Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Nomura Holdings Inc. agreed to buy bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s Asia-Pacific unit, seizing on Wall Street's crisis to speed up a push to become a global investment bank.

Nomura, Japan's largest securities firm, will take over 3,000 Lehman employees as part of the deal, according to a statement to the Tokyo bourse today.

Lehman's demise allowed Nomura President Kenichi Watanabe to restart an overseas push that was rolled back by predecessor Nobuyuki Koga in 2007 as losses on U.S. mortgage investments swelled. Last week's financial-market turmoil reshaped Wall Street and provided Asian and European firms with an opportunity to grab market share in trading, underwriting stock sales and advising companies on takeovers.

Lehman's main units in Japan filed for bankruptcy last week following the parent company's Chapter 11 filing, listing about 4.7 trillion yen of liabilities. The firm negotiated over the weekend with other potential buyers including Barclays Plc and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc., according to two people familiar with the matter.

Barclays, the U.K.'s third-biggest bank, bought Lehman's North American business last week in what Barclays President Robert Diamond called the deal of a ``lifetime.'' Barclays agreed to pay $1.75 billion, including Lehman's New York headquarters and two data centers.

Nomura stopped buying U.S. subprime mortgage loans and repackaging them as securities after losing 31.2 billion yen on the business in the quarter ended June 2007. The firm said the following month it would shut its U.S. residential mortgage business after defaults caused a 73 billion yen loss at the unit.

Watanabe, 55, changed course after the worsening credit market meltdown pushed Lehman into bankruptcy and forced Merrill Lynch & Co. to sell itself to Bank of America Corp. Nomura has reported about $2.4 billion of credit losses and writedowns, compared with $13.8 billion at Lehman.

In March, Watanabe said Nomura must ``take risks'' to compete with Wall Street firms as Japan's economy slows.

The Japanese firm bought U.S. electronic brokerage Instinet Inc. for $1.2 billion in February 2007 and purchased a 15 percent stake in Fortress Investment Group LLC for almost $6 billion the preceding month. Less than a year later, Nomura began rolling back its U.S. expansion as the nation's mortgage market became mired in soaring delinquencies.

To contact the reporter on this story: Takahiko Hyuga in Tokyo at thyuga@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 22, 2008 10:09 EDT