Mizuho Seeks Expansion In India That Will Replicate US Success

Mizuho Financial Group Inc. is exploring ways to build up its business in India, where the Japanese bank sees the potential for replicating its achievements advising and financing corporate clients in other markets, according to a top executive.

“India is a growth opportunity in the medium term,” Suneel Bakhshi, deputy president at Japan’s third-largest lender, said in an interview in Tokyo.

Japanese banks are aggressively expanding in the world’s most populous nation, after spending more than a decade boosting operations in Southeast Asia. While rivals such as Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. — which bought a large stake in a local lender — are seeking to tap India’s vast consumer market, Bakhshi said Mizuho puts a priority on corporate and investment banking.

“The approach in India should and will mirror what we want to do globally, which is on the wholesale side rather than commercial,” he said, referring to serving corporate and institutional clients. “We need to be focused.”

Mizuho has been in talks to buy a majority stake in Indian investment bank Avendus Capital Pvt., though the discussions have stalled, Bloomberg News has reported. Bakhshi declined to comment on specific transactions.

Japanese banks aren’t the only foreign lenders investing in India, with Middle Eastern players including Dubai-based Emirates NBD Bank PJSC also prepared to take big stakes.

“I find tremendous interest in India from other geographies, such as the Middle East,” Bakhshi said.

Mizuho is ranked ninth among bookrunners of foreign-currency loans in India this year, trailing firms including Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and Sumitomo Mitsui, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The bank is 50th among advisers on mergers and acquisitions in the country.

Mizuho is trying to transplant its success in the US, where the focus on investment banking has placed it ahead of other Japanese banks in bond and equity underwriting. As part of that drive, Mizuho acquired boutique investment bank Greenhill & Co. in 2023. The firm is aiming to become Asia’s top investment bank in as early as five years.

“It is helping us with cross-border M&A mandates,” Bakhshi said of the Greenhill deal.

Bakhshi became Mizuho’s most senior non-Japanese executive in April when he was named deputy president. The industry veteran has three decades of experience at Citigroup Inc., where he served as chief of the US bank’s Japanese investment banking unit in the early 2010s.

At Mizuho, his mission is to boost cross-regional collaboration within the bank, which earns about 40% of its gross profit from global corporate and investment banking business.

“We want to pivot from being a Japanese bank with international operations to becoming a truly global bank,” he said. Bakhshi has offices in London and Tokyo and said he is constantly traveling around the world.

As part of the cross-regional drive, Mizuho last month named Thomas Hartnett as head of fixed income for the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He previously led fixed income for the Americas.

Bakhshi said a key to deepening Mizuho’s global ambitions is nurturing human resources, and cross-border moves of employees hired outside Japan is among ideas being studied.

“The opportunity going forward is to increase the number of non-Japanese staff who are working and living outside their mother country,” he said.