Thank you for gathering here today. Allow me to start today's investor presentation for fiscal year 2022 following the order of the presentation materials. This includes the medium-term business plan. I expect this presentation to last slightly longer than half an hour. First, please turn to page 2. Shown here is today's agenda, which starts with an overview of our achievements and our remaining agendas. We have also formulated our purpose. I would like to give you some background on this, after which I will be going over the new medium-term business plan, lastly, the capital policy. Please turn to page 4. As we have already announced the fiscal year 2022 financial results, I won't be going into the details. We made the decision to realize losses on foreign bonds.
Excluding these and foreign exchange effects, we succeeded in meeting consolidated net business profits annual target of JPY 860 billion. Page 5 contains the earnings plan for fiscal year 2023. We have set the consolidated net business profit target at JPY 900 billion, which incorporates a conservative foreign exchange rate of JPY 120 to the US dollar. We will maintain the momentum in the current uptrend in gross profits. Shown on the right are expenses. I believe higher expenses to be unavoidable due to increases in expenses from inflation, compensation improvements, and compliance with regulations, such as, for example, the upcoming shift to ISO and the need to enhance corporate governance in some areas.
On the other hand, we intended to tightly control the bottom line to maintain an expense ratio on the lower end of the 60%-70% range. As shown in the orange portion of the waterfall chart, we will be carrying out investment toward future growth, and this will be done while keeping an eye on the progress of gross profit in fiscal year 2023. Please turn to the next page. Shown here are our achievements, as previously announced. I believe the quality of profit has improved considerably, and we also reached our capital ratio target level. With that being said, I believe there is still room for improvement in terms of ROE, and there is a need to continue the further sale of cross-shareholdings. Please turn to page 7. This section continues on the topic of achievements, namely business structural reforms.
Customer group's net business profit has more than doubled from fiscal year 2016 levels. I believe we saw a series of achievements, but there remain a number of agendas that need to be tackled. Today, I will be focusing mainly on these remaining agendas, the first item for which is strengthening comprehensive asset management consulting function. We have been executing and advancing a global equity strategy, but one of the consequences of our having focused so intently on this strategy is that we lost flexibility in terms of proposals offered. There is a need for us to be able to devise and offer solutions specifically tailored to our clients' asset portfolio, so I believe there is a need to carry further changes to our sales style. Another agenda is that of digitalization.
I believe other Japanese mega banks and online banks have the upper hand when it comes to digitalization. We believe there is a need to thoroughly enhance client convenience through the use of digitalization. I believe the operating keyword going forward will be co-creation. No single individual can solve the challenges that will be emerging in the future on their own. It is therefore vital to bring our clients together, and in that sense, it will also be vital to improve the expert knowledge across our in-house companies and increase cooperation and co-creation amongst them. We will continue even further our efforts to identify and review low profitability businesses. Please turn to page eight pertaining to our corporate foundations. As shown on the left, we count a number of achievements here, such as the integration of offices and functions and the promotion of diverse work styles.
With that being said, several agendas remain to be addressed. I believe we still have a long way to go in our efforts to transform corporate culture, and there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of digital transformation. Additionally, as I will be touching upon later on in this presentation, another important item is the streamlining of IT system structures. Other agendas, as shown in the right-hand corner, are cybersecurity and global governance, and there is a need to thoroughly strengthen these as a G-SIB. Please turn to the next page. Next are fundamental structural reforms. Progress has mostly followed our initial estimates and is moving according to plan. However, as I mentioned earlier, we expect inflationary pressures to continue going forward, and there are also other factors like compensation improvement, etc.
In light of this, a strategy of simply reducing volume isn't very practical, so we will be putting thorough emphasis on the expense ratio in cost control, and we will seek to enhance quality. Please turn to pages 11 and 12. Mizuho's purpose is to proactively innovate together with our clients for a prosperous and sustainable future. Please go back to page 11. As we wrote here, we are seeing a shift in global trend, a large paradigm shift. This paradigm shift is synonymous with considerable uncertainty, but conversely, we also believe it to be an important opportunity. In particular, from Japan's vantage point, I believe this to be an important opportunity to restore and improve Japan's presence and position on the international stage.
