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(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. 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. 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.
Not all has been smooth-sailing, like Nippon Steel Corp.’s jumbo deal to buy United States Steel Corp., first announced last year. Its fate still remains unclear, with a US national security panel deadlocked on its review.
Kihara was not referring to Nippon Steel in his comments and declined to discuss any specific transaction.
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.