Nomura sends bankers to New York, London in asset manager push

[TOKYO] Nomura Asset Management plans to relocate dozens of staff from its Tokyo headquarters to offices in cities such as London and New York to develop its homegrown talent for investment and sales operations.

More staff with overseas business experience will boost Nomura’s stance as a global competitor in asset management, president Hiroyasu Koike said.

“Unless we enhance our global investment capabilities, we will lose our reason for being,” he said, adding that he’s still considering specific locations for the staff. “We want to proactively send trainees and transfer staff to greatly strengthen the development of global talent.”

Japan’s main finance regulator this year revealed how many domestic asset managers often lag behind overseas rivals due to a narrower product offering that is harming the country’s competitiveness as one of the world’s key financial centres. Reform of tax-free accounts under the Nippon Individual Savings Account scheme is helping to draw more people into investing in a nation traditionally more focused on lower-return savings.

Nomura Asset Management currently has about 30 employees stationed abroad and Koike said that he intends to significantly boost that figure, without specifying more detail. Potential destinations include existing offices in New York, London and Singapore, as well as other destinations where parent Nomura Holdings recently acquired some public asset management businesses from Macquarie Group in the US and Europe.

As at the end of September, Nomura Asset Management oversaw around 99.7 trillion yen (S$830 billion). That’s still a sliver compared to global giants like BlackRock Inc., which managed US$11.6 trillion as at December 2024.

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Koike said that Nomura’s purchase of the Macquarie assets offers “a chance to grow into a transformed asset management company in five or ten years”. It’s also being considered as a destination for trainee assignments. Previously, Nomura had sent four trainees to American Century Investments, a major US asset manager in which it holds a stake.

“I want to acclimatise staff to an environment where they conduct daily business operations in English,” Koike said. “Then, when they return to Japan, it would be ideal if they can leverage that network and what they have learned to become future talent capable of engaging in global operations and global management.” BLOOMBERG