Nomura Holdings, a leading Japanese financial services firm, today released its financial results for the fourth quarter and full-year ended March 2021. Despite the significant growth in its investment banking division, Nomura took a major hit of 245.7 billion yen from transactions with a US-based client.

According to the official announcement, net revenue in Q4 stood at 170 billion yen ($1.5 billion), a dip of nearly 28% compared to the same period a year ago. Nomura reported a net loss of 155 billion yen ($1.4 billion) in the last quarter.

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The latest financial results came after Nomura announced the appointment of Christopher Willcox as CEO of New York-based Nomura Securities International. Willcox previously served as Chief Executive Officer at JPMorgan Asset Management.

Commenting on the latest announcement, Kentaro Okuda, Group CEO and President of Nomura, said: “We reported net revenue of 1,401.9 billion yen and net income of 153.1 billion yen for the full year. Total revenues from our three core business segments increased 11 percent and pretax income grew 35 percent year on year as business momentum from the record April to December period continued. Retail pretax income was 92.3 billion yen, 87 percent higher than the previous year, and Asset Management delivered its strongest full-year pretax income since March 2002 of 74.2 billion yen.”

US Hedge Fund Scandal

In March 2021, Nomura and Credit Suisse issued a warning about potential losses due to transactions with an investment fund based in the US. Credit Suisse suffered major losses during Q1 2021 due to the meltdown of the Archegos hedge fund. “Although Wholesale performance was impacted by a loss of 245.7 billion yen arising from transactions with a US client, we delivered pretax income of 64.3 billion yen, a 30 percent decline year on year,” Okuda added.

In March 2021, Nomura announced the appointment of Simon Russell, former Managing Director of Technology Investment Banking at Macquarie Capital, as its new Head of Technology, Media & Services in EMEA.