Nomura Hires Foran of Goldman Sachs as Bank Analyst Amid U.S. Expansion
Nomura Holdings Inc., the Tokyo-based brokerage that’s expanded its global workforce by almost half in two years, hired Brian Foran of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as a senior analyst covering U.S. banks.
Foran will join the company’s U.S. unit, Nomura Securities International Inc., as a New York-based managing director, according to Michael Rietbrock, the head of U.S. equity research. Foran will work alongside Glenn Schorr, who joined from UBS AG in June as a managing director and senior analyst covering U.S. brokers and asset managers.
“We did a search that looked at every bank analyst on Wall Street, and chose Brian to work with Glenn,” Rietbrock said in an interview. “It’s very rare that you get a chance to build a department from scratch, and that’s one of the things that’s making it attractive to people who are joining.”
Chief Executive Officer Kenichi Watanabe, pushing to transform Japan’s biggest brokerage into a global financial firm, has increased staff 44 percent in two years to 27,393 as of June after purchasing Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s Asian and European units and boosting U.S. hires. Forty-three percent of Nomura employees work outside of Japan, double the level two years ago, according to Nomura filings.
Foran wasn’t available for comment, according to Jonathan Hodgkinson, a Nomura spokesman in New York.
Nomura hired Rietbrock, 41, from Bank of America Corp. in March to lead the three-year plan to build the stock research department for the U.S., where it is investing 250 billion yen ($2.74 billion).
600 Stocks
The firm said in May that it plans to offer research coverage for 600 companies in the U.S. in a bid to boost revenue from the world’s biggest equity market. Nomura increased its U.S. workforce to about 1,781 people at the end of March, from 1,079 a year earlier, and has boosted its fixed-income division to more than 270 employees from 50.
Foran covered 22 lenders at Goldman Sachs including Fifth Third Bancorp, KeyCorp, Regions Financial Corp. and SunTrust Banks Inc., according to Bloomberg data. Goldman Sachs, the most profitable firm in Wall Street history, made him a managing director last year.
Nomura has added 10 senior analysts from 10 different firms since April, Rietbrock said. It hired JPMorgan’s Michael McCormack last week as a senior analyst covering the telecommunications and cable television industries, and Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Michael Nathanson, the top-ranked entertainment industry analyst in Institutional Investor magazine’s 2009 survey, in April.
Last month it hired Paul Lejuez of Credit Suisse Group AG as an analyst covering U.S. retail companies and Harry Curtis of Lazard Capital Markets as a stock analyst covering the U.S. gaming, hotel and leisure industries.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff Kearns in New York at jkearns3@bloomberg.net.
Rate These Stories
Rate this Page