In a mostly depressed Tokyo market, Orix stock has climbed 43% over the past year.
But when they arrive, they are going to find some very up-to-date competitors, such as Orix.
Orix has sliced up leasing assets for itself and others and sold them off to investors.
Orix is signing up 3, 000 and more new customers a month over the phone.
With businesses hard up for capital, Orix leased them office equipment and other necessities.
Even as top-tier Japanese institutions go bankrupt or post huge losses, Orix has remained consistently profitable.
"Orix can expand only so far, unless Japan's capital markets become more liquid, " he says.
Shinta Wakino is a sales rep at Orix's office in the Chiyoda section of Tokyo.
Orix's life insurance premium revenues rose 150% last year, even as the industry's declined overall.
When Japan's Orix Corp. began selling life insurance over the phone last autumn, rivals groaned.
Similarly, Orix will help develop car, scooter and bike sharing networks for the area.
Credit for Orix's aggressiveness goes to Miyauchi Yoshihiko, 63, the company's president and chief executive officer.
In the fiscal year to March 1999, Orix did a little better than just survive.
Miyauchi was named president in 1980, and the company changed its name to Orix in 1989.
Orix bought the down-and-out Kobe baseball team and named it the Orix Blue Wave.
That's triple what similar bank deposits pay, but still considerably less than banks charge Orix for loans.
Orix's lucky break came when the pork-barrel spending for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics ended in a bust.
Last year, Orix obtained nearly half of its funding needs through direct sources like buyers of commercial paper.
By the time that Ichiro was 18, he was making his professional debut with the Orix Blue Wave.
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And when the smoke finally clears, don't look for Orix: It will probably have moved on to something else.
In 1989, perhaps a bit before its time, Orix launched a commodities fund.
"Japanese life insurance is sold by giant companies that pay salesladies unbelievably high commissions, " says Yoshihiko Miyauchi, president of Orix.
Tod Wood, an analyst with ING Baring in Japan, says Orix is becoming a mile wide and an inch deep.
"Unlike a banker, I expect everybody at Orix to forget what they did yesterday and start from scratch each morning, " he says.
In March Orix snapped up a trust license from bankrupt Yamaichi Securities so its branches can offer clearing and other banking services.
It will also provide 90-day credit for customers and has, with Orix, a leasing company, set up eMerchantBank to help do this.
Miyauchi says he isn't worried because he intends to continue diversifying Orix so it isn't a head-to-head competitor with the U.S. giant.
He said that early in his career, he was among the tightest players on his Orix BlueWave team in the Japanese league.
In its latest deal, unveiled Tuesday, Orix will pay Rabobank in cash and its own stock for a 90.01% stake of Robeco.
But as it is, Orix is hesitating and risks being trampled underfoot.
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