A unit of Ryobi Holdings, a bus route operator in rural Japan, is setting up an artificial intelligence-powered hedge fund specializing in forex to survive a sharp drop in the country’s population outside Tokyo.
Ryobi has enlisted Kyosuke Suzuki, a former currency trader at Societe Generale, to set up the fund by the end of the year. The hedge fund, part of Ryobi’s subsidiary, Ryobi Systems, will begin investing around the beginning of 2025.
Ryobi was founded 114 years ago as a short railway connecting towns and villages in Okayama Prefecture. Today, it is at the front line of the country’s demographic crisis, grappling with graying customers and shrinking communities. More than 30% of Okayama Prefecture’s residents were age 65 or older as of 2022, with a handful of its towns at risk of disappearing by 2050.
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