Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. engages in banking, trust banking, securities and other businesses related to financial services.
The company provides a broad range of financial services in domestic and overseas markets. The company’s principal activities and subsidiaries are:
Mizuho Bank provides a wide range of financial products and services mainly in relation to deposits, lending and exchange settlement to individuals, small and medium-sized enterprises (‘SMEs’), large corporations, financial...
Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. engages in banking, trust banking, securities and other businesses related to financial services.
The company provides a broad range of financial services in domestic and overseas markets. The company’s principal activities and subsidiaries are:
Mizuho Bank provides a wide range of financial products and services mainly in relation to deposits, lending and exchange settlement to individuals, small and medium-sized enterprises (‘SMEs’), large corporations, financial institutions, public sector entities and foreign corporations, including foreign subsidiaries of Japanese corporations.
Mizuho Trust & Banking provides products and services related to trust, real estate, securitization and structured finance, pension and asset management and stock transfer agency; and
Mizuho Securities provides full-line securities services to individuals, corporations, financial institutions and public sector entities.
The company also provides products and services such as those related to trust and custody, asset management, private banking, research services, information technology-related services and advisory services for financial institutions through various subsidiaries and affiliates.
Group Operations
Group Management Structure
The company operates its group through five in-house companies, which determine and promote strategies group-wide across banking, trust banking, securities and other business areas according to customer segments, and two units that support all the in-house companies.
The company system is classified into the following five in-house companies and two units: the Retail & Business Banking Company, the Corporate & Investment Banking Company, the Global Corporate & Investment Banking Company, the Global Markets Company, the Asset Management Company, the Global Transaction Banking Unit and the Research & Consulting Unit.
Retail & Business Banking Company
The Retail & Business Banking Company is responsible for customer segments consisting of individual customers, SMEs and middle-market corporations, and engages in consulting services that integrate banking, trust banking, securities and other functions within the Mizuho group, as well as providing convenient financial services by leveraging advanced technologies and forming alliances with other companies.
For individual customers, the Retail & Business Banking Company will strive to improve the company’s capacity to provide consulting services, including on asset management and asset succession, while working on the development and provision of convenient services by leveraging advanced technologies and forming alliances with other companies and institutions.
As a reliable partner in an era of lengthening lifespans, the company supports customers who has concerns about their long-term plans, and in addition to the consulting services that combine banking, trust banking and securities functions, it offers its customers asset formation support that utilizes advanced technologies, such as AI-powered asset management advisory services and asset management support utilizing remote channels, etc. Accordingly, in addition to strengthening the company’s efforts related to NISA and iDeCo, an individual type of defined contribution pension plan, it will strengthen financial education through seminars.
Furthermore, to support smooth asset succession, the company provides products and services that utilize its trust functions such as Multifunctional Safety Trust and will trusts, and inheritance arrangement services.
With respect to the loan business, the company has expanded its line of housing loan and card loan products and offer various products and services in response to each customer’s life stage, including products that meet a diverse range of needs, internet-based services and the development of a new business model that utilizes advanced technology.
The company also provides products and services to officers and employees of its corporate clients, such as opening accounts for payroll, providing housing loans, management of retirement payments, etc.
In addition, to increase customer convenience, the company has enhanced the efficiency of its branch and ATM network throughout Japan. As part of these efforts, the company pushed for banking, trust banking and securities services to be provided at the same location, including by setting up Mizuho Securities’ ‘Planet Booths’ in the branches and offices of Mizuho Bank.
The company has also made efforts to enhance customer convenience. For example, the company is engaging in collaboration with other companies and are utilizing advanced technologies to offer new financial and other services and to enhance the quality of its internet and smart phone services, in light of changing customer needs due to ongoing digitalization.
On November 13, 2024, Mizuho Financial Group agreed to enter a strategic capital and business alliance with Rakuten Card Co., Ltd., a consolidated subsidiary of Rakuten Group, Inc. Through this alliance, Mizuho Financial Group has acquired 14.99% of Rakuten Card Co., Ltd. from Rakuten Group.
Further, the company undertakes business related to lottery tickets, such as the sales of lottery tickets issued by prefectures and ordinance-designated cities.
For small- and medium-sized enterprises and middle-market firms, the Retail & Business Banking Company provides solutions with respect to both types of needs: management issues such as business development, and the personal issues of customers who are business owners, such as asset inheritance and management, etc.
