Japan: Mizuho leads as megabanks look overseas

The move might turn out to have much further-reaching consequences than the Japanese bank’s higher-profile purchase of a stake in Merrill Lynch earlier in the month. The acquisition of a small stake in a Wall Street bank looks like a purely financial investment of spare capital, whereas the Russian adventure indicates the increasing desire of Japan’s largest commercial banks to seek profits overseas, as the domestic markets offer little joy.

A Tokyo-based M&A banker at a bulge-bracket firm sums up market perception of Mizuho’s $1.2