japan during the first half of this year rose by 22% compared to the same period last year, reaching 4,931 companies?the highest level in 10 years. It analyzed that especially small businesses are going bankrupt in large numbers, and the number of bankruptcies citing labor shortages as the reason reached a record high for the first half of the year.