Latest news with #ChristopherWillcox
Japan Times
23-05-2025
- Business
- Japan Times
Nomura raises top executives' pay to highest in over a decade
Nomura Holdings has increased pay for its top executives to the highest in more than a decade, as Japan's biggest brokerage posted a record annual profit on the back of the nation's retail investment boom. Compensation paid in the year that ended in March to the company's seven executive officers totaled ¥4.6 billion ($32 million), up 3% from the previous year when there were eight such officers, according to a notice for a planned annual shareholders meeting next month. On average their pay rose 18%. CEO Kentaro Okuda is among the executive officers along with Christopher Willcox, who oversees investment banking and securities trading. The raise came even after some executives, including Okuda, took voluntary pay cuts for a pair of scandals that surfaced in the period. The Tokyo-based firm earned a record ¥340.7 billion profit last fiscal year as the return of inflation to Asia's second-largest economy energized investors. Pretax income at Willcox's wholesale division hit a 15-year high as global securities trading rebounded and cost controls improved. Dealmaking got a boost from Japan's corporate governance overhaul. Cash bonuses for the executive officers rose 88% to ¥2.3 billion, while base salaries grew slightly to ¥607 million. Compensation includes stock awards as well. Nomura is in expansion mode, having recently clinched a deal to buy Macquarie Group's U.S. and European public asset management business. The brokerage is also weighing a return to offering cash prime-brokerage services in the U.S. and Europe — businesses it largely exited four years ago when it lost $2.9 billion tied to the collapse of Archegos Capital Management. Last year's results were blemished by revelations of bond market manipulation and charges of attempted murder against a former employee. CEO Okuda and other executives volunteered to return a portion of their pay for several months following the incidents.
Japan Times
25-04-2025
- Business
- Japan Times
Nomura weighs return to prime brokerage four years after Archegos
Nomura is weighing a return to offering cash prime brokerage services in the United States and Europe, businesses it largely exited just four years ago following the implosion of Archegos Capital Management. As part of the push, Nomura hired Matias Bercun, a 17-year veteran of Barclays, to run the prime brokerage business globally, according to people familiar with the matter. Nomura officials have already held discussions with regulators in Japan about its latest plans, the people said, asking not to be named discussing non-public information. Executives are hoping the expanded offering will help the division generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue, the people said. That would be more than three times what the bank currently makes from the business. A spokesperson for Nomura declined to comment. Prime brokerage, which involves banks lending cash and securities to hedge funds, has become an increasing money maker for Wall Street in recent years due to high equities prices and the growth of multi-strategy hedge funds. Industrywide revenue from the business hit a record $27 billion in 2024, up about 13% from a year earlier, according to data from Crisil Coalition Greenwich. The moves are the latest sign that Nomura is looking to deepen its foothold in its traditional Wall Street businesses, which have been buoyed by resurgent markets in Japan in recent quarters. Christopher Willcox, who heads the Tokyo-based firm's trading and investment banking units, got $12 million in compensation for the year ended March — a figure that meant his pay was more than triple that of Chief Executive Officer Kentaro Okuda. Nomura in 2021 began informing clients it would pull back from certain parts of the prime business after it suffered some of the biggest losses during the collapse of Archegos. The bank ultimately recorded a $2.9 billion hit tied to the implosion. Nomura's loss on Archegos, a little-known firm set up to manage the fortune of trader Bill Hwang, occurred after a series of internal missteps. Officials allowed Archegos to become the single biggest client of the prime brokerage unit and charged him billions of dollars less than the bank's own guidelines suggested while warnings about potential risk failures at the division weren't acted on, it was reported in 2023. Willcox took over as head of Nomura's investment banking division in the wake of Archegos and helped oversee improvements in the bank's risk controls. In a Jan. 2024 interview, he said the firm had made "enormous improvements' and "I think we can say we've put Archegos behind us.' To be sure, Nomura never got out of the prime business completely. There was no change to its offerings in Asia and the company continued to have hedge fund clients in the U.S. and Europe, offering them prime-related services including equity finance, cross asset financing and synthetic prime brokerage. With Bercun, though, those efforts will be more formal, and he will take over responsibilities previously fulfilled by Simon Yates, global head of equities. Bercun will report to Yates in the new role. The company has also recently added BNP Paribas' Oliver Jacomb as head of prime sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Nomura is wading deeper into prime at a time when the business is attracting scrutiny from regulators around the world. The Bank of England, for instance, recently announced its planning to investigate how banks measure their exposures within their prime brokerage divisions after the business has grown more concentrated in recent years. That work was a result of an ongoing, industrywide review by the central bank's Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA), which was prompted by several major events that rocked markets in recent years, including the collapse of Archegos. The PRA investigators have, at times, been accompanied by regulators at the Federal Reserve and other counterparts from watchdogs around the world, it was previously reported.