In response to increasing customer needs related to their growth strategy or business succession in an unclear business environment, the company offers multi-layered solutions in response to the various development stages of its customers’ businesses through the combined strength of the company’s entire group, including banking, trust banking and securities, based on a customer-focused approach.
Specifically, the company offers syndicated loans, advisory services related to overseas expansions, mergers and acquisitions-related services, and business matching services, depending on the customers’ business strategies, in addition to brokering financial products and expanding the customer base for its trustee business for defined contribution pension plans, combining financial services and advanced advisory services.
Using the company’s succession and property know-how, it actively offers solutions for optimal and smooth business succession and asset inheritance, including the inheritance of business ownership and corporate stock as well as corporate reorganization, addressing both individual and corporate needs.
Moreover, the company leverages its existing customer base to support the growth of innovative companies that show future promise by means of finance and other solutions.
At the same time, the company intends to collaborate openly with those both inside and outside the Mizuho group to provide new value incorporating both financial and non-financial products and services, as a partner for individual customers’ life plans and corporate customers’ growth strategies and business succession.
Corporate & Investment Banking Company
The Corporate & Investment Banking Company is responsible for customer segments consisting of large companies, financial institutions and public-sector entities in Japan, and provides custom-designed solutions for each client on a group-wide basis to meet their needs for both financial or non-financial products and services through investment banking product functions, such as M&A and businesses related to real estate.
For large corporate customers, based on the company’s solid customer relationships and utilizing its global industry knowledge, the company does not only provide financing, but also group-wide financial solutions such as fund management, underwriting of equity and bonds, M&A advisory and risk hedging products, etc., on a global basis to meet their needs in fund-raising, investment, management and financial strategies.
Mizuho Bank and Mizuho Securities has introduced a dual-hat structure in Japan. Through inter-sectoral group collaboration, they provide the company’s customers with solutions tailored to their capital management, business strategy and financial strategy.
Mizuho Bank and Mizuho Trust & Banking together provide solutions related to real estate, where the company has a leading track record in the industry in Japan. They also work together in the areas of pensions, asset securitization, securities management, stock transfer agent matters, consulting matters, etc., in response to the company’s customers’ diversified needs.
For financial institutions, the company offers advisory services and solutions, such as advice on financial strategy and proposals on various investment products, by concentrating its diverse financial expertise from each group company to meet the increasingly sophisticated and diversified needs of customers.
For public sector customers, as a leading bank with a wealth of experience and a solid track record, the company provides optimal financial services group-wide that include funding support as a trustee and underwriter of public bonds, and services as a designated financial institution. In addition, in the field of revitalizing rural regions in Japan, an important matter to the Japanese economy, the company engages in Public Private Partnerships/Private Finance Initiatives (PPP and PFI) projects in collaboration with regional financial institutions, national and regional government entities and their affiliates.
The company will build new relationships with customers and endeavor to realize value co-creation and co-prosperity based on changes in customer needs in response to changes in social and industrial structures.
The environment that the company’s customers are facing is changing rapidly due to such factors as the progress of industry transformation and society’s heightened interest in sustainability, as well as intensified geopolitical risks. Under such circumstances, the company strives to become a value co-creation partner for its customers to help them achieve sustainable growth by providing solutions with in-depth industry- and product-specific knowledge through the combined strength of the company’s banking, trust banking, securities, and research and technology functions.
Global Corporate & Investment Banking Company
The Global Corporate & Investment Banking Company is responsible for customer segments consisting of both Japanese companies operating outside Japan and non-Japanese companies and provides various solutions by taking advantage of the company’s deep understanding of its clients’ businesses and the company’s strengths in corporate finance and transaction banking, such as lending and corporate bond underwriting.
For the company’s Japanese corporate customers, it provides integrated support both in and outside Japan to help them expand their overseas operations. The company offers highly specialized services that use its advanced financial technologies and expertise. Particularly in Asia, the company supports Japanese corporate customers developing new markets by offering advisory and other services.
In addition, through the company’s Global 300 Strategy, which involves focusing on a group of approximately 300 blue-chip non-Japanese companies, it is expanding business with non-Japanese corporate customers.
Meanwhile, the company is enhancing its channels with customers to strengthen the framework to support their business outside Japan. The company is forming business alliances with local financial institutions and government-affiliated institutions to provide up-to-date local information to its customers. The company is also enhancing its service framework to address the diverse business needs of customers.
