Mizuho Financial Group

The Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. (株式会社みずほフィナンシャルグループ, Kabushiki-gaisha Mizuho Finansharu Gurūpu), known from 2000 to 2003 as Mizuho Holdings and abbreviated as MHFG or simply Mizuho, is a Japanese banking holding company headquartered in the Ōtemachi district of Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The group was formed in 2000–2002 by merger of Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, Fuji Bank, and Industrial Bank of Japan. The name mizuho (瑞穂) literally means "abundant rice" in Japanese and "harvest" in the figurative sense.

Mizuho Financial Group is the parent holding of Mizuho Bank, Mizuho Trust & Banking, Mizuho Securities, and Mizuho Capital, and the majority owner of Asset Management One. The group offers a range of financial services, including banking, securities, trust and asset management services, employing more than 59,000 people throughout 880 offices. It is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange—where it is a constituent of the Nikkei 225 and TOPIX Core30 indices—and in the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American depositary receipts.

Upon its founding, Mizuho was the largest bank in the world by assets. Following further consolidation, it has become the third-largest of Japan's so-called megabanks with total assets of $1.9 trillion at end-March 2023, behind Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group ($2.9 trillion) and SMBC Group ($2.0 trillion). Mizuho was the 15th largest banking institution in the world by total assets as of December 2018, and the 90th largest company in the world according to Forbes rankings as of May 2017. It has been consistently listed as a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board.

The history of the banks that formed Mizuho combines multiple threads of Japanese financial history, going back to the early Meiji era and particularly the establishment in 1873 of Dai-Ichi Bank, Japan's first modern bank and joint-stock company led by Shibusawa Eiichi, if not even earlier with the foundation of trading house Yasuda-ya in 1864. In addition to Dai-Ichi (whose name literally means "number one"), Mizuho also incorporates several of the subsequent National Banks in Meiji Japan which were numbered in accordance with their chronological date of establishment until 1880:

The group's predecessors also include Nippon Kangyo Bank (est. 1897) and Industrial Bank of Japan (est. 1902), two institutions founded as policy banks in the Meiji era and converted into commercial banks after World War II.

Mizuho was established in 2000 as Mizuho Holdings, Inc. by the merger of Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, Fuji Bank, and the Industrial Bank of Japan, first announced in 1999. It was the first financial holding company structure created among major Japanese banks.

On 1 April 2002, DKB, Fuji and IBJ were officially and legally combined into two banks, Mizuho Bank, Ltd. and Mizuho Corporate Bank, Ltd., through a split and merger process reorganizing the three legacy banks. Initially Mizuho traded under the ticker symbol MHHD on the London Stock Exchange. Mizuho Corporate Bank focused on large corporations, financial institutions and public sector entities in Japan and overseas, whereas Mizuho Bank focused on individuals and small and medium-sized companies in Japan.

The merger resulted in the world's first trillion-dollar banking group, with its $1.2 trillion in assets, surpassing the next largest bank by about $480 billion. The move has been considered to have formed one of the first "mega-institutions" in the financial industry, beginning a trend in the industry of large-scale bank mergers referred to in Japan as the consolidation movement during the 2000s. While other mega-institutions were composed of one major player and several minor ones, Mizuho was composed of three relatively equal institutions in terms of their size and influence. It remained the largest mega-bank in the world until 2005.