Mr. Ogiwara is Head of Fixed Income Capital Markets in the Global Capital Markets Division in Tokyo. He started his career in the financial industry in 1992, having worked in New York prior to joining Morgan Stanley in 2002. He has been active in helping clients to raise debt capital market instruments and manage their liabilities. He holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Keio University.
Describe your current role at the firm and your responsibilities.
I run the Fixed Income Capital Markets including debt underwriting, liability management and fixed income derivatives. We provide tailor made solutions to our clients, which from time to time, include off-balance-sheet financing to help our clients achieve objectives to manage their balance sheet in an efficient manner. Our products are extremely diverse and there are tremendous varieties of product combination which differentiate and allow us to offer creative solutions to our clients. This is the most interesting part of our business.
What does a typical day at work look like for you?
Every day is a new day. The market changes constantly and I find it stimulating to read what happens every day in the global market which provides a lot of insight and ideas for our clients. In most cases, my day is almost filled with meetings – seeing clients or meeting with my team or internal colleagues from different divisions such as Investment Banking and Fixed Income divisions. My days often finish with client dinners or with conference calls with syndicate colleagues in New York/London to discuss what we propose on the following day/week or even months ahead. Overseas business trips give me an opportunity to meet sophisticated global institutional investors and the primary purpose of these trips is to sponsor new issue roadshow for our issuer clients in the US, Europe and Asia financial centers.
How would you describe the firm's culture?
I am a big fan of “Putting Clients First,” one of Morgan Stanley’s core values. We have a collaborative culture in place as well to help each other to “put clients first.” This applies even on occasions where we don’t know each other in person but we work together for the common goal, to deliver first-class business in a first-class way. We often call our colleagues “internal clients” which I think is very significant. This gives me a sense of importance to “put clients first” regardless of clients being internal or external. Our internal clients assist us in providing the best services that Morgan Stanley can provide to our external clients, so the best practice in approaching our external clients always starts from collaboration with our internal clients.
What indicators do you look for in the industries/stocks/markets that you cover?
While my business lies in Fixed Income product areas, we cover different markets and indices such as stock market, interest rate market, FX market, credit market, and commodities market. This tells us that the global capital market is always well-connected and correlate with cross products. I put a lot of focus on activities in the financial industry as the industry is always a reflection of the macro market environment, and the tie between financial industry and other industrial sectors are close enough to give us guidance on how financing activities would be going forward.
Tell us about the importance of “Giving Back”- both at the firm and for you personally.
“Giving Back” is one of our core values and the firm encourages us to get engaged with our community and our next generation. Over the years I have participated in beach clean-up events where Morgan Stanley employees work together to clean the beach before the summer season kicks off. Clothing Drive and Book Drive are other platforms that Morgan Stanley employees can participate to start “giving back” to help those in need.
