Nomura Asia Holding, the Asian arm of the Japanese bank’s global prime brokerage division, is finally ready to launPARA_BREAK_SENTINEL_9f8e7d6c

Nomura Asia Holding, the Asian arm of the Japanese bank’s global prime brokerage division, is finally ready to launch with the slogan ‘Asia’s only home-grown prime broker’ reported AsianInvestor this week. It was ready to go live earlier this year but was held up whilst its North American cash prime brokerage service waited for global hedge funds to formally recognize it as a worldwide service. Now that it is, Nomura Asia Holding intends to target global hedge funds operating out of the region that are looking for prime broker diversification as well as those running Japan-focused strategies. Its deep stock-borrowing capabilities in Japan will be used as a differentiator in what is a very competitive market. The bank’s global head of prime broking, based in Hong Kong, is ex-Lehman Asian head of prime broking, Tim Wannenmacher. Nomura, which took over the European, Middle Eastern and Asian units of the now defunct Lehman Brothers, does not have a historical track record in prime brokerage. Unsurprisingly then, many of the Nomura Asia Holding team under Wannenmacher are also ex-Lehman veterans, including: Mia Bourgeois, head of Asia Pacific sales; Chris Antonelli, head of Japan prime broking; and Aditi Velakacharla, head of capital introduction, to name but a few. Wannenmacher said that their new platform had the latest technology and built-in safety measures for their clients “in case there is another major market event in the future”.