City Job cuts feared at Nomura

Fears were growing today that Japanese bank Nomura could announce hundreds more job cuts, largely focused on its London-based European, Middle East and Africa business.

The cuts could come as early next week, according to the Wall Street Journal, which said senior executives at the bank were calling on it to focus on its profitable businesses in Japan, the US and other parts of Asia.

Such a move would represent a major retrenching after Nomura bought the collapsed Lehman Brothers businesses in London and Asia in 2008, keeping many of the staff and then going on a major hiring spree in the capital. It at present employs some 3500 in London with a further 1000 around the region reporting back here. Last month Nomura announced that 400 jobs would go mainly in the EMEA operations.

The bank refused to comment today and is due to report its third quarter results on November 1. In April Chancellor George Osborne officially opened Nomura's new London headquarters overlooking the Thames in the City. It has space for 1800 traders on two separate giant trading floors.

Nomura has previously had to retrench in London.

After growing rapidly in the second half of the Eighties it was forced to cut back on its international operations because of domestic economic problems in Japan in the Nineties.