Business Times
25-04-2025
- Business
- Business Times
Nomura weighs deeper foray into prime brokerage four years after Archegos
[LONDON] Nomura Holdings is weighing a return to offering cash prime-brokerage services in the US and Europe, businesses it largely exited just four years ago following the implosion of Archegos Capital Management. As part of the push, Nomura hired Matias Bercun, a 17-year veteran of Barclays, to run the prime brokerage business globally, according to sources familiar with the matter. Nomura officials have already held discussions with regulators in Japan about its latest plans, the sources said, asking not to be named discussing non-public information. Executives are hoping the expanded offering will help the division generate more than US$1 billion in annual revenue, the sources said. That would be more than three times what the bank currently makes from the business. A spokesperson for Nomura declined to comment. Prime brokerage, which involves banks lending cash and securities to hedge funds, has become an increasing money maker for Wall Street in recent years due to high equities prices and the growth of multi-strategy hedge funds. Industrywide revenue from the business hit a record US$27 billion in 2024, up about 13 per cent from a year earlier, according to data from Crisil Coalition Greenwich. The moves are the latest sign that Nomura is looking to deepen its foothold in its traditional Wall Street businesses, which have been buoyed by resurgent markets in Japan in recent quarters. Christopher Willcox, who heads the Tokyo-based firm's trading and investment banking units, got US$12 million in compensation for the year ended March – a figure that meant his pay was more than triple that of chief executive officer Kentaro Okuda. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Nomura in 2021 began informing clients it would pullback from certain parts of the prime business after it suffered some of the biggest losses during the collapse of Archegos. The bank ultimately recorded a US$2.9 billion hit tied to the implosion. Nomura's loss on Archegos, a little-known firm set up to manage the fortune of trader Bill Hwang, occurred after a series of internal missteps. Officials allowed Archegos to become the single biggest client of the prime-brokerage unit and charged him billions of US dollars less than the bank's own guidelines suggested while warnings about potential risk failures at the division were not acted on, Bloomberg reported in 2023. Willcox took over as head of Nomura's investment-banking division in the wake of Archegos and helped oversee improvements in the bank's risk controls. In a January 2024 interview with Bloomberg, he said the firm had made 'enormous improvements' and 'I think we can say we have put Archegos behind us'. To be sure, Nomura never got out of the prime business completely. There was no change to its offerings in Asia and the company continued to have hedge fund clients in the US and Europe, offering them prime-related services including equity finance, cross asset financing and synthetic prime brokerage. With Bercun, though, those efforts will be more formal, and he will take over responsibilities previously fulfilled by Simon Yates, global head of equities. Bercun will report to Yates in the new role. The company has also recently added BNP Paribas' Oliver Jacomb as head of prime sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Regulatory scrutiny Nomura is wading deeper into prime at a time where the business is attracting scrutiny from regulators around the world. The Bank of England, for instance, recently announced its planning to investigate how banks measure their exposures within their prime brokerage divisions after the business has grown more concentrated in recent years. That work was a result of an ongoing, industrywide review by the central bank's Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA), which was prompted by several major events that rocked markets in recent years, including the collapse of Archegos. The PRA investigators have, at times, been accompanied by regulators at the Federal Reserve and other counterparts from watchdogs around the world, Bloomberg has previously reported. BLOOMBERG
Japan Times
23-04-2025
- Business
- Japan Times
Nomura bets big on U.S. market rebound with $1.8 billion deal
