Nomura's ex-traders are finding new jobs for Christmas

With only weeks to go until the end of the year, Nomura's former markets professionals are arriving in new jobs, some of which seem preferable to those they occupied before.

This week's arrivals include Waleed Haram, a former emerging markets trader at Nomura, who has just arrived at Morgan Stanley as a director. There's also Ioannis Sokos, a former director of fixed income research at Nomura, who just assumed a similar position at Deutsche Bank.

Some might question the wisdom of joining Deutsche Bank at this point in time, but with the German bank's share price close to record lows, an optimist might consider now the ideal moment to get paid in Deutsche Bank stock. Even better, while Nomura is unranked for fixed income trading in Europe, Deutsche Bank is ranked joint second in Europe and is first globally for credit trading (according to Coalition). 

Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, ranks fourth globally for its fixed income trading business. 

Haram spent nine years at Nomura before joining Morgan Stanley. Sokos spent one year at the bank after nearly 10 years with BNP Paribas previously. 

Banks are typically unwiling to recruit front office professionals at this time of the year because doing so requires that they compensate their new recruits for 12 months of bonuses left behind at previous employers. However, if new hires are out of the market, the need for bonus buyouts is obviated; banks can then be keen to hire as they rush to fill recruitment quotas before year-end.

Sokos left Nomura in August. The Japanese bank eliminated around 50 of its traders in July and has since been selectively hiring people in areas like rates and structured credit. This month it's already hired a former Credit Suisse managing director as head of GBP swaps trading. 

Sokos and Haram aren't the only ex-Nomura staff to find new roles elsewhere. Fred Jallot, who left Nomura (voluntarily) in June, is about to join Jefferies. Juan Grana, a former managing director in Nomura's structured credit business, who resigned in June, joined the London office of hedge fund ArrowMark Partners in October.

This week, Nomura CEO Koji Nagai made an investor presentation saying that Nomura's wholesale business had a bad November and that the EMEA region will have its capital allocation cut from $5bn to $3bn.

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