The Japanese firm is looking at foreign asset management growth and acquisition after failing to achieve some M&A targets at home, reports said.

Japan-headquartered Orix Corp is on the lookout for acquisitions to help attain a target of doubling its assets under management of $260 billion, examining foreign targets, its chief executive is quoted by media as saying.

The firm bought investment management firm Robeco from Netherlands-based bank Rabobank in 2013. It now wants to take its asset management operations up a gear, Makoto Inoue is quoted as saying.

"Robeco alone is small. We expect a shakeout in the industry and we need to have scale. We have to build the business through mergers and acquisitions,” he said, according to one account of his views by Reuters.

Robeco had €246 billion in assets under management as of December. Inoue said he wants to double that amount but did not specify over what period of time.

The focus was on targets overseas, as the company missed out on opportunities to grow in its domestic Japanese market, he said.

"Until around two years ago, there were sales (of asset management businesses) as non-core assets in Japan. But since GPIF, asset management has become everyone's core business," he said.

Orix is also eyeing the emerging middle class in Asian countries such as Indonesia, Philippines and Malaysia as future clients and is studying plans to set up an asset management company in Southeast Asia, he said.

Starting out in 1964 as a leasing company, Orix has grown to become a financial conglomerate with Y11 trillion ($92 billion) in assets.