Japanese investment banking major Nomura Holdings, which acquired Lehman Brother's Asia and India operations, has slashed its investment banking team by half in the country. Among those let go include the top dogs like Surojit Shome, Ashok Mittal and Prashant Purker, reports
Financial Chronicle. Another 10 people have also been fired from the investment banking
team, reducing the size of the team from 26 to 13.
The Japanes I-bank is also cutting workforce in Lehman's BPO operations it acquired in Powai. Nomura has already closed its structured finance operations with sacking 8 people. Its planning cut the 2,500-strong workforce it acquired from Lehman by 25%. While 400 people have been already let go, another 110 people are on the bench.
The redundancies have been done due to the lack of work and also personnel overlap, according to reports. Nomura, which is now the top investment bank in the region, has overall cut 50 investment banking jobs in the Asia region. These include cuts in offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and South Korea.
When Nomura acquired Lehamn operations last year, it promised attractive bonuses in order to reatin top talent. The employees were granted retention bonuses varying between 40-130% of their annual basic salaries.
Lehman had hired high-profile executives from other top investments investment banks in the country by offering them huge paychecks. Shome was hired as head of its investment banking division from Citigroup, with a paycheck of reportedly over $1 million along with bonus. Mittal was hired as a MD from HSBC, where he was co-head of investment banking at HSBC Securities and Capital Markets. Purker was hired from ICICI Bank.
