Approximately 60 days to go before senior staff seep silently from Nomura?
As we noted yesterday, Nomura's third quarter results appeared to contain some dubious news regarding this year's compensation arrangements.
Staff costs in the final quarter declined 22% on the previous year, even though the bank hired 2,000 people in total (600 in the US alone) during 2009. For the nine month period as a whole, however, compensation per head rose approximately 15%, which is good - but not as good as the nearly 40% increase in pay per head at JPMorgan investment bank last year, or the almost 60% increase at Goldman Sachs.
This matters, because senior staff who joined Nomura from Lehman in the 2008 will receive the second tranche of a generous two year bonus guarantee in April. After that they'll be free to leave.
One headhunter says he's targeting precisely this cohort. "There are so many other bids on the street that Nomura are going to find it difficult to retain people," he says. "My impression is that they haven't had results as quickly as they'd hoped and haven't been able to bring in many high quality names from elsewhere."
Needless to say, Nomura insiders strenuously deny this. Pointing to champagne quaffing on the trading floor yesterday to celebrate the bank's second place ranking (behind UBS) in Institutional Investor's European equity research poll, Nomura's position as the top equities trader on the London Stock Exchange, and a strong appetite to outdo BarCap, they say senior Nomura staff will almost certainly stick around.
"People feel Nomura is a momentum business focused on global growth and want to be part of a new team. The jury is in - we're successful and very stable." said a Nomura spokesperson.
The apparent pay discrepancy doesn't appear to be discouraging people from joining Nomura: the spokesperson also said the bank's hired 343 since the end of last year.
