Today's agenda, the summary of financial results. I am sure you have already seen them, so I will be quick. The initiatives increasing corporate value will be the main focus of my explanation. Please turn to page four. As you all know, the results are as follows. The consolidated net business profit was over JPY 1 trillion, and also the net gains related to stocks was JPY 54.7 billion, and also the ROE was 7.6%, and expense ratio came out to be 62.9%. Forecast on the consolidated business, it is going to go up by JPY 54.2 billion year-on-year for the net business profit. Also the net income is going to be JPY 750 billion, up by JPY 71.1 billion. We raised JPY 5 for the dividend in the mid-year. In the end, we are going to go up by JPY 5, and so it is going to be JPY 105.
For the 2024 year, we plan to go to JPY 115 by a JPY 10 increase. For three-year midterm, from starting 2023 to 2025, so we are actually achieving the targets there for the final year in 2024. On page seven, there are many different factors. The price-to-book ratio is coming up to some level. We are not satisfied with this current level, but 0.75 or 0.8 level that we are at right now. The capital cost has come down as well, and return has been increasing, and EPS has been on the rise as well. The main topic, focus on initiatives, increasing corporate value. Please turn on page nine. The price-to-book is up now, so we want to go above 1x. That is the top priority for management.
In focus areas, we need to make sure to grow the profits and also implement the financial discipline so we can reduce the capital cost as well by increasing return on equity. We are focused on that. In this bird's-eye view, these are the requirements, what we need to do, explain and summarize. I am sure you have seen this before, so nothing really new information on this chart, but I want to go deeper in each item to talk about progress and the challenges we are facing at this point. Please turn to page 10. The steady profit growth to be accomplished in 2022, JPY 810 billion level. We went to JPY 1 trillion in 2023, and we are going to JPY 1,070 billion in 2024, so making steady progress. We already shared the three major area.
We want to grow JPY 170 billion for the focus areas during those three years. In 2023, it was JPY 46 billion. In 2024, we want to do more. We started a new HR system called CANADE from this April, so the cost is increasing for this new system. That is actually putting some pressure. However, hopefully, if we want to accomplish JPY 50 billion or so by establishing the foundation, we want to make a big jump in the final year. This JPY 170 billion target will be maintained. Page 11, please. Improving asset profitability, we are tackling this in a solid fashion. In fiscal 2023, JPY 2 trillion decrease was made to non-profitable assets. We wanted to go further, but the overseas business was somewhat weaker.
Also, we were rather disciplined, so JPY 2 trillion decrease in non-profitable assets was done, and we somehow broke even in that endeavor. Cross-holding, lending, and overseas lending was the main ones that we decreased. M&A was domestic corporate businesses, SI and Global C ID business shall grow further. We will shift toward high-profit assets from low-profit assets continuously in fiscal 2024 as well. Highly profitable assets are the ones we would like to accumulate in larger than we expect for mode, but that is to do with the Forex. If the Japanese yen is too weak, CET1 ratio would be negatively impacted. We would have to restrain from lending too much, which has to do with the exchange rate. Page 12, cross-holding. JPY 300 billion was something that we decided to sell, and we will sell.
JPY 111.7 billion will be something we will sell. You can see the counterpart situation, and we are gradually decreasing the cross-holding shares. In principle, we will continue to shift from low-profit asset to high-profit assets, and we would like to cast a wide net, that we would like to be rather stringent. Moving on to page 13, expenses. There are various push-up effects from various ways to push up our expenses. Inflation for one, not only abroad, but gradually we are seeing inflation in Japan. Also responses to regulations, AML, that is applicable to any of the countries, IT platform and vendor cost is rising, as well as the hardware cost. Therefore, cost increase factors are all over the place.
For us, we cannot help but to live with these factors, we would have to lower the cost base somehow, and we are continually tackling the cost front.
