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Native name | 株式会社みずほフィナンシャルグループ |
|---|---|
Romanized name | Kabushiki gaisha Mizuho Finansharu Gurūpu |
| Company type | Public |
| Industry | Financial services |
| Predecessors | |
| Founded | September 2000; 25 years ago (2000-09) |
| Headquarters | Otemachi Tower,, Japan |
Key people | Seiji Imai (chairman) Masahiro Kihara (president &CEO) |
| Products | |
| Revenue |  ¥5.78 trillion (2022) |
| ¥789.6 billion (2022) | |
| ¥219.20 billion (2022) | |
| Total assets | ¥254.26 trillion (2022) |
| Total equity | ¥8.47 trillion (2022) |
Number of employees | 52,420 (March 2022) |
| Subsidiaries | |
| Website | mizuhogroup |
| Footnotes / references [1] | |
TheMizuho Financial Group, Inc. (株式会社みずほフィナンシャルグループ,Kabushiki-gaisha Mizuho Finansharu Gurūpu), known from 2000 to 2003 asMizuho Holdings and abbreviated asMHFG or simplyMizuho, is a Japanesebankingholding company headquartered in theŌtemachi district ofChiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The group was formed in 2000–2002 by merger ofDai-Ichi Kangyo Bank,Fuji Bank, andIndustrial Bank of Japan. The name mizuho (瑞穂) literally means "abundant rice" in Japanese and "harvest" in the figurative sense.
Mizuho Financial Group is the parent holding ofMizuho Bank,Mizuho Trust & Banking,Mizuho Securities, and Mizuho Capital, and the majority owner ofAsset Management One. The group offers a range of financial services, including banking, securities, trust and asset management services, employing more than 59,000 people[2] throughout 880 offices.[3] It is listed on theTokyo Stock Exchange—where it is a constituent of theNikkei 225 andTOPIX Core30 indices—and in theNew York Stock Exchange in the form ofAmerican depositary receipts.
Upon its founding, Mizuho was the largest bank in the world by assets.[4] Following further consolidation, it has become the third-largest of Japan's so-called megabanks with total assets of $1.9 trillion at end-March 2023, behindMitsubishi UFJ Financial Group ($2.9 trillion) andSMBC Group ($2.0 trillion).[5] Mizuho was the 15th largest banking institution in the world by total assets as of December 2018,[6] and the 90th largest company in the world according to Forbes rankings as of May 2017.[7] It has been consistently listed as asystemically important bank by theFinancial Stability Board.
The history of the banks that formed Mizuho combines multiple threads of Japanese financial history, going back to the earlyMeiji era and particularly the establishment in 1873 ofDai-Ichi Bank, Japan's first modern bank and joint-stock company led byShibusawa Eiichi, if not even earlier with the foundation of trading houseYasuda-ya in 1864. In addition to Dai-Ichi (whose name literally means "number one"), Mizuho also incorporates several of the subsequentNational Banks in Meiji Japan which were numbered in accordance with their chronological date of establishment until 1880:
The group's predecessors also includeNippon Kangyo Bank (est. 1897) and Industrial Bank of Japan (est. 1902), two institutions founded as policy banks in the Meiji era and converted into commercial banks afterWorld War II.