On April 5, 2025, Mizuho Bank Europe N.V., a local subsidiary of Mizuho Bank in Amsterdam, Netherlands, as the surviving company, merged with Mizuho Securities Europe GmbH, a local subsidiary of Mizuho Securities in Frankfurt, Germany. Mizuho Bank Europe N.V. transitioned to a universal bank model, which integrates its banking and securities businesses on April 7, 2025, and will be better able to provide comprehensive financial services and meet its valued clients’ expectations.
Global Markets Company
The Global Markets Company is responsible for market-related businesses, engages in sales and trading services for a wide range of customers, from individuals to institutional investors, by offering market products to meet their risk hedging and asset management needs, and conducts ALM and investment business, including stable capital raising and balance sheet management as well as management of fixed income, equity and other securities portfolios.
To become a top-class Asian player in the global markets, the company’s basic strategy is to enhance its presence in the market so that the company can develop the most suitable products and organizational structure based on arising customer needs.
With respect to the sales and trading business, the company has continued to promote the integration of banking and securities functions and expand the product lineup to diversify its revenue base.
Against the backdrop of the mitigated restrictions of the firewall regulation in Japan, the company will further deepen the integration of banking and securities functions in Japan and will continue to accelerate the integration in other parts of Asia.
The company strives for stable and efficient operations on a global basis to contribute to the well-being of the overall business performance of the Mizuho group. Moreover, the company is promoting sustainability in various functions of sales and trading, investment and fund-raising businesses.
Asset Management Company
The Asset Management Company is responsible for businesses related to asset management, and provides products and services that meet the asset management needs of the company’s wide range of customers, from individuals to institutional investors, through the collaboration between the group’s banking, trust banking and securities functions, as well as Asset Management One Co., Ltd.
For individual customers, the company offers investment products that contribute to their medium- to long-term asset formation to meet their various needs.
For institutional investors such as pension funds, the company makes its asset management capabilities more sophisticated and offer comprehensive solution services to meet their diversified and sophisticated asset management needs.
The company offers its customers investment products that are best suited to them by strengthening the company’s asset management capabilities in collaboration with its group companies and affiliates such as the New York subsidiary and other foreign subsidiaries of Asset Management One that are established for diversified global investments; Asset Management One Alternative Investments, Ltd. located in Tokyo, that selects and offers hedge funds, and Matthews Asia, an independent, privately owned firm and the largest dedicated Asia investment specialist in the United States.
In addition, in various product fields, the company focuses on developing and offering products through collaboration with BlackRock, Inc., Partner Group AG and Golub Capital.
On February 28, 2025, the company announced that it has entered into an agreement with State Street Corporation to sell to said company the global custody and related businesses of Mizuho Trust & Banking (Luxembourg) S.A., which is a local subsidiary of Mizuho Trust & Banking Co., Ltd. in Luxembourg, and Mizuho Bank (USA), which is a local subsidiary of Mizuho Bank in the U.S., subject to notification to the relevant authorities and obtaining permits therefrom.
Global Transaction Banking Unit
The Global Transaction Banking Unit is in charge of providing transaction banking solution services to customers in a wide range of segments, including corporate clients and investors.
In the transaction business, the company provides various solutions in accordance with customer needs and the character of their business as follows:
For the company’s corporate customers, it offers various financial services and products such as online banking, cash management solutions, domestic/foreign currency transaction services and trade finance on a global basis.
For financial institutions and institutional investors, the company promotes custody and yen correspondence settlement.
In addition, the company is further expanding its range of services in collaboration with its group companies and leveraging the latest technological innovations.
Furthermore, the company will closely collaborate with offices in Japan and around the world to respond with flexibility on a global basis to a diverse range of needs of its customers, especially for cash management, settlements and other transaction banking services. In addition, the company is working to provide solutions from a long-term perspective by capturing market trends in various business areas such as enhancement of business functionalities in light of the progress in digital transformation while maintaining its role as a stable settlement platform.
Research & Consulting Unit
The Research & Consulting Unit offers a wide variety of solutions with research functions that provide deep analysis, spanning from industrial to macroeconomic analysis and consulting functions that cover many fields, from specialized areas, such as the environment to business strategies.
In the research field, the company conducts deep investigations and wide-ranging analyses from macro-economics to industry and corporate trends, and link research and business origination functions.
In the consulting field, the company also offers a wide range of functions to help solve various issues that companies face, including those regarding management, HR planning, sustainable transformation and digital transformation strategy, and the creation of new businesses, as well as social issues within the public sector, including environment & energy, infrastructure and health care.
