Mizuho Financial Group Inc will pursue a digital route if it decides to follow its Japanese competitors into retail banking in Asia’s fast-growing emerging markets, chief executive officer Tatsufumi Sakai said.
Japan’s third-largest banking group is more likely to either buy an online lender or build one from scratch itself, rather than acquire banks with physical branches, Sakai said in an interview.
“We don’t intend to enter legacy consumer business at this point,” he said. “We’re more interested in a digital business model.”
Photo: Bloomberg
Japan’s biggest banks have made Asia their focus as persistently low interest rates and a sluggish economy hurt prospects at home.
Mizuho’s approach would mark a sharp contrast with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc, which have spent billions of dollars acquiring traditional commercial lenders in Southeast Asia in recent years.
While Mizuho does not have any specific plans to get into retail banking in emerging Asia right now, the region has huge growth potential and a young population that is embracing digital technology for banking, Sakai said.
“The need for financial services will no doubt increase,” he said.
With the weakest capital ratio among the three Japanese banks, Mizuho has less room to make acquisitions of the scale that its rivals have achieved. At home, it is reducing its retail branch network and bolstering digital channels, according to a five-year business plan released last month.
Sakai, 59, also spoke of ambitions to expand transaction banking for corporate clients in Asia.
Handling more money transfers and cash flows for companies would allow the bank to boost its overseas deposits, providing a relatively cheap source of foreign-currency funding.
Mizuho and its rivals have been aggressively expanding overseas lending, which generates bigger margins than domestic loans.
“It’s important to secure as much as client deposit money as a stable funding source” to continue expanding lending abroad, Sakai said.
While there has been ample liquidity in the past three years, “we expect the funding environment will become tighter,” he said.
Sakai ruled out the idea of acquiring a US bank to expand Mizuho’s dollar deposits, given the costs of buying and integrating a local lender, along with regulatory issues.
SEASONAL WEAKNESS: The combined revenue of the top 10 foundries fell 5.4%, but rush orders and China’s subsidies partially offset slowing demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) further solidified its dominance in the global wafer foundry business in the first quarter of this year, remaining far ahead of its closest rival, Samsung Electronics Co, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. TSMC posted US$25.52 billion in sales in the January-to-March period, down 5 percent from the previous quarter, but its market share rose from 67.1 percent the previous quarter to 67.6 percent, TrendForce said in a report. While smartphone-related wafer shipments declined in the first quarter due to seasonal factors, solid demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) devices and urgent TV-related orders
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) yesterday announced the launch of the TSMC-UTokyo Lab to promote advanced semiconductor research, education and talent development. The lab is TSMC’s first laboratory collaboration with a university outside Taiwan, the company said in a statement. The lab would leverage “the extensive knowledge, experience, and creativity” of both institutions, the company said. It is located in the Asano Section of UTokyo’s Hongo, Tokyo, campus and would be managed by UTokyo faculty, guided by directors from UTokyo and TSMC, the company said. TSMC began working with UTokyo in 2019, resulting in 21 research projects,
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) yesterday expressed a downbeat view about the prospects of humanoid robots, given high manufacturing costs and a lack of target customers. Despite rising demand and high expectations for humanoid robots, high research-and-development costs and uncertain profitability remain major concerns, Lam told reporters following the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Taoyuan. “Since it seems a bit unworthy to use such high-cost robots to do household chores, I believe robots designed for specific purposes would be more valuable and present a better business opportunity,” Lam said Instead of investing in humanoid robots, Quanta has opted to invest
RSS