Soon after Nomura Holdings Inc. got burned on the collapse of Archegos Capital Management, its executives vowed to revamp its prime brokerage. Insiders and hedge funds are starting to grasp what that means for those operations in the U.S. and Europe: There won’t be much left.
Within the Tokyo-based firm, executives privately predict its plan to rein in risks will shrink the prime brokerage unit in Asia — and curtail it much more dramatically in Europe and the U.S., where Nomura was relatively small but was attempting to expand.
Word of the retreat is already spreading on Wall Street, as some of Nomura’s prime brokerage employees in New York start to explore other job opportunities or advise key clients to establish backup relationships with other banks, people with knowledge of those talks said. Nomura has also approached some rival firms about the possibility of having them take over lending commitments to prime-brokerage clients, another person said.