The beginning of a new END ??

Nomura May Sell Units to Raise Cash After Fourth Straight Loss

Nomura Holdings Inc. said it may sell businesses to raise capital and will cut executive pay after posting a fourth straight quarterly deficit on trading losses and costs to acquire parts of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Japan’s largest brokerage will divide itself into “core” and “non-core” operations and may sell some units, Chief Financial Officer Masafumi Nakada said at a press briefing in Tokyo. Nomura today reported a record 342.9 billion yen ($3.8 billion) deficit in the fiscal third quarter.

The company posted a trading loss of 134.5 billion yen, compared with a 65.1 billion yen profit a year earlier, as the MSCI World Index dropped 22 percent. Chief Executive Officer Kenichi Watanabe has flagged costs of $2 billion to take over Lehman’s Asian and European units and has said he isn’t sure when the purchase will start generating earnings.

“Major factors behind the group’s trading losses were the failures of hedging and arbitrage strategies,” Standard & Poor’s said in a statement cutting its rating on Nomura one grade to BBB+. “The rising costs associated with the acquisition of the business units of Lehman Brothers also pose additional risks.”

Nomura will eliminate executives’ annual bonuses and cut their monthly pay as much as 30 percent as it aims to reduce costs by 10 percent in the fiscal year starting April 1, Nakada said. He said details for a capital-raising plan have not yet been decided.

The company’s four straight quarterly losses compare with five at New York-based Citigroup Inc. and six for Merrill Lynch & Co., the Wall Street firm acquired by Bank of America Corp. in a deal that’s sparked anger from investors.

Revenue Evaporates

Revenue plunged 99 percent to 2.7 billion yen in the three months ended Dec. 31 from a year earlier. Brokerage commissions declined 29 percent to 73.4 billion yen as investors shunned the stock market, causing the average daily value of shares traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange to drop 33 percent from a year earlier.

“We posted a big net loss because of unprecedented turmoil in the third quarter,” CEO Watanabe said in a statement. “But our financial base is still strong and we can see synergies in cross-border mergers and acquisitions from merging with Lehman.”

Watanabe, who joined Nomura in 1975 and became CEO in April 2008, didn’t attend the press briefing.

Nomura fell 59 percent in Tokyo trading during the past 12 months and climbed 4.9 percent today to close at 639 yen before the latest financial results were reported.

Labor Costs Surge

“Nomura’s heavy losses leave no doubt that the global financial crisis has caught up with Japan,” said Neil Katkov, head of Asia research at Celent LLC in Tokyo. “Similar bad news can be expected from other Japanese securities firms, large and small.”

The firm, which agreed to take over about 8,000 employees from Lehman, said labor costs in the third quarter surged 73 percent. The company said last month it would fire as many as 1,000 employees in London, including former Lehman employees.

It also is eliminating more than 100 positions in Asia and cutting at least 100 jobs in Tokyo, mainly among former Lehman employees, two people familiar with the situation said Dec. 9.

Nomura will also cut its full-year dividend to 25.5 yen per share, from 34 yen a year earlier.

The company has previously announced it will raise about $6 billion of capital after about $4.4 billion of losses and writedowns tied to the global credit crisis.

Nomura booked a 32.3 billion yen loss linked to Bernard Madoff’s investment funds and lost 43.1 billion yen on Icelandic bank bonds. It booked a loss from its stake in New York-based Fortress Investment Group LLC of 62.3 billion yen.

(Source: Bloomberg)