Mizuho Holdings Inc., the holding company for the world's largest banking group, the Mizuho Financial Group, is planning to reshuffle its top management next April and will name Terunobu Maeda as its new president, banking industry sources said Saturday.

Maeda currently serves as vice president of Fuji Bank, one of the three banks belonging to the group.

The reshuffle is designed to facilitate the disposal of bad loans at the Mizuho Financial Group, which also includes Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank and the Industrial Bank of Japan.

Maeda, 56, will take over from the current president of Mizuho Holdings, Katsuyuki Sugita, who heads DKB. Sugita will announce his resignation Monday afternoon.

The holding company's two chairmen -- Yoshiro Yamamoto, Fuji Bank president, and Masao Nishimura, president of IBJ -- and the six deputy presidents will also step down.

The three banks comprising the Mizuho Financial Group will be transformed into two entities -- one offering services for individuals and small companies and the other catering to large corporations -- in April 2002.

The Mizuho Financial Group is likely to end in the red in the year to March 31, under the weight of 2 trillion yen in losses from the disposal of bad loans. The group's net loss may reach 600 billion yen.

The forecast is largely attributed to surging securities appraisal losses from the recent stock market slump and burgeoning costs for the disposal of nonperforming loans.

The group's banks apparently raised their loan loss reserves for struggling major borrowers amid ongoing special inspections by the Financial Services Agency.

Other restructuring efforts will include increasing the number of branch offices to be integrated or shut down by March 2005 by around 30 from the currently planned 153.

The three banks will also consider cutting employees' salaries and special retirement allowances to board members, the sources said.

The Mizuho group banks will announce April-September first half earnings results on Monday.