In addition to the acceleration of digitalization, the rapid development of sustainability trends, such as decarbonization, resource circulation and human rights have been further diversifying the company’s customers’ needs. By taking initiatives such as enhancing the sophistication of research and expansion of consulting functions and by utilizing the company’s industry and economic expertise, including those in relation to social issues and corporate management, which will be the source of its enhanced competitiveness, the company intends to provide advanced and progressive value for helping address the issues of its customers and of society.
On September 30, 2024, Mizuho Financial Group began examining the integration of Mizuho Bank and Mizuho Research & Technologies, Ltd. By integrating personnel with expertise in research, consulting, IT, and technology development with banking personnel, Mizuho Financial Group will qualitatively transform its business and will offer products and services with higher added value to customers and society.
Competition
The company’s major competitors in Japan include:
Japan’s other major banking groups: Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group.
Government financial institutions: These include Japan Finance Corporation, Japan Post Bank, Development Bank of Japan and Japan Bank for International Cooperation.
Supervision and Regulation
The Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (Kinyu Shouhin Torihiki Hou) requires Mizuho Financial Group to file with the Director-General of the Kanto Local Finance Bureau an annual securities report including consolidated and non-consolidated financial statements in respect of each financial period, supplemented by a semiannual securities report (starting from the fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, instead of a quarterly securities report that the company was required to file until the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024, due to certain amendments to this law that became effective on April 1, 2024) and extraordinary reports.
Under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, registered Financial Instruments Business Operators (kinyu-shouhin torihiki gyousha), such as Mizuho Securities, as well as Registered Financial Institutions (touroku kinyu kikan), such as Mizuho Bank and Mizuho Trust & Banking, are required to provide customers with detailed disclosure regarding the financial products they offer and take other measures to protect investors, including providing explanatory information, to such customers prior to the conclusion of transactional agreements in a manner and to the extent necessary for customers to understand based on their attributes, and upon the conclusion of transactional agreements.
The Act on the Protection of Personal Information (Kojin Jouhou no Hogo ni kansuru Houritsu) (Act No. 57 of 2003, as amended) and related guidelines impose various requirements on businesses, including the company, that use databases containing personal information, such as appropriate custody of such information and restrictions on information sharing with third parties.
Mizuho Financial Group, Mizuho Bank and Mizuho Americas are financial holding companies (‘FHCs’) within the meaning of the U.S. Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, as amended (the ‘BHCA’), and are subject to regulation and supervision thereunder by the Federal Reserve.
The New York branch of Mizuho Bank is licensed and subject to supervision, examination and regulation by the New York State Department of Financial Services (‘NYDFS’) as well as by the Federal Reserve. Each other U.S. branch and representative office of Mizuho Bank is also licensed and subject to regulation and examination by the state banking authority of the state in which such branch or representative office is located. The deposits of Mizuho Bank’s U.S. branches are not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (‘FDIC’).
On the other hand, Mizuho Bank (USA) is a New York state-chartered bank that is a member of the Federal Reserve System whose deposits are insured by the FDIC. As such, Mizuho Bank (USA) is subject to regulation, supervision and examination by the Federal Reserve and the NYDFS, as well as relevant FDIC regulation. As an FDIC-insured institution, Mizuho Bank (USA) is subject to regular insurance assessments by the FDIC, as well as occasional ‘special assessments.’
In the United States, U.S.-registered broker-dealers are regulated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the ‘SEC’).
Mizuho Americas is the holding company for the company’s U.S. bank subsidiary, Mizuho Bank (USA), its U.S. securities broker-dealer, Mizuho Securities USA LLC, and certain other of the company’s U.S. subsidiaries.
The company is a Category III FBO as delineated by the Tailoring Rule as of the end of December 2024.
Under Section 13 of the U.S. Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 BHCA (as amended by the EGRRCPA) and its implementing regulations, also known as the ‘Volcker Rule,’ any insured depository institution, subject to certain exceptions including for a depository institution that, together with every company that controls it, has $10 billion or less in total consolidated assets and trading assets and liabilities that are less than 5% of total consolidated assets, any company that controls such an institution, any non-U.S. bank with branches in the United States, such as Mizuho Bank, and any affiliate or subsidiary of such entities (each, a ‘banking entity’) is prohibited from engaging in proprietary trading or from investing in or sponsoring private equity or hedge funds, subject to certain limited exceptions.
History
Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. was founded in 2000. The company was incorporated in 2003.