In fiscal 2023, there were external environmental issues, including inflation and governance, the other factors resulted in the JPY 34 billion increase and human resources cost, the JPY 6 billion wage increase that is. Also various discretionary expenses resulted in altogether this expense increase you can see. Expense ratio is being lowered, 62.9% was the percentage for fiscal 2024. Exchange rate, inflation of JPY 30 billion in net, Governance and infrastructure, such as inflation and regulation would result in JPY 40 billion of cost. We are trying to lower this governance and infrastructure level, we would have JPY 40 billion increase there. Labor cost will increase. That is the combination of CANADE cost and base wage increase. Also Greenhill cost would continue to have some cost increase. Also discretionary cost, some bonuses tied to the performance.
We are tackling the front end, we are starting to increase the headcount in growth areas gradually. At any rate, there are cost increase factors, but we are controlling the governance and infrastructure cost tightly so that we can have a lower end of a 60%-70% range expense ratio. Page 14, stabilizing profits from core business. You can see the table on the top. Since the introduction of the negative interest rate, our revenue has been diversified. As you can see at the bottom left-hand side, expense control was tightly exercised, centering around customer dividend, we were generating profits, we could exceed JPY 1 trillion. We diversified business profits and that is a major endeavor. Also stabilizing profits from core business, we are growing the growing businesses, we are controlling against any predicted cost.
Also, as you can see, the structure of mitigating credit-related cost, we are controlling against any predicted events. Forward-looking provisioning is another key. Nowadays, we are providing support for turnaround of the companies in Japan. Overseas, Global 300 strategy would be the main strategy to lend centered around IG grade entities. Next page 16, please. Effective capital use. As you can see, Mizuho was rather weak in capital adequacy. The capital adequacy must be bolstered, somehow we are strengthening shareholder returns as well. To some extent, we would have to invest in growth to some extent, we could steadily grow so far. On the top left-hand side, allocation track record can be seen.
The allocation of net income attributed to financial group, JPY 5.2 trillion in the past 5-10 years, JPY 0.5 growth investment, JPY 2.7 for capital adequacy, JPY 2 for shareholder return, JPY 0.5 to growth investment. JPY 75 in fiscal 2019 being raised to JPY 115 is the shareholder return per share. CAGR, 27% was the growth of thanks to the investments made. That kind of a high rate of growth has been enjoyed within the limited investment that we could invest in growth, we could generate high level of growth. Page 17, you can see some specific examples. Up to year 2021, we could concentrate on accumulating capital. We were selective in making investments. Royal Bank of Scotland is one example that we invested in.
In fiscal 2023, since the beginning of the year, investment was strengthened, returns were bolstered as well, we were starting to be able to strike balance between the two. The dividend was increased substantially then, Greenhill was invested in in fiscal 2023. Digital, net, retail and asset focusing businesses, including investment into securities, were done since then. Core business. You can see the definition of core businesses, but the core businesses are doomed to be obsolete. We constantly would have to explore new businesses. Credit Saison India is one of the new businesses we decided to invest in. We have to remember to exercise discipline, as you can see in the middle of the page. Even when we make investments, if we cannot achieve the expected effectiveness from the investment, then we decided to close down the entity. Page 18, please. Capital policy.
In an ongoing manner, we continue to have the same policy, pursuing the optimal balance between capital adequacy, growth investment, and enhancement of shareholder return. Many of the people say that we have to show a specific range we target. We decided to disclose that this time around. The range would be mid 9% to mid 10%-11% range. Mid 9% or lower level would have to require capital adequacy bolstering. If we exceed 10%-11%, we have to strengthen shareholder return. 9.8% is the current number
Given that, investment into growth would have to be done. It is about time, maybe not necessarily this fiscal year, we would have to start considering buyback of our own shares. That's what we consider. Page 19, please. This is the summary. PBR, 0.75, 0.8. Substantial improvement has already made. We would like to achieve 1x at least of PE price to book value. We would have to lower the capital cost. ROE would have to be enhanced. These are various challenges we have to tackle. Please read through that at your leisure later on. Item number two, effective use of resources. The third bullet point, reallocation of resources to focus business areas that will be necessary to strengthen our forte. We would have to strike balance between a growth investment and return to our shareholders.
