First set up a trading business, then the deals will follow, said Nomura COO Takumi Shibata in an interview with Reuters today.
Actually, before the deals comes hiring, and the U.S. operation of the Japanese bank is buzzing with recruitment activity. Shibata, who is overseeing Nomura's aggressive overseas expansion, said he expects the bank's U.S. workforce to grow by 25% to 2,000 by March 2011. At the top of his priorities is to fatten its stock and bond trading by adding more research and new areas such as convertibles, according to Reuters.
While many banks are expanding in Asia, the Japanese brokerage is looking to the West to drive much of its new revenue growth. The firm aims to have its overseas operations deliver about 75% of revenue in the next five years, an increase from the current 50%, with the U.S. acting as the primary engine of growth.
The announcement is the latest phase of Nomura's grand plans to take the global banking scene by storm. Lehman's fall put its plans in motion in 2008 when it scooped up the defunct bank's European and Asian businesses. It devoted much of 2009 to rebuilding its U.S. operation and hired hundreds of bankers.
"We've already been hiring a lot for equities derivatives trading. We're also looking at program trading and quantitative trading, statistical arbitrage and algorithmic trading," said Ciaran O'Kelly, head of Nomura's U.S. equities, told FINS last summer.
The bank first focused on developing its equity platform, then later shifted its attention to building out its fixed-income business in the second half of 2009. Its U.S. headcount increased from 800 before the financial crisis to 1,300 by late last year, and it's expected to jump to 1,600 by the end of March. And the U.S. business is finally able to rally around a local leader with the long-awaited appointment of a new head of investment banking in the Americas announced in January. The head of i-banking in Asia ex-Japan Glenn Schiffman is now heading up the U.S. division, charged with replicating the growth achieved in Asia and Europe in the past year.
Shibata has been consulting with his stateside business friends to determine who is worth poaching. He has also been a proponent of changing the bank's compensation structure to lure in top talent in the U.S.
For aspiring bankers, Shibata offers a word of advice: "Be proactive, use your own brain and don't expect things will be the same tomorrow," he said. "The only thing that is certain is that we are living in the era of uncertainty."
Write to Yoree Koh