When Michal Katz joined Mizuho in late 2019, the bank ranked No. 24 in global investment banking league tables. It now sits at No. 11. One more rung and Mizuho breaks into the top 10, a publicly stated goal of its senior leadership and something that Katz has made the organizing principle of everything her division does.
"Fiscal 2026 is all about execution," she said. "How do we come in and provide our clients with a solution?"
The focus on execution comes after a couple of years of building a platform that the bank can deploy effectively worldwide. It was the 2023 acquisition of Greenhill, the boutique M&A and restructuring firm, which added a global footprint to Mizuho's existing lending and capital markets strengths. "From a product or solution perspective, the Greenhill acquisition has been an absolute home run," Katz said. But the real test of any acquisition is not what it adds on paper. It is what it enables in practice. For Katz, the answer runs through Tokyo.
Japan has become the most distinctive competitive edge in Mizuho's franchise. Katz has led delegations of some 20 bankers into Mizuho's home market over the past two years, generating about 80 client meetings with Japanese corporates per trip. Mizuho now services more than 80% of Japan's publicly traded universe.
Japan is undergoing what Katz calls an economic awakening: monetary policy normalization, investment in industrials like the defense industry and corporate governance reforms pushing companies toward shareholder value creation. The deal flow that has resulted moves in both directions. Alphabet and Berkshire Hathaway have raised yen-denominated debt through Mizuho's network, while Japanese trading houses are deploying capital into the U.S. at scale.
Mizuho advised Mitsubishi on its $7.5 billion acquisition of Aethon Energy assets and brought Marubeni in as a buyer for an Apollo portfolio company. "Despite much of the talk around deglobalization I would rather say that there has been a realignment," Katz said.
That Japan edge showed up in one of the year's most iconic transactions. On the SpaceX IPO Mizuho was the sole Japanese bank in the syndicate and booked more than $6 billion in orders from Japanese retail investors for the deal. The team also was bookrunner on the previous year's largest IPO, Medline's $7.2 billion fundraise. Mizuho advised on multibillion-dollar deals including for NorthWestern Energy on its merger and for Skechers on the 3G Capital take-private transaction.
Mizuho's IBM relationship illustrates how Katz earns mandates larger rivals miss. Eyal Ofir, IBM's global head of M&A, said Mizuho did something unusual in its advisory work on IBM's acquisition of Cognitus: it surfaced a company IBM didn't already know. "It was the first time somebody … hustled their way into finding relevant connections," Ofir said. "To find somebody relevant that we don't know is quite unusual."
IBM has a large in-house M&A function and does not routinely engage outside advisors. Mizuho, earning the mandate as external advisor, speaks to the relationship Katz has built at the senior level. "I really feel like she's become a friend," Ofir added. "That's not the case for most bankers."
Katz measures the platform's success not just in rankings but in people. She has invested heavily in Mizuho's VP development program, drawing on the apprenticeship model she benefited from earlier in her career. "I started with people," she said, "and I want to finish with people."