I would like to give you a progress update on business focus areas. In our mid-term plan, we have set out the focus areas for the business. Once again, we wanted to recap on that, though where they came from and how we came up with these themes. I want to go through that once again. We have set a purpose, saying that productively innovate together with clients for a prosperous, sustainable future, a kind of vision that we are trying to accomplish through our own vision. We have strengths. We want to multiply these two to create our focus areas. On the left, showing the strengths.
Some of the strengths are the ones we may not be the best at the current level. If we could reinforce, we can be better than others, excel the others, and that's also part of that. Strengths that we already possess, be it corporate banking and the global CIB capability, also relationship with startups. Areas, functions to enhance our strengths, mass retail business and solutions to mid-caps and SMEs, asset management, other areas. We have the vision and also our strengths, and they multiply together to focus on five business focus areas at the right top. In 2023, in the mid- and long-term perspective, what we want to be at, and what type of initiatives are to be implemented. We discussed a lot over them. To identify what the target business model that we should pursue.
In order to grow and generate profit from this business model, what the base function, the base foundation for the business, that's what we discussed a lot. Please turn to page 22. We started the customer experience improvement of the global CIB business. We have those four quadrants, and we thought of the vision ideal state in each area. Regarding improving customer experience, we want to be most user-friendly trusted partner for mass retail customers. Face-to-face, online, remote should be provided and in a seamless manner. The asset and wealth management in Japan at the right top, is most reliable brand in asset and wealth management. That's what we want to accomplish. We need to have unified group, and will pursue to be unified as a group and will reinforce open alliances.
Enhancing the competitiveness of Japanese companies, left bottom, a professional institution that delivers value-added solutions for business creation and growth. Global CIB business model at the right bottom. A top 10 global CIB and strategic partner to our clients. Of which we are thinking about in-house or by integrating capability within ourselves to reinforce a North American CIB model. That's what we want to accomplish. In each focus area, we will brush up our capabilities thoroughly, we will connect them together so we can exercise our strengths. There are many arrows to be pointing out to the other areas. Those will be the key points for us. That's how we want to connect them together. Especially important one will be the trust business, the investment trust business, and to reinforce the competitiveness, also the asset wealth management in Japan business.
These will be important in terms of trust business. We want to reinforce our presence in this area. Please turn to page 23. Let me go deeper for each area of where we are at right now. For the retail business, creating the new accounts. Now we turn to one, now we see the net adds. It used to be the net declines in the past, but now we turn to see net increases. We brush up each channel and connect those channels together to offer the convenient. The consultation is going to be quite important, and we'll establish branches which is applicable to the consultation. The online area, UI, UX to be further brushed up. Mizuho Direct UI, UX to be improved furthermore. The MAU has improved up to 75% already at this point. Recently in May, we improved the Mizuho Wallet.
All the settlement functions were offered in Mizuho Wallet. There's still a lot more that we can handle. The remote area, this is about call center and contact center. This is connecting the face-to-face and online. In August, we are starting a next-generation contact center utilizing AI. We are brushing up each area and connecting them together. The connection is going to be the digital marketing. January of 2024, we started to offer such a service, the data's coming up from each different channel, and those data's are connected together to offer the best proposal to customers. On page 24 non-cost investment. How do we get returns for the investment? Yes, we do need to invest. We are planning to get returns through this. Of course, maybe everything will not be covered by this, but this is one of them.
First, operation cost reduction, trying to simplify the process, revising our product, because pretty much there are many products where we have little customers, so we want to take them out, and we want to centralize back-office operations. Also reducing the cost of branches. Currently, full line branches are there. We want to downsize them from this year onward so we can reduce the cost of branches. That will create some available people. We will reskill them, then we can use them for the front office. Next. This is about doubling assets and wealth management in Japan. This is not making good progress as I hoped to see at this point. It is still behind what we hoped to see. Revenue-wise, it is growing year-over-year, but AUM is behind compared to the budget. Since last year, we changed our sales approach.
