New York · Tokyo
Jonathan Malveaux
Author, Investor, and Host of Malveaux: The Room
Three decades across New York and Tokyo, with more than $100 billion in global transactions sourced, structured, or negotiated.
The Book
On Shelves November 18
Japan has everything it needs to lead the world, except the resolve to do so.
A book about why the strengths that built modern Japan now hold it back, and why the power to change has never left.
A book about why the strengths that built modern Japan now hold it back, and why the power to change has never left.
Malveaux: The Room
Watch The Show
Long-form conversations with accomplished people across business, food, arts and culture. In English and Japanese, between New York and Tokyo.
Most people never get the space to say what they actually think. Because real conversation needs the right space. So I built this room. New York and Tokyo. Boardrooms and backstage. Artists, athletes, founders, diplomats, chefs. People with influence. People still fighting for their place. The real story, the human story, is rarely the official one. Here, it finally has room to be heard. I’m Jon Malveaux. Welcome to The Room.
Japan’s top-ranked restaurant at Asia’s 50 Best—and the chef behind it once spent so much on records he couldn’t afford to eat. Yusuke Takada went to Paris with no French and no connections. Later, he rode through Osaka handing out flyers for his own restaurant. Music never left him. He says the menu is the lyrics. In The Room, he says the rest.
Nearly 40 years at H&M. Germany, 23 stores to more than 400. In Ginza, 7,000 people in line. Behind that expansion was a man who lost his wife and moved to Japan as a single father. Jonas Olsson helped build a global business—but what did it take, and what did it teach him about happiness? We’ve been friends for almost twenty years. We had never talked like this.
Two Michelin stars—built on a loan his father secured by putting the family home on the line. For nearly eight years, Noboru Arai’s family cooked dinner on cassette stoves because their kitchen had become his restaurant. When HOMMAGE struggled, his parents told him: make your cooking better. He calls what carried him “baseless confidence.” After all of it, he still says he isn’t successful. The conversation is about why.
Is AI the greatest investment opportunity of our lifetime—or the biggest bubble in history? Economist and pre-IPO analyst Max Fraad Wolff argues it can be both, joining us to follow the money from Tokyo to Wall Street and Silicon Valley. We explore who drives soaring tech valuations, how inflation shifts the burden of Japan’s debt onto ordinary people, and what the yen reveals about the limits of American power. Max also explains why AI’s next winners may be smaller companies few have heard of, challenges the promises being made about jobs, and makes the case that Japan is holding a stronger hand than the world realizes. Throughout, one question keeps coming back: who actually pays, and who actually wins?
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About
A career across institutions, industries, and cultures.
From the South Bronx to Harvard, Panasonic to Wall Street, business to media.
From the South Bronx to Harvard, Panasonic to Wall Street, business to media.
NEW YORK CITY
The Bronx
Where discipline and ambition took root
UNDERGRADUATE
Harvard University
A.B. in Government
GRADUATE
Columbia University
J.D. / M.B.A.
OSAKA, 1996
Panasonic
(Patent Licensing)
(Patent Licensing)
The largest consumer electronics company in the world; first American in the group
LAW
Latham & Watkins
Leveraged Finance and cross-border structuring
FINANCE
Wall Street
Lehman Brothers
Credit Suisse
Deutsche Bank
FOUNDER
Grand Alliance
Strategic investment and advisory firm, New York and Tokyo
AMBASSADOR
Tokyo
Ambassador to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government
ON THE RECORD
Malveaux: The Room
Long-form conversations across business, food, arts and culture
AUTHOR
日本よ、覚醒せよ
Japan, Awaken!
Japan, Awaken!
Published by Shinchosha
November 18, 2026
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