Kazuhiro Arai

BuilderModernb. 1968· Japanese

Kazuhiro Arai spent sixteen years managing institutional money, first at Sumitomo Trust Bank and then at Barclays Global Investors, where he ran corporate and public pension portfolios. A serious illness and the 2008 crash made him doubt the way he had been taught to invest, and that November he left to co-found Kamakura Investment Trust, a fund that publishes every company it holds. In 2018 he set up eumo, which issues a community currency that Japanese shops accept through a phone app. Each unit expires after three months, and what expires goes back to the community instead of to the person holding it, so the money has to be spent.