We used to be product out, but we try to capture the needs of customers to provide consultation now. The shift is not completed yet. I think that is why we are not seeing the result as expected. There are many different alliances we have started, as you see on the left-hand side. I will not go into one by one in details, but we have a lot more coming up, actually. The right bottom, we are talking about challenges. Face-to-face consulting. It is a must to improve here. Asset Management One would need to be improved. This is number four, actually, within the investment trust area. We need to improve furthermore. Sato-san, who is leading this business, is aware of the issues to be addressed. On next page 26, talking about improving competitiveness of Japanese corporations.
Large corporations, enterprises, where we have a strength, basically in the business at the left bottom. We need to be involved in the corporate actions, M&A, the real estate business, and all this has grown so far. In the league table in debt area, we have been continuing to stay number one player. The challenge is in M&A. Last year, we were number seven. The number of projects, we are number three, but we were not able to be involved too much in the large projects. That is where we want to do something about. Greenhill. I will touch more on Greenhill later, but we want to utilize the Greenhill functions furthermore to reinforce our M&A business. Page 27. This is about the SMEs.
As you see in the header, for the growth support and business succession will be the keyword to take a strategic approach to them. For SMEs, for these businesses, the solution pipelines are listed on here. We increased them 18% last year for the loans average balance, and the end of month balance is also growing. The business succession is another key point, and we need to utilize this whole trust banking capability. The pipeline has grown by 20%, we need to monetize them this year. On the startups, we have studied various initiatives over here on the right-hand side, the space business. In such a deep tech area, we are reinforcing the supply, the risk money in there. Last year, we had a collaboration with UPSIDER. We created that fund with them.
It's been about six months only, but we've already used up half that facility. The investment balance, both equity and debt, basically balance increased by 25%. We will be monetizing this in many different ways. Next page 28, sustainability. We will have the engagement to increase the transition finance for the individual project investment into them. This is investing in next-generation technologies and building platforms with the customer to provide co-created values. We've done all these initiatives where we saw progress in a sustainable finance. We had a target of JPY 100 trillion. We have come to JPY 30 trillion at this point. Transition investment facility and value creation investment are shown on the right-hand side. Also hydrogen area. We had declared about JPY 2 trillion, as mentioned in Nikkei newspaper. We will be investing into JPY 2 trillion in hydrogen carbon credit.
We're also investing in the Climate Impact X, which is in Singapore, global CIB. The top 10 strategic partners. CIB is quite volatile business. That's what the people said. I want to explain what we are trying to do in the CIB business. This is the banking primary business, sales and trading, tech under business, to be sought to accomplish tandem growth, especially in the tech under business to support the banking business. For the issuers, we offer hedging functions. Such solutions are provided to institutional investors who are joining in the primary market. We will offer secondary transaction flows and financing. Banking, sales, and trading, it will be supplementing each other to generate revenue. That's the kind of model we are talking about. On the right-hand side, the situation in the Americas is shown. In the Americas, product coverage has been expanded.
We are actually taking every step to confirm that they are in-house, so they are completely covered by us. Through 2018, overall total product available in primary and secondary, our product coverage was about only 48%, but making gradual actions, we have grown that up to 78%, and we are hoping to get to 85% of the market. Page 13 on Greenhill. Lastly, Greenhill is going to be a key point. Integration PMI is going quite well so far. We only consolidated for a month last year, but we had several interesting project that we saw. U.S. cross-border projects, we saw that as well. Greenhill was also leveraged. We want to be a global top 10 player like you see. In 2023, we increased our positioning from 17 to 14 as player.
Also in the U.S. league table, we have been raising our position as well. Please go to page 31. In APAC, transaction banking, trade finance is the main endeavor. We have captured trade and capital flow, derivatives will be more interesting from now on. Combining bank and securities platform, we can have a sales and a trading platform that is already available. We would like to operate that in full scale to generate profits. On the right-hand side, you can see the progress in EMEA. Universal banking will be reinforced and that would remain unchanged. Sustainability-wise, EMEA is extremely important. They are going ahead of the rest of the globe, so we would like to have a solid position there, we are starting to establish that without fail. Sustainability-related activities shall be rolled out globally. That is what we would like to do.