Against the backdrop of this paradigm shift, over the past year, we discussed amongst ourselves at Mizuho, with input from both employees and executives, the kind of things we want to be doing ten years, thirty years from now, and how Mizuho wants to be. The corporate purpose that emerged from this grassroots movement by employees and through collaboration between executives and employees is one to proactively innovate together with our clients for a prosperous and sustainable future. I believe these coming times will bring many initiatives to solve a variety of challenges, and Mizuho wants to work alongside our clients in carrying out these initiatives. We want to link up these initiatives to create a platform, such as the kind of company we want to become.
Against this backdrop, we ourselves will break the mold of what is considered the norm in a variety of areas and challenge ourselves. This spirit is reflected in our purpose to proactively innovate together with our clients for a prosperous and sustainable future. Let us now move on to pages 14 and 15. We formulated a new medium-term business plan. Over the past year, employees and executives discussed the correct path for Mizuho to follow and redefined our corporate identity. As you can see in this diagram, based on our redefined corporate identity, we took the future as the starting point to backcast the right course of action in the present.
The box on the right shows Mizuho's vision for the world in 2030 or 2040. We used this as a starting point to identify the kind of world Mizuho should work to make a reality 10 years from now. We have synthesized this world we aim for into 4 points. First is development towards an inclusive society, providing many people with an opportunity to participate and lead fulfilling lives.
Second, we expect the widespread adoption of a variety of technologies, leading to an increase in convenience. Third, Japan faces adversity in terms of its international competitiveness. The goal is to overcome these difficulties and prosper. Last, we will see the real-world adoption of a variety of new technologies contributing to global sustainability, such as the world we at Mizuho would like to help build.
Page 15 discusses the themes we should approach in the present toward achieving these goals. We have listed here five broad themes within business. The first is support for the Doubling Asset-based Income Plan. Second is enhancing customer touchpoints. Third is enhancing the competitiveness of Japanese companies. Fourth is the pursuit of a global CIB business model.
Lastly, we believe things like improvement in the competitiveness of Japanese companies and the pursuit of a global CIB business model will translate into sustainability and innovation. However, achieving these goals requires robust corporate foundations. To this end, we will be carrying out corporate culture transformation, digital transformation, human capital enhancement, IT reforms, and the maintenance of stable business operations. I believe these to be big foundations.
There is a need to make progress in the promotion of these five focus themes, but given the finite nature of management resources, it is paramount that this should be done with a sense of balance. Please turn to page 16. Shown here is what I believe will become Mizuho's value creation process. Shown on the left is our management capital, which we will leverage in the execution of the management strategy we formulated through a backcast from our desired future.
Through this management strategy, we will be enhancing Mizuho's corporate value. We have included here four targets from the medium-term business plan, the first two being consolidated ROE of over 8% and consolidated net business profits between JPY 1 trillion-JPY 1.1 trillion. Over the past year, we received feedback that it would be beneficial to have a way to gauge corporate culture transformation quantitatively.
We have therefore set engagement and inclusion scores as quantitative targets, and we aim to raise these scores to 65%. We will be upholding these targets while enhancing our corporate value, ultimately creating social value. By pursuing social impact, we will seek to realize Mizuho's vision for the future. This, in turn, flows back into our management capital, and by repeating this cycle, we seek to realize Mizuho's vision for the future and create social value. Please turn to page 17.
We discussed internally whether we would set the duration of the new medium-term business plan to three or five years. Given the difficulty in predicting future global trends, we ultimately decided on three years. The main scenario for this period is for an economic downturn in Europe and the United States in light of high interest rate levels and no end in sight to inflationary pressures.
On the other hand, a bounce in inbound tourism to Japan could mean economic strength for the country. One thing we must bear in mind is the fact that over the past year, the US Federal Reserve has rapidly raised interest rates from 0% to 5%. Looking back at history, interest rate hikes on the part of the Federal Reserve usually portend economic hardship. Silicon Valley Bank collapsed and was followed by a number of regional banks. Hopefully, there won't be any further bank failures, but this might not necessarily be the case. There is still a risk of targeted attacks, and there is risk of contagion to institutions other than regional banks. There is a chance these fears could come to pass. As such, I believe the banking industry will operate with considerable caution over at least the next year.
