Sayonara trade

4 September 2012 By Peter Thal Larsen Follow @Peter_TL

Top dealmaker William Vereker is giving up his executive role at the investment bank, and may leave. It’s another sign that global ambitions have been reined in by commercial reality. Now Nomura must explain how its new strategy will serve shareholders better.

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Prominent dealmaker William Vereker is stepping down as joint head of investment banking at Nomura and has been given a new title, a move colleagues said would lead to his imminent departure, Reuters reported on Sept. 3.
Vereker, who has been advising Xstrata on its merger with Glencore, is one of the few senior ex-Lehman bankers still at Nomura after it bought the collapsed U.S. firm’s European operations in 2008.
His new title would be vice-chairman of investment banking, an internal memo obtained by Reuters showed. A Nomura spokesman confirmed the contents of the memo and said Vereker would focus on a pipeline of existing deals.
But people who work with Vereker said that the 45-year-old would in all likelihood leave the bank soon, now that he was no longer in charge of the investment banking operations, even if he would see existing deals to an end.
Nomura said last week it would cut an additional $1 billion in costs, the second major restructuring of its loss-making overseas operations in less than year, and the first mark new Chief Executive Koji Nagai is making on the bank.
Nagai has promised a break with the past strategy of former Chief Executive Kenichi Watanabe and Chief Operating Officer Takumi Shibata, architects of the troubled Lehman acquisition.
In the new set-up, Kentaro Okuda - who had been joint head with Vereker - would assume sole leadership of global investment banking, the memo said.
James DeNaut and Charles Pitts-Tucker have been appointed joint international heads of investment banking, both reporting to Okuda, the memo also said.

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