OREANDA-NEWS. Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. (MHFG) subsidiary Mizuho Bank, Ltd. (MHBK) today submitted a business improvement plan to the Japanese Financial Services Agency based on the business improvement order (No. 2094) that it received on September 27, 2013. (See attached MHBK press release regarding the business improvement order for details.)

MHFG would like to take this opportunity to express our most sincere apologies to our valued customers and other stakeholders for the inconvenience and concern that we have caused in relation to this business improvement order.

In light of the order, MHFG has investigated all of our subsidiaries in Japan in relation to the status of their control of transactions with anti-social elements. Specifically, these investigations included whether appropriate management reporting and process control frameworks are in place within each group subsidiary, whether there are transactions with similar structures as the current problematic captive loan scheme (also referred to as "tie-up loans", "joint loans", and "four-party loans"), and whether attribute verifications are performed at both entry and post-execution stages of credit transactions. The investigations did not find any new anti-social transactions other than the transactions under the captive loan scheme in MHBK.