Nomura to Expand Structured Finance in Private Markets Push

(Bloomberg) -- Nomura Holdings Inc. plans to build out a newly created team that will focus on helping both public and private companies raise cash through non-traditional means.

The “Structured Finance and Solutions” group at Nomura Securities Co. has about 20 people at present and will start operating on April 1, with further expansion likely, said Yosuke Inaida, senior corporate managing director for investment banking.

Core to the 30-year Nomura veteran’s plans are unlisted securities, part of chief executive officer Kentaro Okuda’s recent push to expand further beyond public markets. The team will look beyond stock offerings, corporate debt issuance and other more conventional areas of corporate finance to drive growth in new ways, Inaida said.

“We ought to focus more on creating products that satisfy customers’ needs to ensure our survival,” Inaida, 53, said in an interview.

Shohei Takahashi, a 50-year-old Nomura Securities managing director with experience in bond underwriting and fixed-income trading, will head the new team under Inaida.

More Specialists

Inaida said he’s looking within Nomura, as well as searching outside the firm to add more specialists with diverse backgrounds. However, no decision has yet been made on size. Products he envisages the group to work on include:

• Structures like the “Model AA” shares in Toyota Motor Corp. that carried voting rights and were priced at a premium to the common stock and required a five-year lock-in period
• Securitizing intellectual property rights and other assets that aren’t widely used for fund raisings
• Security token offerings

Inaida said he will use his experience in offering products to global investors to match his customers’ needs in a world awash with cash. The new team sits within Nomura Securities, the main domestic unit of Japan’s largest brokerage.

“I’m now on the financiers’ side of the field,” he said. “I want to somehow help match what they offer with the level of risk investors really want to take,” he said.

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