Against this backdrop, we will strive for balance, allocating sufficient resources to our strengths and shoring up our defenses. Please turn to page 18. As shown here, our most recent consolidated ROE is around 6%. Going forward, we will thoroughly pursue capital efficiency and prioritize the allocation of corporate resources to focus areas.
Through this, we seek to achieve an ROE of over 8% by the final year of the medium-term business plan. Following this, we intend to increase efficiency and productivity, allowing us to reach a PBR above a multiple of 1. Please turn to page 19. I believe the formula on the top left-hand corner is bound to elicit opinions from stakeholders. We intended to steadily increase ROE, allowing us to improve PBR. We will work to improve asset profitability, control the expense ratio, and generate expectations for growth.
Allow me to direct your attention to the denominator, which is the cost of capital minus the expected rate of growth. Our cost of capital is being slightly discounted. There are factors particular to Mizuho behind this, as well as factors particular to the overall market. In terms of factors particular to Mizuho, we have the volatility and stability of profits. In terms of the overall market, we have low levels of growth in Japan's economy. Regarding Mizuho's particulars in terms of the stability of profits, as I believe was the case with this fiscal year's financial results, there is some variance depending on the business line. I believe we have been able to put in place a structure where these business lines complement one another.
Looking at overseas markets in the past 2 or 3 years, I believe that secondary markets tend to make up for the weakness in primary capital markets and vice versa. I believe we have achieved greater profit stability to some extent, but we would like to increase this even further going forward. Additionally, as it pertains to Japan, I believe it is also important for us to contribute to and incentivize the further development of the country's economy. This is why we included the topic of the competitiveness of Japanese companies in our 5 themes. As I will be discussing later on in this presentation, over the past 2 years, we have concentrated sales targeting midcaps. As a result of this, I believe we have been able to make business contributing to our clients' growth. Please turn to page 20.
As you may remember, we used this slide in the results presentation for the second quarter. It shows our plans to rebalance our business portfolio. I will be going over the details on page 22, but in summary, we seek to rebalance JPY 6 trillion-7 trillion in risk assets. Following this, and depending on business confidence, we would like to additionally allocate around JPY 6 trillion to areas with high levels of profitability. Should we be able to do this, I believe we will see a contribution to net business profits in the customer groups of approximately JPY 170 billion. Whether we will be allocating these extra JPY 6 trillion or not depends on the state of the economy, as we will be taking a particularly cautious approach this year. Please turn to page 21.
The waterfall chart illustrates our planned path to achieve consolidated net business profits between JPY 1 trillion and JPY 1.1 trillion by the final year of the medium-term business plan. In terms of net income attributable to the financial group, we are aiming for the mid-range of JPY 700 billion. Consolidated net business profits stood at JPY 807.1 billion for fiscal year 2022, and we expect each of the businesses shown here to make a profit contribution toward the target of between JPY 1 trillion and JPY 1.1 trillion. As such, we expect an increased contribution of JPY 50 billion from asset formation and asset management, JPY 17 billion from the domestic corporate business, and JPY 60 billion from the global CIB business. Regarding the global CIB business, I will be giving a brief explanation later on in this presentation.
For example, outlining how we will be changing course from low profitability areas to high profitability areas. We expect investment related to sustainability to increase in the domestic corporate business. Our target in terms of sustainability finance was originally JPY 25 trillion, but we have since revised this number to JPY 100 trillion and currently execute approximately JPY 7 trillion each year. Since the target is JPY 100 trillion, that'll be a pace of JPY 10 trillion per year. This increase of JPY 3 trillion translates into an increase in finance arrangement revenue of around between JPY 10 billion-JPY 15 billion. Although this is a rough estimate.
we will also be taking in assets, assuming we take in JPY 2 trillion-3 trillion, I believe JPY 70 billion of net business profit in domestic corporate business to be rather achievable. We had previously stated that our real estate loan portfolio was very strong. unfortunately, last year we fared worse than Mitsubishi. We will be digging deep into this issue as we believe this to be an area we suffered a significant defeat in. we intended to stage a recovery here, we view the target of JPY 70 billion as feasible. is asset formation and asset management, where we view the new NISA as a chance to strengthen our presence. there is a need to drastically revamp the style of the business of asset management at our Mizuho Securities.
