Nomura Holdings Inc. plans to hire about 20 bankers in the U.S. to help regain lost share of the world's largest mergers and acquisitions advisory market.
The nation's biggest brokerage will seek people to work on leveraged lending and building relationships with private-equity firms such as KKR & Co., global investment banking head Kentaro Okuda said in a recent interview in Tokyo. Others will be recruited to cover the hotel, real estate, casino and gaming industries, he said.
The hiring plans mark a shift by Chief Executive Officer Koji Nagai toward resurrecting Nomura's global ambitions after spending the first 16 months of his tenure fixing his predecessor's missteps, such as ballooning overseas costs and an insider-trading scandal that roiled domestic operations. The brokerage is expanding in leveraged finance as stricter global capital requirements make the business more expensive for banks.