Nomura is hiring in the U.S. again - but senior bankers are still leaving

More senior leveraged finance professionals have left Nomura as it continues to shake-up its Wall Street operations.

Christina Park, a managing director in acquisition leveraged finance who only joined Nomura in August 2015, left in July and has just been hired by RBC Capital Markets in a similar role.

Meanwhile, Mark Liggitt, also a managing director in leveraged finance at Nomura, has joined private equity firm Ares Management in New York.

The exits follow the departure of Carl Mayer, a managing director and head of leveraged finance at Nomura, who left to join Guggenheim Partners in New York as a senior managing director within its leveraged finance division earlier this month.

If you work in leveraged finance in a Wall Street investment bank, it pays to work for a smaller firm. Rules recently implemented by the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency make it difficult for larger investment banks to provide large amounts of debt to companies.

The result has been that larger investment banks on Wall Street have struggled to make their leveraged finance desks profitable. Smaller banks – Nomura, Jefferies, Guggenheim all included – do not fall under the regulations and so have taken advantage of the loophole.

Nomura had benefited in terms of talent too. Park joined from Barclays, where she he worked as a managing director for four years. Liggett was also a managing director at Barclays, where he worked for eight years having moved across from Bank of America in 2006.

Both joined Nomura at a time of expansion for its investment bank. In October 2014, 15 senior bankers across M&A, business development and leveraged finance signed up to its Americas business.

Nomura’s U.S. operation has, however, flitted between expansion and contraction – in March it announced that lay-offs would hit, and its 250-strong headcount has fallen to around 150 people, according to Bloomberg.

However, in August, Tetsu Ozaki, its chief operating officer, said it had room to hire up to 20 bankers in the U.S., particularly in M&A.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com