Mizuho's Stakeholders
Having articulated its fundamental ethical posture towards its stakeholders in the Mizuho Code of Conduct, Mizuho proactively undertakes communication activities and strives to ensure that its corporate activities are in harmony with common sense as well as being fair and transparent.
Mizuho classifies its stakeholders as follows: customers, shareholders, employees, regional/local communities, suppliers, competitors, and government authorities.
Mizuho recognizes the importance of our social responsibility and public mission as a global, open, and comprehensive financial group that represents Japan, and we will fulfill our social responsibilities by complying with laws and regulations, and by conducting sincere and fair corporate activities that do not conform to social norms regarding following issues.
- Discrimination
- Confidential Information management
- Environment, safety and health
- Conflicts of interest
- Corruption and bribery
- Antitrust/anti–competitive practices
- Money laundering and insider trading
- Whistleblower
Mizuho's Stakeholder Communication
Customers
Mizuho's customer base is extremely broad, including depositors, borrowers, trust consignors, and trust beneficiaries, and it ranges from individuals to enterprises. It is also geographically diverse, since we have customers around the world.
As well as paying careful attention to the comments we receive from customers through mechanisms such as customer feedback cards, call centers, and customer satisfaction surveys, we use television, newspapers, our website, and other media to transmit information. At the same time, we carry out two–way communication via direct dialog at branches and through our sales staff. The results of our communications are used in various ways, from improving products and services to enhancing the quality of our management.
Shareholders
Mizuho places one of its highest management priorities on continuing to disclose information to our shareholders and investors in a fair, timely, and appropriate manner, in order for them to form relevant judgments and appraisals of the Group. Mizuho works to enhance understanding about the Group through ordinary general meetings of shareholders as well as by holding various meetings intended for both individual and institutional investors.
Enhancing engagement with shareholders and investors
Employees
Mizuho considers its human resources to be its most important resource, and it also believes that the personal growth of each one of its employees will promote the sustained, stable growth of Mizuho. Based on these ideas, we are working in close cooperation with employees to create work environments in which each employee is highly motivated to work and can take great pride in his or her work.
In conjunction with our efforts to build sound work environments, we provide compliance education and training, ensure rigorous observance of labor laws, pay close attention to safety and health in the workplace, provide a hotline to address discrimination and sexual harassment, and conduct motivation surveys at the workplace.
Regional/Local Communities
Mizuho undertakes initiatives to revitalize local communities and organizes voluntary activities for executives and employees as part of its efforts to operate businesses that harmonize corporate and social profit as well as reflects the importance of contributing to the sustainable development of local communities and society at large.
Suppliers and Competitors
Mizuho's transactions with suppliers arise through orders for IT systems and purchases of goods and services.
We maintain healthy and transparent relationships with suppliers in order to ensure mutual prosperity by treating them as business partners who provide us with the best quality and services. To maintain trust in the Mizuho brand, we ask suppliers to understand "The Mizuho Code of Conduct."
In line with the principles of self–responsibility on which the market economic structure is premised, we compete in a fair, transparent, and free manner based on a strong sense of self–help and independence.
Our suppliers
Throughout our procurement operations, our aim is that both Mizuho and our suppliers will be able to positively contribute to development of a sustainable society and achieve mutual growth as business partners. To this end, we provide our Procurement Policy, Human Rights Policy, and Environmental Policy to our primary suppliers and ask them to familiarize themselves with the contents.
Also, we are purchasing environmentally friendly goods and services in line with our Environmental Policy and Procurement Policy. In regards to centralized purchasing of goods and services, in addition to requesting suppliers’ understanding of our policies, we make an effort to give priority to companies which are proactively pursuing environmental conservation, including resource and energy conservation.
Initiatives for purchasing environmentally friendly goods and services (PDF/127KB)
Government Authorities
Mizuho has multifaceted relationships with the governments of Japan and many other countries around the world. Whether it is a matter of following laws and regulations in conducting business, using public services necessary for business, lending funds for government or national projects, or borrowing funds from central banks, we endeavor to observe all national laws and maintain sound and normal relationships with domestic and foreign regulatory authorities and politicians with jurisdiction over our operations.
Maintain Sound and Normal Relationships with Government Authorities
Relationships with Public Officials, etc.
The Group has adopted a basic stance of maintaining healthy, transparent relationships with political and administrative entities and personnel and avoiding acts that encourage mutual dependence or collusion. To sustain this basic stance, it operates a strict compliance mechanism based on its compliance policies. The compliance manual also provides clear explanations of this basic stance and the compliance mechanism, and it promotes dissemination of knowledge about them through compliance training, etc.
For example, strict performance standards have been laid down to ensure that entertainment and the exchange of gifts with public officials, etc. (including politicians) do not promote expectations of special favors or encourage suspicions of bribery and corruption in relationships with politicians and administrators. Compliance officers at each unit and compliance control division are also obliged to implement a priori checks.
Relationships with Foreign Public Officials
With regard to relationships with foreign public officials, employees are obliged to check for conformity with the Unfair Competition Prevention Law, the criminal codes of host countries, and host country domestic laws based on the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.
Involvement with Political Activities
Concerning contributions to political activities, our policy is to carefully review such contributions to ensure that they are legal and do not imply a provision of interest.