As such, though we view these as slightly challenging figures, we see them as feasible. We would like to achieve this number by training our personnel and changing our sales style over the next 3 years. Additionally, naturally, we will see an increase here in equity method income. While these are some challenging figures, they are still achievable. Please turn to page 22. Next is a detailed view of the asset reallocation strategy I showed earlier. Allow me to start with residential mortgages, which is an area of particular interest for stakeholders. We will shift our focus away from these, as we will no longer engage in blind interest rate competition. With that being said, there are cases presenting added value for us as looking at the data has revealed that borrowers at a certain income level have a high probability of becoming core clients.
There is also the advantage of borrowers of residential loans opening an account with us to which they have their salary deposited. We will continue to carry out mortgages in cases like these in a limited manner. Regarding our cross-shareholdings, we announced the sale of JPY 150 billion in fiscal years 2022 and 2023. We now intend to sell more, raising this amount to JPY 300 billion over 3 years. We have plans to drop underperforming assets both in Japan and globally and take on strong performers. Overseas, we will be reducing underperforming assets, primarily in Europe, but also Asia, and direct these funds to well-performing assets in Americas and APAC. Please turn to page 23.
As I mentioned just now, we will once again be accelerating the sale of cross-shareholdings as we have made the decision and committed to selling JPY 300 billion. This is partially dependent on the stock price, but we expect the market value balance to drop below 20% of net assets. In terms of the ratio of acquisition cost to net assets, we expect this percentage to drop below 10%. Additionally, we do not intend to stop at JPY 300 billion, so we will continue to review whether to hold these assets and continue to sell shareholdings with a suboptimal risk-return profile. Furthermore, we will also be reducing stock from the Employee Retirement Benefit Trust Fund, aiming for a total reduction of JPY 200 billion. Please turn to page 24. Here is the assumed scenario for target achievement as it pertains to corporate resources.
An increase in expenses is inevitable, but we will work to thoroughly reduce costs wherever possible and control the expense ratio. Regarding personnel, looking at the data reveals the fact that our headcount has decreased, though digitalization is still in its early stages. As such, we will continue advancing digital transformation efforts while allocating personnel to key domains. Ultimately, I believe we will see a slight decrease in personnel. This is still under deliberation, but we are considering a reduction of around 4,000, allocating 3,000 to focus areas. Regarding IT investment, the key theme here is stabilizing business operations, so we believe it's paramount to carry out investment here. With that being said, there is a need to thoroughly review existing areas and its products and services to see if there is anything superfluous.
Through these efforts, we seek to optimize the maintenance costs for running the bank. On the other hand, we will be covering costs related to investment toward future growth. We divide our IT cost category into running the bank and changing the bank, the latter of which currently account for 15%-20% of IT-related investment, and which we would like to increase to approximately 30%. Please turn to page 25. Allow me to skip this page, which gives an idea of the number of expert personnel we seek to reskill and upskill to our workforce. I will also be skipping page 26, which contains a summary of the topics I have discussed thus far. I would now like to discuss strategy as it pertains to individual areas.
We will be holding an IR day event separately, I will be leaving the details for the heads of each of our in-house companies. Allow me to go over these as well. First is RPC, and the title of this slide is Support for the Doubling of Asset-Based Income. On the upper left-hand side, we have the recognition of the current situation. As a result of our having advanced our global equity strategy, the equity investment trust balance has increased significantly. This is an undeniable fact, and I don't think we made the wrong decision in advancing this strategy. However, it should be said that things got a bit too rigid. As such, there is a need to carry out a transformation to comprehensive asset management consulting, not restricted to global equity. On the bottom left corner, you will find client segmentation outlining our strategy going forward.
