Nomura Holdings Inc might dismiss about 20 percent of its workforce in North America, according to people with knowledge of the matter, joining a growing number of competitors shrinking Wall Street operations amid a trading slump.
Decisions are not final and the ultimate number could still differ, said the people, who asked not to be identified.
One senior manager said that reductions could be expanded to affect as much as 30 percent of the region’s staff.
Japan’s biggest brokerage has about 2,500 employees in the Americas, most of whom work in the US and Canada.
Jennifer Will, a company spokeswoman in New York, declined to comment.
In the Americas, the company has posted pretax losses for six straight quarters.
Chief executive officer Koji Nagai, 57, abandoned a goal to earn ￥50 billion (US$443 million) in profit abroad for the year ending this month after the company lost ￥63 billion overseas before taxes in the first nine months.
Nomura last made an annual profit outside of Japan in the year ended March 2010.
Market swings, low interest rates and slumping commodities prices already are spurring rival firms to warn shareholders about another drop in revenue from trading and dealmaking this quarter.
The challenges also have been spurring more job cuts at companies including Credit Suisse Group AG, Bank of America Corp and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Global investment banks are deepening staff reductions as the trading slump and stricter regulations curtail profitability.
Credit Suisse announced 2,000 additional job cuts on Wednesday, with chief executive officer Tidjane Thiam saying the Swiss bank might post a net loss this quarter.
Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, two of the largest US-based investment banks, have been leaning on annual dismissals of low performers to shrink parts of their Wall Street operations, people familiar with the plans have said.
Nagai, who became Nomura’s chief executive officer in August 2012, has grown more bearish about prospects for the company’s overseas business in recent months.
The firm is to cut costs overseas by trimming jobs and shrinking unproductive operations, he said in an interview last month.
Global market turmoil has affected overseas wholesale business and made it difficult to predict when the company could return to profit abroad, he said.
As recently as December last month, Nagai said there was “still potential for growth in the Americas” and that the firm is seeking to double investment-banking revenue there over the next two to three years.
The Japanese firm employed 2,501 people in the Americas as of Dec. 31 last year, an increase of 56 from a year earlier.
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