Nomura plans dozens of job cuts in Europe, US

London

NOMURA Holdings Inc is planning to cut dozens of jobs across its trading and investment-banking businesses in Europe and the US as the brokerage struggles to make a profit overseas, people familiar with the matter said.

Executives at the Tokyo-based firm may shed more than 100 traders and bankers across its overseas units, according to the people, who requested anonymity.

The bulk of the reductions are likely to come from Nomura's troubled European business, which has lost billions of dollars in the past decade, the people said.

Nomura chief executive officer Koji Nagai and his wholesale banking head Steven Ashley are under pressure to turn around the international parts of the group after years of failing to produce sustainable profits.

The CEO, who also faces headwinds at home in Japan, has been reviewing the firm's businesses and expects to present the results as soon as April, the bank said in January.

The Japanese bank has struggled to generate profits in Europe ever since it bought Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc's operations there in 2008. Mr Nagai pushed through about 50 job cuts in London in July, including some of the firm's most senior traders, and signalled in a December interview with Bloomberg that more were on the way.

Nomura's plan to end the status of its office in the UK capital as a global booking hub also means the current 3,000-strong workforce in the region may be "a little large", the CEO said.

At home, Nomura's retail business slumped last quarter as sentiment among individual investors deteriorated amid a stock market rout. Retail revenue dropped 22 per cent in the three months ended December from a year earlier. BLOOMBERG