In particular, for clients that only need digital services, we have alliances with PayPay Securities and Rakuten Securities, so we would like to refer these clients to our alliance partners. It goes without saying that there are also people that want both digital and consulting services. For these clients, we will be improving the ease of use of our digital platform, while at the same time thoroughly enhancing our consulting capabilities through our contact centers in physical locations. This refers to asset building within BK. Thankfully, our life plan advisors and individual RMs within BK have developed the ability to make multifaceted proposals. We will be offering thorough coverage through BK for clients choosing digital as well as face-to-face services. Going forward, we will be progressing to tap into the demographic of wealthy clients.
Regarding wealthy clients, BK can act as a relationship hub, but we would like to offer a variety of other services by combining SC's asset management capabilities and CB's real estate and inheritance capabilities. In doing so, of crucial importance is what we show here on the diagram on the right, namely that we review the client's asset portfolio, risk-return tolerance, and to discuss the client's life plan in offering a variety of assets. We would like to carry out these efforts in earnest.
Please turn to page 28. This slide is titled Enhancing Customer Touchpoints. In addition to thoroughly enhancing convenience for our customers, we would also like to leverage our alliances. Shown here is an example of enhancement in our in-house services, namely the investment in digital technologies on a scale of JPY 100 billion, including investments to update technology.
Additionally, we will also thoroughly digitize the main services needed by corporate and retail clients. Previously, I mentioned a joint digital marketing initiative Mizuho is carrying out together with Google, and we expect to be able to launch this service in October of this year. In terms of physical locations as well, we have plans to thoroughly digitize and streamline a variety of processes. We will make it possible for clients to do these processes themselves in a self-service manner as we would like to move toward a model of lightweight branches combining self-service and consulting services. We have been able to secure the opening of iDeCo and NISA accounts from visitors to our bank branches, as we have had success in suggesting these to clients coming to our locations for reasons other than specifically for that purpose. These lightweight locations can therefore be beneficial for us.
Regarding our alliances shown on the right-hand side, we maintain an open and flexible approach. Furthermore, unfortunately, we canceled the LINE Bank and J.Score projects. What we learned from these projects is the need to thoroughly evaluate the probability of success right from the incubation stage and monitor the project, having the determination to withdraw from the business when it appears to lack what it needs to succeed. I believe we could have made this decision sooner. Regardless, I believe trial and error to be important when trying out new things, so we will be closely managing this. Please turn to page 29. This slide is titled Enhancing the Competitiveness of Japanese Companies. As I mentioned earlier, a large paradigm shift is taking place.
Personally, I have the impression that Japan has undergone a lost decade of sorts. I believe this is the last chance for Japanese companies to stage a recovery by leveraging this paradigm shift. We would like to go deeper, especially in approaching mid-sized companies. Against this backdrop, we would like to deploy the sector expertise we have cultivated through our relationships with large corporations and advanced value co-creation amongst large corporations, innovative companies, and mid-sized companies. In the bottom left corner is a graph showing our net business profits, which stood at JPY 330 billion in fiscal year 2018 and at JPY 440 billion in fiscal year 2022.
While it may not reach as high as a CAGR of 8%, the plan is for a CAGR of 5% through to fiscal year 2025, for which we intend to deliver JPY 510 billion in Net Business Profits. Allow me to direct your attention to the right upper hand side. We concentrated sales function of the upper middle range of mid-sized companies into several corporate departments in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. Doing so has made it possible for the sharing of expertise and for business proposals toward growth, this has translated into a significant increase in profit. As such, we believe there is still room for us to do more when it comes to mid-sized companies. Lastly, regarding large corporations, we intend on further creating sustainability-driven business. Please turn to the next page. This slide is titled Sustainability and Innovation.
Allow me to discuss two topics here. Demonstration tests for new technologies are essential in achieving sustainability transition. I furthermore believe it is important to offer support for carrying out these trials. To this end, we have a Transition Investment Facility. Our pipeline for this Transition Investment Facility is very well established. We have already financed three projects. The vertical bar graph on the right shows our sustainable finance target, which we raised from JPY 25 trillion to JPY 100 trillion. Recently, we have been able to arrange approximately JPY 7.5 trillion in financing every year. We are confident we will be able to achieve JPY 10 trillion annually. Page 31 contains recent examples of sustainability initiatives. We invite you to peruse these contents at your convenience later on. Page 32 details public-private collaborations. We invite you to review this information too.
