, in close consultation with public health and medical professionals. but all of us have our own decisions to make as well, and those decisions will depend on public confidence that it is again safe to undertake various activities. from an economic perspective, we hope to learn a lot from your experiences and from what you ’ re hearing from your colleagues, customers, and communities : how they ’ re coping with that uncertainty now, how they ’ re thinking about a future that ’ s harder to plan for, and what matters most as they navigate the path. the feedback we get from our community and business contacts has always been crucial in how we conduct monetary policy. in extraordinary times such as these, it takes on even greater importance. i want to thank you again for providing that insight and look forward to the conversation. thank you. 1 / 1 bis central bankers'speeches

to achieve sustainable growth and increase corporate value. from my own experience in management, i can say that, in order to turn environmental change into opportunity, firms need to strengthen their business resources not by relying solely on their own resources but by making effective use of personnel with different backgrounds and knowledge. they also need to take the lead in pursuing change and to reform their business structure without delay, and thereby realize growth. to this end, it is important to carry out deregulation aimed at facilitating free business activities and to create a market in which firms can obtain ample investment funds that enable them to implement their growth strategies and thereby achieve sustainable growth. in what follows, i talk about the roles both direct and indirect financing are expected to play in terms of firms'fund raising. d. expected roles for direct financing first, let me talk about direct financing, in which firms issue stocks to raise funds directly. as of the end of september 2020, japanese households held about 1, 900 trillion yen in financial assets, of which about 1, 000 trillion yen was in cash and deposits and about 500 trillion yen was in insurance and pension plans. this means that, while a great deal of money is poured into financial institutions, not much flows directly to firms actually doing business. funds raised through initial public offerings ( ipos ) and public offerings ( pos ) in japan in 2019 remained small, amounting to about 10 billion u. s. dollars, which is only one tenth of the amount raised in the united states. in addition, looking at venture investment by investment funds, the amount of funds invested by venture capital ( vc ) funds in the united states in 2020 was 16 trillion yen ( 156. 2 billion u. s. dollars ), continuing to increase even during the covid - 19 pandemic. 3 on the other hand, in japan, the amount invested by vc funds in 2019 was about 200 billion yen, and there was a decline of about 30 percent for the january - september period of 2020 compared to a year earlier. 4 in the united states, where ample funds flow to firms, startups with disruptive technologies and business models bolster their innovation capabilities by steadily raising funds, and some of them become unicorns. such unicorns continue to raise funds directly from financial markets even after going public, eventually growing into major firms. on the other hand, in japan, the total market capitalization of firms listed on the first section of the tokyo stock exchange ( tse ) at the