4. Building a high-quality capital base

Having completed the repayment of capital injections in October 2006, SMFG issued non-cumulative perpetual preferred securities in December 2006 through an overseas special-purpose subsidiary to increase its own capital, with the aim of ensuring implementation of future growth strategies.

However, SMFG’s capital policy was heavily affected by the international trends toward tightening financial regulations. These trends were spurred by a direction agreed on at the first G20 summit meeting held in Washington, D.C. in November 2008, which called for stronger financial control, notably requirements for financial institutions to improve the quality and quantity of equity capital.

Responding to the above requirement, SMFG carried out a series of steps to build a high-quality, solid capital base. SMFG started with refinancing outstanding preferred securities with higher-quality capital-raising instruments newly issued. This was followed by the issuance and public offering of common stocks in June and July 2009, which raised a total of 861 billion yen. Then, in January and February 2010, SMFG ran the fiscal year’s second session of common stock issuance and public offering and raised 973 billion yen in total. Conducting more than one major fund-raising program in the same fiscal year was an exceptional measure. It was a decision in response to the Basel III draft of December 2009 that SMFG should accelerate efforts for capital enhancement. Additionally, in February 2010, SMFG bought back perpetual preferred securities and perpetual subordinated bonds to be retired.