The details, please take a look at your leisure later on. Those are the business focus areas. I would like to talk about enhancing our corporate foundations. Page 33, please. In medium-term measure plan, IT policies implementation promotion, DX promotion, and corporate culture transformed, these are some of the emphasized targets that we shared. These are ideal state for each of these endeavors. Among them, corporate culture transformation, human capital enhancement will be particularly important. I would like to further elaborate on those. Page 34, please. In order to strengthen our people, this is what we would like to do. After formulating the strategy, people are the ones to implement the strategy. First of all, creating a sense of unity by establishing our purpose. That was done from fiscal 2021. We are communicating closely with the employees.
The top management has been in close dialogue with employees. CANADE, the new HR framework is being introduced this particular fiscal year to have a better human capital management and incentivize employees. We would like to create a culture to motivate employees to take actions at their own initiatives. We would like to create an environment conducive to the workers by utilizing digital means and so on. DEI is the last portion. We would like to leverage diverse talent. Page 35, please. Purpose and culture transformation is shown here. The top management will communicate continuously with employees. I myself would have liked to visit 70 offices, but we covered 60 locations, and we were engaged in 50 town halls. Kato, Hamamoto, Umeda, and Yoshihara, those presidents were continually included, participated in those communication events.
We cannot hear everything, but to some extent, we provide feedback from the management down to employees in response. Employees, more or less, are quite positive about new endeavors. Page 36. Human capital management system. This is the ideal state. From the viewpoint of employees would like to work in a place where they feel supported and can feel self-fulfillment. We need to have a solid retention of talented workforce aligned to our strategies. As a result, we can have a win-win situation and grow together. You can have more details about the platform. We would like to unify group-wide framework. Within this broad field, throughout the Mizuho Group companies, employees have the opportunities for their work. We would like to promote their growth and challenges. Eliminating seniority system or Japanese traditional HR framework, we would like to do some wage tied to certain positions.
At any rate, employees can pursue their own career path. On the right-hand side, you can see the development of human resources tied to the special characteristics and needs of different businesses. Altogether, JPY 20 billion will be spent on this particular endeavor in addition. We would like to make sure that employees would respond extensively in a positive manner so that they can grow as well. Page 37, culture transformation driven by employees. There are various initiatives driven by employees. Mizuho Pochette is one of them. With Sega, we created an idea. Working with Sega ultimately a financial education will be done with this particular platform, Mizuho Pochette. NISA Cafe will be rolled out through our various branches across the country, and it has been reported by various media.
Salaried workers can come to Mizuho NISA Cafe, for example, in Yaesu and Nihonbashi area to begin with. We would like to roll this out throughout the country. Page 38, diversity. 860 employees were employed mid-career. We are employing new graduates in the same order. We were ranked second as a popular employer among university students. We also had 1.5% that was employed overseas, and 40% was the mid-career hire, and 30% being women. Engagement score was enhanced to 59%, and then we would like to go for 65%. Inclusion score is already 60%, and we would like to further enhance both of these scores, and we are improving and transforming our mindset. Many of the employees resonate with the corporate philosophy. We still have a long way to go, so we would like to go further.
Maintenance of stable business operations, page 40. I would like to briefly touch on this. Various KPIs were measured, and there was only no case. We measured system failure, and no incidents took place, and we enhanced the governance overseas. There was another progress last year. IT transformation is to improve our metabolism, so to speak. Run the bank cost should be lowered so that we can transform ourselves in the non-bank operations. We would have to change the bank operation, having more investment available for that. This particular circle is starting to rotate in a positive manner, although we do have a long way to go. Last page 42. We are showing this slide once again, as usual. Continuously, we would like to achieve results and fully commit to further growth.
As was mentioned earlier, we would like to further hone our core business strength. We would like to link them so that we can exercise added value. Cultural transformation is being pushed forward steadily, and we would like to further make progress on this. Mizuho, finally, is starting to see some positive changes, and we would like to turn these signs of positive change to strong momentum. That is what we would like to do in the new fiscal year. We look forward to having your support and guidance and input from various angles. Thank you for your kind attention.