As other bankers wait out a volatile stock market, Michal Katz's dealmaking team is keeping busy and rapidly growing.
Katz, who works out of Mizuho's New York office, has headed investment and corporate banking for the Americas arm of the Japanese firm since 2019. In that time, she has grown the division's revenue by 40%, according to the bank.
And, in the past year, Katz has also expanded her team of bankers by 15%, partly through Mizuho's acquisition of Dallas-based Capstone Partners last July. The purchase boosted Mizuho America's portfolio in private equity fundraising and added specialists in acquisition financing and capital markets.
Mizuho also announced in May its $550 million purchase of New York-based investment bank Greenhill & Co., a deal set to close by December pending regulatory approval. Greenhill will add 370 employees in 15 locations to the investment and corporate banking division, potentially expanding Katz's team to a total of 920 employees.
"We have been building out our debt capital markets, leveraged finance and equity capital markets, but have been underweight in M&A, which was a missing piece to the puzzle," Katz said. "The Greenhill acquisition enables us to gain significant scale in a highly lucrative and competitive market."
Katz has more than three decades of banking experience and has confidently completed a series of deals in financial markets where other bankers were skittish about the financial impact of inflation and interest rate hikes.
Mizuho America's investment division recently advised on biotechnology company Amgen's $24 billion bond issuance, a critical fundraising deal in the company's bid to buy Horizon Therapeutics. Katz called the Amgen debt offering a "pretty seamless transaction," adding that even in a challenging market there is an appetite for debt from a well-regarded and well-rated company.
Also, Mizuho advised on Mobileye's spin-off from Intel. Last October, Mobileye, a company that makes technology for self-driving vehicles, completed an initial public offering that raised $861 million.
One challenging deal, Katz said, was Mizuho America's role as a lender in the $6.6 billion refinance of the multiterminal JFK airport redevelopment project in New York. Katz came into the deal with questions about the aviation industry's post-COVID recovery.
Part of Katz's management approach is encouraging employees to engage more in person with one another. She has helped organize events that offer employees the chance to eat meals together, attend happy hours or partake in morning yoga sessions. She is also seeking to minimize the use of Zoom and other types of remote communication as much as realistically possible when people are physically at work.
"The office should be about purposeful engagement, and in-person ideation, collaboration and relationship building," Katz said.
Katz is also a sponsor of Mizuhos' women's network. She led her division's first Sophomore Women Program and established a partnership with the Sponsor for Educational Opportunity, which places people from underrepresented communities in careers across corporate America.
Outside of Mizuho, Katz sits on the board of directors at PTC, a Boston-based computer software and services company.
Katz earned her undergraduate degree at Binghamton University. In May, she delivered the commencement address to Binghamton's School of Management.
"We can do what is expected of us," Katz said to the graduating class, "or we can blaze our own trail."
