(Bloomberg) — Mizuho Financial Group Inc.’s efforts to expand its global mergers and acquisitions advisory business will likely get a boost from the incoming Donald Trump administration’s policies.
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Masahiro Kihara, the chief executive officer of Mizuho, Japan’s third-largest lender, is expecting President-elect Trump to make regulations more business friendly. This could aid the firm, which is seeking a bigger dealmaking presence in US financial markets and acquired boutique investment bank Greenhill & Co. last year.
“I think there are many positives for the US such as a pickup in M&As” as a result of Trump’s return, Kihara said in an interview. For foreign firms, though, “given ‘Make America Great Again,’ I don’t know yet how the acquisition of US companies by the Japanese will be viewed,” he said.
Japanese banks are chasing more business abroad as a shrinking population at home limits the growth outlook, and the global M&A market is one key target. The volume of deals this year has risen about 15% to reach $3.3 trillion worldwide after two years of declines, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Mizuho’s acquisition of Greenhill, which valued it at $550 million including debt, aims to speed up expansion in Americas by delivering the Japanese bank more than 80 M&A managing directors.
Mizuho expects to win more mandates advising cross-border deals by leveraging the client networks of Greenhill and Mizuho beyond the US, said Kihara, who has spent his entire career since 1989 in what’s become Mizuho after a merger of banks.
The CEO, who studied mid-career at Duke University School of Law, said he sees “many opportunities” for cross-border transactions, such as those between the US and Asia as well as the US and Australia.
For itself, Mizuho is focusing on a smooth integration with Greenhill, before considering any further acquisitions in the US, Kihara said. But it’s open to opportunities in asset management companies like Golub Capital, he said. Mizuho bought a minority stake in the US private credit manager earlier this year.
The Greenhill deal will help Mizuho compete with top M&A firms like Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley, the head of the Japanese bank’s US securities unit said last year after the transaction was announced.