Neil Riley

Neil Riley is a banking and finance professional who specialises in dealing with the Japanese market. He has spent most of the past 25 years either living in Japan, or working in Japan-related roles.

Neil is Senior Director at Mizuho Bank Ltd, London Branch, where he builds and maintains relationships with Japan-parented corporate client groups. He previously ran the EMEA Japan Desk at Barclays, and has also spent time in previous roles at the Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi Ltd (London), Deutsche Bank AG (London and Tokyo), and HSBC (Tokyo and Moscow).

In the mid-2000s Neil established and ran a business in Japan: a winter sports themed travel agency and property fund aimed at international ‘inbound’ visitors. Through this role he spent three years living in Echigo Yuzawa, Niigata Prefecture, and was appointed as ‘Tourism Spokesperson for Niigata Prefecture’ (Niigata-ken Kankou Karisuma) by the local government. As a means of enhancing PR for the Niigata region, Neil once achieved the Guinness World Record for “Most Different Ski Lifts Ridden in 24 Hours” (42).

Neil read Politics and East Asian Studies (Japanese Language) at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne. This course took him to Japan for the first time in 1994, taking one year of exchange study at Fukuoka University, Kyushu. He took his MBA at the University of Nottingham, specialising in Corporate Finance and Business Ethics and graduating with Distinction in 2012.

Neil is married with two daughters, who have joint British-Japanese citizenship.