SRP Asia Pacific 2025: Personality of the Year – Tomoyuki Sasai

Tomoyuki Sasai (pictured), managing director, head of global markets sales in Japan at Société Générale (SG), received the highest number of votes from respondents to the SRP Asia Pacific Awards Survey 2025.

Structured notes have lost the trust of investors and regulators due to the pursuit of excessive profits that were not aligned with the true value of the products

The seasoned salesman with over 25 years of experience joined Société Générale in October 2023, responsible for leading the development of the French bank’s fixed income department, equity department franchise, and cross-asset solution and distribution business in Japan.

Sasai, the financial engineering graduate of Tokyo Institute of Technology, began his career in the equity structured products business in 1998, where he was the equity derivative sales and marketer at Lehman Brothers before moving to J.P. Morgan in 2000, with a reporting line to Masahiro Oshige.

There had been several historical moments for the industry at that time, he recalled, with Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) had allowed banks to distribute mutual funds in 1998 as part of the country’s “Big Bang” financial deregulation program, prompting the banks’ sale of mutual funds to gain momentum after 2000. This also coincided with the time period of the dot-com bubble, which had weakened local investors’ demand for equity structured notes, he said.

“That was a big moment, and I started to learn the solution business in equity derivatives,” he said. “I learned a lot from my manager [Oshige] and how we pitch [to clients].”

Structured funds

Sasai noted that regulation was changed, and banks at that time were "struggling to find success in the mutual fund business and were searching for solutions."

"I think it was difficult for banks to push the simple equity mutual fund to [meet] clients’ demand, and thereby I proposed equity-linked structured funds to the distributors and asset management companies,” he said.  

According to Sasai, this equity-linked structured fund idea subsequently gained support from distributors and investors, which “significantly increased its sales volume” until just before the Lehman crisis.

In 2002, along with Oshige, Sasai headed to Deutsche Bank, where he structured equity and fund derivatives. The structurer had pushed the quantitative investment strategies (QIS) business to the country’s central financial institution and regional banks, as well as fund derivatives structured funds linked to commodity trading advisers (CTAs), trend-following hedge funds, to retail distributors during his tenure at the German bank.

In late 2009, he joined Credit Suisse (CS), along with Oshige whom Sasai speaks highly. Sasai spent 14 years running the Swiss bank’s cross asset derivatives and solutions business in Japan as sales.

Started as director with the responsibility of selling products like QIS via structured funds, he was promoted to managing director in early 2014, and head of solutions sales covering both fixed income business and cross asset solution business in late 2016, a role he held until 2023 prior to joining SG.

In 2017, his team at CS developed an equity-linked put option strategy, which initially didn't appeal to regional banks but saw demand take off two years later following their consistent push, he recalled.

“One of the most popular products our team developed was a one-month, 90% put option. This product was widely supported by a broad range of investors in a market environment with extremely low yen interest rates,” he said.

Mind shift

Speaking of the latest market developments, Sasai admitted the past two years as “very difficult” to sell structured notes via both private placement channel and public distributed channel, where products distributed by the latter are also known as structured Uridashi in Japan.

The lower sales came after the new distribution guideline implemented by the Japan Securities Dealers Association in July 2023, a few months after the FSA stepped up with a review of structured Uridashi sold to retail investors.

“I think the wallet size structured notes is probably less than one-tenth compared to three, four years ago,” he said. “Distributors got pressure and now focus on Assets under Management (AuM) business, such as mutual funds, fund wrap, or annuity products like fixed annuity, fixed indexed annuity and variable annuity.”

The slump of the structured notes market in Japan also presented an opportunity for Sasai and his team at the French bank to consider a pivot.

“We still got the people and [we're thinking] how we utilise the people resource and system resource in other [areas]. QIS business is one of the businesses,” he said.

Compared with the relatively “passive” business model of distributing structured notes through external distributors from manufacturer’s perspective, QIS business requires the manufacturer’s more “aggressive” inputs, such as the sales’ good understanding of clients’ liability management and what the clients want to hedge, which could range from equity, foriegn exchange (FX) exposure need or duration needs, according to Sasai.

Over the past four to five years, Japan’s regional banks had been favouring QIS such as risk premia strategies, such as the equity volatility risk premia strategy, which most of them deployed into delta one products, according to Sasai. However, such demand has been declining along with the rise in yen interest rates, he said.

What’s rising is “a strong demand for hedging QIS” over the past year, he said in the context of the recent uncertain market environment and regulatory changes. Investors hedge against private debt and equity have also seen increased demand, he added.

“I think each client segment has its unique demand, [which we’d need to have] a good communication and plans to meet clients’ demand,” he said.

Regaining trust

Still for the structured notes business, Sasai said he hasn’t “given up” with the hope of seeing such products revived in the country but he sees a need for both product manufacturers and distributors to change their business models, particularly in terms of revenue structures.

“We must revisit our business models and restore trust by making the market as transparent as possible. At the very least, as long as end investors have potential demand for structured products, we should provide solutions to meet their needs,” he said.

“Structured notes have lost the trust of investors and regulators due to the pursuit of excessive profits that were not aligned with the true value of the products. However, the manufacturers and distributors need to have more confidence in the value of structured notes that offer genuine benefits to investors, provided that fees are kept at appropriate levels,” he said. 

“As a manufacturer, seriously we need to think about how we can reuse the trust of structured notes from the regulator and end investors,” he added. 

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