Nomura said to plan cutting about 20% of North America staff

Nomura Holdings may dismiss about 20% of its workforce in North America, according to people with knowledge of the situation, joining a growing number of competitors shrinking Wall Street operations amid a trading slump.
Decisions aren’t final, and the ultimate number could still differ, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations. One senior manager said reductions could be expanded to affect as much as 30% of the region’s staff. Japan’s biggest brokerage has about 2,500 employees in the Americas, most of whom work in the US and Canada.
Jennifer Will, a company spokeswoman in New York, declined to comment.
Firings in the US would signal a reversal for chief executive officer Koji Nagai, who said as recently as December that the Tokyo-based bank has room to add employees in the Americas even after losing money there. Market swings, low interest rates and slumping commodities prices already are spurring rival firms to warn shareholders about another drop in revenue from trading and deal-making this quarter. The challenges also have been spurring more job cuts at companies including Credit Suisse Group AG, Bank of America Corpand Goldman Sachs Group.
Shares of Nomura rose 0.3% at 9:29am in Tokyo yesterday. The stock has dropped about 25% in 2016, heading for a third year of declines.
Nomura has gone through a series of expansions and contractions outside of Japan over the years. It bought bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings’ European and Asian operations in 2008, only to pare back operations in the regions later, after costs and losses swelled.
In the Americas, Nomura has posted pretax losses for six straight quarters. Nagai, 57, abandoned a goal to earn ¥50bn ($443mn) in profit abroad for the year ending March after the company lost ¥63bn overseas before taxes in the first nine months. Nomura last made an annual profit outside of Japan in the year ended March 2010.
Global investment banks are deepening staff reductions as the trading slump and stricter regulations curtail profitability. Credit Suisse announced 2,000 additional job cuts on Wednesday, with CEO Tidjane Thiam saying the Swiss bank may post a net loss this quarter. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, two of the largest US-based investment banks, have been leaning on annual dismissals of low performers to shrink parts of their Wall Street operations, people familiar with the plans have said.
Nagai, who became CEO in August 2012, has grown more bearish about prospects for the company’s overseas business in recent months. The firm will cut costs overseas by trimming jobs and shrinking unproductive operations, he said in an interview in February. Global market turmoil has affected overseas wholesale business and made it difficult to predict when the company could return to profit abroad, he said.
As recently as December, Nagai said there was “still potential for growth in the Americas” and that the firm is seeking to double investment-banking revenue there over the next two to three years.
Nomura, which has been relying on domestic operations for profit, also faces tougher business conditions at home, where investors are losing enthusiasm for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic stimulus policies. Net income is expected to fall 19% to ¥183.2bn in the year ending March 31, according to the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.