Nomura Holdings is telling clients to stay invested through the turmoil that has pervaded financial markets during the escalating trade tensions. With its $1.8 billion acquisition of an asset management business, the Japanese brokerage is putting its money where its mouth is. "We constantly tell our clients, stay invested through short-term volatility,' Christopher Willcox, Nomura Holdings' executive officer and chair of investment management, said in an interview after the firm's most significant deal since it bought Lehman Brothers assets in 2008. "So, if we were not to display those behaviors ourselves, we would not be particularly credible.' With the purchase of Macquarie Group's U.S. and European public asset management business, Nomura is scooping up about $180 billion in client assets across equities, fixed income and multiasset strategies. About 90% of them are from the United States, where stocks, bonds and the dollar have faced selling pressure since U.S. President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs earlier this month. Willcox said the latest disruptions don't change the fact that the U.S. remains the largest asset management market in the world. Nomura is seeking to build scale in the business to generate stable income and diversify away from the domestic retail operation as well as trading and investment banking, he said. Nomura looked at at least 20 different possible acquisition targets, Willcox said. It may consider bolt-on transactions later to build on the platform. "Clearly doing the deal in the middle of this much volatility is challenging and makes it harder,' said Willcox, who was once chief of JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s asset management business. "But I think on both sides of this, we feel that the deal is reflective of the market conditions.' Nomura doesn't have a widely recognized brand name in the U.S., and the asset management business is highly competitive with the shift toward passive investing driving down fees, said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida. "That said, Nomura's investment, at a reasonable price, does not involve high risks,' he said. "The assets tend to be sticky, and unlike investment banking and trading, the assets do not walk out the door every evening.' Willcox said a lot of people have lost money betting against U.S. markets in the past 30 to 50 years. While the latest volatility is likely to persist due to the political landscape, over time, the market will find an equilibrium. Nomura Holdings Executive Officer Christopher Willcox | Bloomberg "I'm not bearish about markets,' he said, pointing out that the underlying capabilities of the U.S. and global economy are still strong. "Short term, I think we're all going to suffer through a lot of uncertainty.' Japanese investors are unlikely to suddenly start pulling assets that they have spent years accumulating abroad, even if their exposure to international markets isn't particularly big, Willcox said, adding that it's unclear what the alternatives would be. "We'd have to be in a significantly more serious situation than now before we start to see really big asset allocation decisions out of Japan,' he said. Because the latest market ructions happened at the start of Nomura's financial year, the company wasn't fully exposed to risk, "which is probably a good thing,' he said. Nomura reports results for the final quarter of last fiscal year on Friday. Further volatility will present chances to trade on market dislocations, he said, citing Japanese government bonds as an example. The firm has the dry powder to take advantage of market opportunities, while also being focused on providing liquidity to clients, said Willcox, who is also chief of the wholesale division that runs investment banking and trading. Willcox was also optimistic about prospects for dealmaking, particularly in Japan, where transactions continue to be driven by trends such as the unwinding of cross-shareholdings and corporate governance changes. "We actually haven't seen a deal slowdown,' he said. "If the volatility continues and the uncertainty continues, it probably will have a negative effect on the deal environment.'
Bloomberg
22-04-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Nomura Bets Big on US Market Rebound With $1.8 Billion Deal
Nomura Holdings Inc. is telling clients to stay invested through the turmoil that's pervaded financial markets during the escalating trade tensions. With its $1.8 billion acquisition of an asset management business, the Japanese brokerage is putting its money where its mouth is. 'We constantly tell our clients, stay invested through short-term volatility,' Investment Management Chairman Christopher Willcox said in an interview after the firm's most significant deal since it bought Lehman Brothers assets in 2008. 'So if we were not to display those behaviors ourselves, we would not be particularly credible.'