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Mizuho was established in 2000 as Mizuho Holdings, Inc. by the merger of Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, Fuji Bank, and the Industrial Bank of Japan, first announced in 1999.[12][13][14] It was the first financial holding company structure created among major Japanese banks.[15]
On 1 April 2002, DKB, Fuji and IBJ were officially and legally combined into two banks,[16]Mizuho Bank, Ltd. andMizuho Corporate Bank, Ltd.,[17][18] through a split and merger process reorganizing the three legacy banks.[19] Initially Mizuho traded under the ticker symbol MHHD on the London Stock Exchange.[20] Mizuho Corporate Bank focused on large corporations, financial institutions and public sector entities in Japan and overseas,[21] whereas Mizuho Bank focused on individuals and small and medium-sized companies in Japan.[22]
The merger resulted in the world's first trillion-dollar banking group, with its $1.2 trillion in assets, surpassing the next largest bank by about $480 billion. The move has been considered to have formed one of the first "mega-institutions" in the financial industry, beginning a trend in the industry of large-scale bank mergers referred to in Japan as the consolidation movement during the 2000s.[23] While other mega-institutions were composed of one major player and several minor ones, Mizuho was composed of three relatively equal institutions in terms of their size and influence.[24] It remained the largest mega-bank in the world until 2005.[16]
The name "Mizuho" means "new, bountiful, and rich harvest of rice" in Japanese.[25] The original structure saw the founding of the Mizuho Bank, focusing on individuals andSMEs, and the Mizuho Corporate Bank, which focuses on corporate entities.[26] The initial strategy of the company was to expand its lending operations with individuals and SMEs, and begin to offer fee-based services including securitizations, merger and acquisitions support, security-based investment banking, and syndicated loans. At the time, Mizuho controlled about 50% of the syndicated loans market.[27] Mizuho also launched one of the first Internet-based securities products in 2000.[28]
In 2003, Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. took over the operations of Mizuho Holdings.[16] On 1 October 2005, all subsidiaries of Mizuho Holdings were transferred to the direct control of Mizuho Financial Group.[16] Mizuho Holdings, no longer a bank holding company, was then renamed Mizuho Financial Strategy, which now focuses on providing advisory services.[29] Mizuho Financial Group was in turn listed on theNew York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol MFG in 2006.[30]
Mizuho Corporate Bank engaged in steady expansion overseas, opening twenty overseas offices between 2005 and 2010,[31] particularly in China, as well as in the Americas, Europe and Middle East. In 2006,Mizuho Corporate Bank became the first Japanese bank to obtain financial holding company status in the U.S.,[32] and Mizuho Financial Group listed its ADRs on the New York Stock Exchange.[33]
Mizuho, through its operations in New York, became involved in thesubprime mortgage crisis and lost seven billion dollars on the sale ofcollateralized debt obligations backed by subprime mortgages. It is the Asian bank which suffered the most losses due to the crisis.[34] In 2012 Mizuho Financial Group acquired 100% of the assets from the Brazilian bank Banco WestLB do Brasil S.A.[35]
On 30 June 2013, the group structure was simplified by a merger of Mizuho Bank and Mizuho Corporate Bank into a single banking entity that retained the name Mizuho Bank.[36]
In 2014 the company underwent a board of directors reform to further streamline its corporate culture into a more of a single identity, although its original board founded in 2002 was consistent with Japanese banking protocols.[24] In 2016 they opened their global transactions banking headquarters in Singapore, and have offices for this unit in China, Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, and New York City.[37] That year they also began a partnership with Cognizant, to develop block-chain methods of securing the banks private records.[38]
Mizuho splits its business into four distinct divisions, on a global basis:
Mizuho is active inretail banking with 515 branches and over 11,000automated teller machines (ATMs).[40] Mizuho Bank is the only bank, other thanJapan Post Bank, to have branches in everyprefecture in Japan.[41] It serves over 26 million Japanese households,[42] 90,000SME customers, 2500 corporations,[43] and retail brokerage clients under the name Mizuho Investors Securities nationwide, with $114 billion in retail customer assets under its management as of 2016.[44]
Mizuho predecessors, theDai-Ichi Kangyo Bank (DKB), theFuji Bank (Fuji) and theIndustrial Bank of Japan (IBJ), had great control over many Japanese companies throughkeiretsu system. The three banks led theDKB Group,Fuyo Group and theIBJ Group respectively. The Fuyo Group traces its history as far back as the oldYasuda zaibatsu. Even now, seven out of ten companies listed on theTokyo Stock Exchange have dealings with Mizuho.[45]
Asset Management One manages a number of ETFs which are listed in Japan, but some of these ETFs are very illiquid because no market maker was appointed. For example, One ETF Gold (1683:JP) frequently trades at a discount of more than 10% to the NAV.[46][47]
Mizuho is a sponsor of theTokyo International Marathon[48] and the2020 Olympic Games and2020 Paralympic Games.[49]
In September 2013, a routine regulatory control unveiled that Mizuho enabled loans of up to $1.9 million to theyakuza (Japanese mafia). It also appeared that loans to the mob had been approved through its affiliate credit company Orient Corp. This scandal led to the resignation of the group's CEO Takashi Tsukamoto.[50][51]
In December 2019, a report named Mizuho as the top private lender to coal developers between January 2017 and September 2019.[52] In March 2020, Japanese NGO Kiko Network filed the first climate related shareholder resolution with a Japanese company proposing Mizuho align its investments with the goals of the Paris Agreement,[53] which was followed by investor support for the resolution.[54] In response, Mizuho has agreed not to finance any further coal projects, and to end all existing loans for coal projects by the year 2050.[55]
Mizuho Financial Group will stop financing new coal power projects and end all loans for coal by 2050, bowing to pressure from a group of leading investors for climate concessions ahead of the bank's annual shareholders' meeting in June.
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| National | |