Next is the global CIB business on page 33. Net business profits more than doubled between fiscal years 2018 and 2022. This performance isn't easy to replicate. Going forward, while we expect a slight increase in expenses, we will work to grow gross margin and achieve JPY 480 billion in net business profits. A large driver here is the reduction of underperforming assets to be allocated to focus areas, as illustrated in the graph on the bottom left corner. We still have underperforming assets with a RORA of less than 1.5%, which we will be reducing by JPY 4 trillion and allocating JPY 4 trillion to areas with high profitability. Additionally, we are planning to further allocate approximately JPY 4 trillion newly to areas with high profitability.
By reallocating JPY 4 trillion, we believe this will have a positive effect of approximately JPY 40 billion-JPY 50 billion. On a per region basis, we will restructure the business base in EMEA to make it more lightweight and efficient. Here, we will primarily be involved in projects from the perspective of SDGs. Please turn to page 34, which pertains to the Americas and APAC. Our IG DCM business has been in business in the Americas for quite some time and has remained in eighth place. Additionally, our share increased in fiscal year 2022, which indicates a great increase in capabilities. This isn't exclusive to DCM, though, as we have and intend to continue to grow our capabilities in ECM and M&A. The bottom left-hand corner deals with sales and trading in the Americas, which saw an increase of JPY 65 billion over the last four years.
We believe this is indicative that this has also increased in capabilities. Naturally, there is some variance. We intend to continue expanding our business in the Americas in both primary and secondary market businesses. We are working to transfer to Asia the successes we delivered in the Americas, especially as it pertains to our derivatives platform. Page 35 deals with digital transformation. Allow me to discuss one topic here. Up until now, we have carried out incubation at Blue Lab, as was the case with projects like J-Coin. At some point, this incubation function appears to have been forgotten, so we would like to go back to carrying out incubation at Blue Lab. Naturally, incubation is carried out together with Front Enterprise Solutions in the process of scaling up the business. In the case of J-Coin, this project languished without being able to scale up.
This was a very unfortunate turn of events. As such, going forward, for incubation projects showing promise, we intend to apply scaling efforts through Front Enterprise Solutions. Please turn to page 36 dealing with human capital. We have a number of initiatives here, such as corporate culture transformation, well-being, and our Kanade HR initiative, promoting an organization where all employees can be themselves, leading to employee satisfaction and ease of working. As written here at the top, this translates into an increase in employee skills and allows us to carry out external hiring and develop managerial staff. This represents an improvement in human capital. Page 37 shows the trend in external hires, with Mizuho executing the mid-career recruitment of 570 employees. As shown on the right-hand side, this also applies to management-level personnel. Page 38 deals with corporate culture transformation.
As Group CEO, I am leading this group-wide transformation, carrying out initiatives like the Group CEO live session and town hall meetings, and made rounds from Kagoshima to Nagoya for a week at the end of April, communicating with employees. I visited around 15 branch locations during this period and discussed Mizuho's corporate identity and other topics. Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, we will also be paying close attention to our engagement and inclusion scores. In terms of culture, Mizuho's CFO took a leading role in the start of a collaboration with the Tokyo University of the Arts. We will see what this union between art and finance will bring, but we would like to carry out corporate culture transformation through a variety of initiatives. Next is the capital policy on page 40. Mizuho's basic policy remains the same.
Going forward, we intend to maintain a necessary level in terms of the CET1 capital ratio in the lower end of 9%-10%. With that being said, the recent climate has been fraught with risks, so we have the capital ratio at 9.5%, where we would like to keep it for the time being. Please turn to page 42. As previously announced, the dividend forecast for fiscal year 2023 is JPY 95 per share. This is the final slide. I would like to encourage investment in Mizuho.
Over time, we have been refining our business model, leading to quality improvements on many fronts. Additionally, we also intend to thoroughly pursue ROE improvement and balanced capital efficiency. Furthermore, we also intend to advance sustainability management and human capital management. For this reason, I would like to request your continued support for Mizuho's corporate activities. This concludes today's presentation. I would like to thank you for your time today