Mizuho’s $550 million acquisition of Greenhill in 2023 has given the Japanese financial supermarket, in its own words, “all the capabilities inside our institution” to become a top-10 global investment bank, said CEO Masahiro Kihara in an interview with the Financial Times (September 12, 2025). He added: “We have the aspiration to ratchet up the league table in global corporate and investment banking,” and “I think Greenhill will be the catalyst for that.”
But does the market agree?
Is Greenhill truly Mizuho’s springboard into the global top 10? Is Greenhill’s reputation — in essence, its key asset and the primary rationale for the acquisition — genuinely the catalyst Mizuho expects it to be?
Warren Buffett once warned a group of managers at Salomon Brothers in the aftermath of the 1991 trading scandal: “If you lose dollars for the firm by bad decisions, I will be very understanding. If you lose reputation for the firm, I will be ruthless.” (Source: J. Fuerbringer, New York Times, August 27, 1991).
A strong reputation has a shelf life, and in today’s fast-changing world, it can fade quickly. Built on admiration, excellence, and status, reputation is like water — always flowing somewhere. As a business asset, it is definable, measurable, and, interestingly, always improvable.
With this in mind, a new study set out to identify the most respected wholesale banks operating in Europe. The goal was to create the equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize for wholesale banking — that is, for banks providing commercial, corporate, and/or investment banking services.
To come up with the definitive list of elite wholesale banks in Europe, over 4,000 C-level executives and senior managers from Fortune Global 500 and Forbes Global 2000 companies nominated their top banks operating in Europe (i.e., European and non-European banks). Banks were rated on six key success factors: [1] client centricity, [2] external engagement, [3] competitiveness, [4] quality of leadership and employees, [5] innovativeness, and [6] business model efficiency and effectiveness (indicators include the bank’s agility, client responsiveness, and reliability).
Recently, the report “Mizuho — Banking Beyond Limits” was published. It is the definitive report card on Mizuho’s reputation and performance, as seen through the eyes of this influential group of decision-makers. “Mizuho — Banking Beyond Limits” focuses exclusively on the bank — independently, systematically, comprehensively. It offers unique data and dozens of actionable insights and recommendations for Mizuho, its peers, investors, and other stakeholders.
More details are available at www.pieterklaasjagersma.com/reports/mizuho-banking-beyond-limits.
[Note: A few years ago, I wrote a book about Greenhill's reputation and performance entitled ‘On Becoming Extraordinary: Decoding Greenhill and Other Star Professional Service Firms’ (ISBN 9798630508621]
— published on LinkedIn | 02.17.26