EMEA bears brunt of Nomura’s $1bn cost cuts
Nomura, Japan’s biggest brokerage, said it will make cuts in its equities and investment banking businesses as it looks to chop $1bn (£628m) in costs, mainly from its ailing overseas operations, cooling its global ambitions.
Unveiling details of a $1bn restructuring it outlined last week, Nomura said the combined European, Middle East and Africa region would account for 45 per cent of the total cost savings target, with the Americas accounting for 21 per cent, Asia ex-Japan 18 per cent and Japan 16 per cent.
The plan is Nomura’s second major restructuring in less than a year and is the first move by new Chief Executive Koji Nagai to retrench from an expansion built on the 2008 acquisition of the Asian and European operations of Lehman Brothers.
The previous pruning, launched last year, also sought to cut $1bn in costs from the wholesale division, which handles equities, fixed income and investment banking, and eliminated about 1,000 jobs across the group.
Nomura, announcing the cuts at a briefing in Tokyo this morning, said it would streamline its investment banking operations to focus on advising clients on deals in certain sectors such as retail and financial institutions, and migrate most of its equities execution outside of Japan to its Instinet electronic brokerage unit.
It did not say how many jobs will be cut in the latest plan.