Nomura Securities International, the global leader in yen bond underwriting, will shift its strategic mandate with the goal of making itself into a bulge bracket firm keenly focused on global fixed-income. Stefano Ghersi, the London-based head of international capital markets, says the firm has just begun to build up all of its regional groups and is broadening its product lines for debt capital markets to create a multi-currency origination and distribution platform. "This investment makes sense in the medium-term in terms of mandates and opportunities. Particularly from a debt point-of-view, there has never been a better time, because there is an increasing need for credit as a strategic resource," says Ghersi.
Whereas Nomura has been at the top of the league tables in the yen market for the past 10 years, its presence is negligible in other markets.
Structured finance will become increasingly important as Nomura's invesament banking business becomes more debt-focused, said Ghersi. More hires will come to that group, under the leadership of Tariq Rafique, former head of asset-backed securities at ABN Amro in London, who joined Nomura in October. The structured finance group will deal in ABS, repackaged deals and liability derivatives.
Ghersi, who joined Nomura earlier this year from Merrill Lynch, where he headed the public credit group in London, says the firm plans to expand its operations in U.S. dollar bonds, U.S. dollar-denominated Eurobonds, Australian dollar bonds and further into the euro-denominated markets over the next few months. Nomura will add to its Latin American and Canadian teams as well as its already-dominant yen business. Ghersi says Japan and Asia will continue to be a major market for Nomura as he expects the need for credit there to be the greatest, given the high-profile economic woes in that region.
Nomura's global debt capital markets team is currently about 60-strong and Ghersi said there is no magic number in mind for a target size. So far, Nomura has hired about 13 distribution professionals, with a few more to come this year. More distribution pros will be added post-bonuses. As for origination, approximately 12 bankers have been hired and more are to be added, he said. All origination bankers are now responsible for multi-currency origination.