Despite a steady two-year decline in mergers-and-acquisitions activity, Michal Katz, head of investment and corporate banking at Mizuho Americas, saw an opportunity in the business for her investment bank.
When the bank acquired the Greenhill M&A advisory firm for $550 million last December, deal volume had been dropping after hitting record levels in 2021.
"We saw this as an opportunity to really double down," Katz said. "We knew that this was an area where we were looking to grow."
Katz knew that M&A deal activity was going to make a comeback, and the declining investment banking business for some of her competitors as well as the regional bank meltdowns of 2023 presented Mizuho with an opportunity to step up.
"Maybe it was the Warren Buffett contrarian philosophy: Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful," she said.
Katz leads nearly 1,000 employees in the investment banking division, including U.S., European and Asian operations. Her division provides
A self-described "builder who leads from the front," Katz said she is not "a build-it-and-they-will-come type of leader. I do think that you have to draw a vision, but while you do that you also have to execute and garner traction and lead by example."
Integrating Greenhill, which had 370 bankers and $300 million in annual revenue, and Capstone, a third-party private equity fundraising company Mizuho bought in 2022, will take time, Katz said. Building the M&A advisory business also requires recruiting talent with different skills than with the lending and capital markets business, she said. With M&A, calls are made to the CEOs and boards; in financing, the calls go to the assistant treasurers, treasurers and chief financial officers.
To broaden the base of its overall recruiting pipeline, in 2023, the investment bank started to recruit women as college sophomores — a year earlier than what is typical for the industry — to educate them about the industry and the firm at an earlier age, with the goal of convincing them to eventually work for Mizuho, she said.
"We all know that women make up more than 50% of the workforce and yet still constitute a fraction of that presence in senior positions," she said. "There's been a lot of data that demonstrate that the companies that have diversity, whether it be women or other minorities, have brought higher returns on equity, higher valuation and not just shareholder sponsorship, but also employee engagement and loyalty. And so I think the stakes are incredibly high."
Katz often sprinkles sports metaphors into her speech. For example, she said she always ends her Monday morning video call weekly update for the 1,000 or so division employees with: "Let's play ball." She sees a similar analogy for women working in finance.
"Women should raise their hand and ask for the 'at-bat,'" she said. "We're so concerned as to whether we have the skills, we have the capabilities, whether we're ready for the role. Step up to the plate. Ask for the 'at-bat.' What's the worst thing that can happen? No one bats 100%. Ask for the opportunity. Step up for the role."
