Nomura Holdings Inc has picked Frankfurt, Germany, as the headquarters for its EU operations after the UK leaves the bloc, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Japan’s biggest brokerage is to start preparations this month to form a base in the German financial center, one of the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter is confidential.
It will seek regulatory approval and find office space before transferring fewer than 100 employees from London to Frankfurt, the person said.
The move makes Nomura the first Japanese securities firm to choose a location to secure business in the EU after Brexit.
Home to the headquarters of the European Central Bank, Frankfurt has emerged as one of the favored options for global banks seeking to relocate jobs from London.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley are scouting for office space in the city, which could serve as their new trading hub inside the EU, people with knowledge of the matter said earlier this month.
Nomura, which as of March had 3,026 employees in Europe, mostly in London, had been considering cities including Munich, Germany; Luxembourg; and Paris to house its EU operations.
Kenji Yamashita, a spokesman for Nomura in Tokyo, declined to comment on the decision.
The Tokyo-based securities firm has enjoyed an earnings revival in Europe following a round of cost cuts.
Last fiscal year, it posted its first annual overseas profit in seven years after eliminating about 900 jobs, mainly in Europe and the US.
Daiwa Securities Group Inc, Japan’s second-biggest brokerage, is looking at Frankfurt and Dublin for its EU operations.
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc and Mizuho Financial Group Inc have been building their presence in Amsterdam, where they hold a banking license that gives them access to the EU.
British Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney joined forces this week to defend the financial services industry as the government seeks to shift its Brexit focus away from controlling migration to safeguarding jobs.
Hammond said the “fragmentation” of services would increase prices of financial products, while Carney called for a new system of cooperation between Britain and the EU over derivatives clearing houses.
Formal negotiations between UK and EU officials on Brexit began on Monday.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts