Nomura has unveiled an organisational shake-up intended to give life to its already announced intention to organise its international operations along product as well as regional lines. The new set-up will also tie in the product lines more closely to Japan, in tune with the bank's new focus to use international offices to supply local products to customers in Japan.
Any changes in the investment banking division, now reporting to global head Hiromi Yamaji in Japan, will be revealed later. Equity now reports to Takashi Tsutsui in Tokyo, but is otherwise unaffected.
The main changes fall in the debt division, to which Craig Schiffer moves from propietary arbitrage. Schiffer will be responsible for credit arbitrage, swaps and derivatives related businesses, and will report to Tetsu Ozaki in London, and through him to Hiroshi Toda, global head of debt.
The proprietary arbitrage group will be renamed the asset investment group, and Simon Fry, former head of international markets, will take a more operational role, managing that group.
The asset management group will be customers of both the debt and the equity groups, as well as the street.
Fry will also be responsible for managing co-ordination of the new arrangements, on behalf of Toda and London head Takumi Shibata.
News in brief
* Commerzbank's global fixed income division has been expanded through several new hires.
Geraint Thomas, as announced in EW 572, takes up his position as head of fixed income credit research. He leaves Paribas, where he was head of European credit research.
Tim Streeter joins from Daiwa and takes up a key role within the syndicate team. He joins Stuart Montgomerie and has specific responsibility for emerging market and high yield syndicate.
Julia Cobb joins the management group as chief of staff, based in London. She will be based in London and report to Régis Fraisse and Paul Mizrahi. Separately she will coordinate public relations for the global fixed income division.
Martin Herman arrives from Nikko to join the corporate origination team. And Christopher Kemp joins the sales team in London from Merrill Lynch.
* Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale has hired Luke Nunnely as head of marketing for WestLB Asset Management. He was previously head of institutional sales and marketing at Fleming Investment Management.
* Laurie Mayers has joined NatWest Global Financial Markets, London, as managing director and global head of credit risk.
She was previously director and head of global counterparty policy, systems and risk measurement at ING Barings.
NatWest GFM, Spain, has appointed Jose Maria Iceta as managing director and country manager of Spain.
Iceta was formerly head of treasury and capital markets at NatWest in Madrid.
* Greenwich NatWest has hired Alex Maddox as director and head of credit derivatives trading.
Based in London, he will report to Frank Canelas, managing director and head of credit products, and to Vincent Tomasi, managing director and global head of derivatives.
Before joining Greenwich NatWest, Maddox was the head of structured credit trading at Lehman Brothers in London.
* Geoffrey Sherry has relocated to London to head up Chase Manhattan's high yield trading and capital markets unit for Europe.
Sherry joined Chase in 1995 and was most recently co-head of the high yield trading business in New York.
* Tim Pettit has been appointed The Royal Bank of Scotland's capital markets director. He joins the treasury and capital markets team from the NatWest Group where he was managing director and head of derivatives marketing.
Chris Gaskarth, formerly capital markets director, is to lead an initiative in the bank's corporate and institutional banking division's risk area aimed at further developing the bank's portfolio management capabilities.
* Cedel International has hired Rüdiger Neuenburg as chief corporate affairs officer and Thomas Rabe as chief financial officer.
Neuenburg was most recently director of corporate communications and a member of the board at Reader's Digest, Germany.
He will be a member of the executive management of Cedel International and will report to André Lussi, president and chief executive officer.
Rabe was most recently chief of staff and a member of the group executive management at Cedel. He reports to André Lussi.
* David Macfarlane has been elected head of Ashurst Morris Crisp's corporate department. He succeeds Geoffrey Green who becomes senior partner on December 1, 1998.
Also, Chris Ashworth has been appointed head of mergers and acquisitions, and Adrian Knight succeeds Macfarlane as head of corporate finance. *