Glenn Schiffman, head of Nomura Holdings' investment bank in the Americas, has left the firm after only about a year in the job.
He will be replaced by Jim DeNaut, a senior managing director and co-head of global natural resources at Nomura. DeNaut, 48, was hired from Deutsche Bank in August.
Nomura declined to comment about the departure but said it remains committed to expanding in the Americas.
Schiffman, 41, was head of Lehman Brothers investment bank in Asia and started at Nomura in the heat of the crisis when the Tokyo-based firm bought that unit and a similar unit in Europe. He helped integrate the Lehman operations.
Nomura lost out to Barclays in a bid for Lehman's U.S. operations, but it sent Schiffman to New York in April of 2010 with orders to build up its U.S. banking platform. By mid-September, Schiffman had expanded the country's i-banking staff from 12 to 110. The team focused on natural resources, financial institutions and industrials.
However, the expansion has been expensive and the firm has been slugging it out with fast growing U.S. boutiques and big domestic banks like Bank of America and Citigroup, which rebounded from the recession quickly. Nomura ranked 12th in global M&A revenue last year, but failed to break into the top 20 in the U.S., according to data from Dealogic.
Nomura, which committed about $3 billion to the expansion, has about 2,000 U.S. employees, including 140 in New York.
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