To stem capital losses from slumping stock markets, the new president of Mizuho Financial Group Inc. has said he plans to reduce the megabank's ¥3 trillion in equity holdings by about 20 percent.
"Because ¥3 trillion is certainly a tremendous amount, we have long been considering the need to reduce a little more of our holdings," Mizuho President and Chief Executive Officer Takashi Tsukamoto said Wednesday in an interview with The Japan Times. "We hope they will be brought down to around half, or 50 percent of our Tier 1 capital."
Tier 1 capital is a bank's core capital and is often used to gauge its financial health. Mizuho's Tier 1 capital stood at ¥4.6 trillion as of December.