New Nomura CFO Shrugs Off Pressure

It may have taken 86 years for Nomura Holdings Inc. to appoint its first female senior executive, but Junko Nakagawa, the firm’s new chief financial officer, says she feels no special pressure because she’s a woman: She says her promotion is consistent with the company’s push to globalize and compete with its rivals on Wall Street. Nakagawa, 45 years old, was named Nomura’s finance chief last month in a broad shuffling of its senior management. In Japan’s traditional finance industry, she stands apart: the country’s top three banks, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mizuho Financial Group, all have no women on their executive management boards.

Two years after acquiring Lehman’s Asia and Europe arms, Nomura continues to face challenges as it seeks to build a global investment banking business. Nomura’s overseas operations were unprofitable for the third straight quarter in the three months to December, losing ¥3.05bn (€25m). Nakagawa says that despite some setbacks, Nomura will continue its global push while at the same time expanding its business at home. The bulk of Nomura’s investment banking revenue still comes from its home market. Nomura is the leading investment bank in Japan by a wide margin, earning nearly one fourth of the total investment banking revenue in Japan last year, according to Dealogic.

Nakagawa, who started her new role Friday, intends to be low-profile as the chief financial officer, but she is also aware that her promotion is a part of Nomura’s efforts to better compete globally with Western rivals such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. “I think it’s a part [of our efforts for further globalisation]. Being a woman is just one facet of myself – it’s like being a different nationality,” she said. She didn’t deny the possibility that, in the future, a foreigner could become the chief executive of Nomura, given the changing environment at the company. Along with Nakagawa’s promotion, Nomura promoted Indian-born Jasjit “Jesse” Bhattal to group deputy president and chief executive of the wholesale banking division, the highest role for a foreigner in the company’s history.

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