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Reuters India – Nomura Holdings plans to launch a global prime brokerage business by September as the financial crisis creates room for new players to offer lucrative services to hedge funds, a senior executive said on Monday.
The move shows how Japan’s biggest investment bank, which scooped the European, Middle Eastern and Asian units of bankrupt Lehman Brothers, is muscling into an industry once dominated by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Chicago Tribune – The Citadel Investment Group will shutter its Tokyo offices and cut 37 jobs from its Asian operations.
The Chicago-based hedge fund will still have a presence in Hong Kong, where 25 positions will be cut, the company said Monday. The investment firm founded by billionaire Ken Griffin in 1990 will maintain 25 to 30 staffers in Hong Kong. A regional group that invested in companies undergoing mergers, asset sales or lawsuits will be cut.
Citadel’s decision comes after its two primary funds reported losses of 47 percent through November. The firm manages $16 billion in assets.
Bloomberg – Citadel Investment Group LLC, the hedge fund manager founded by Kenneth Griffin, will close down its Tokyo office and Asian principal investments operations, cutting more than half of jobs in the region.
Citadel will run its remaining Asian operations from Hong Kong in the future after shutting the regional principal team that invests in companies undergoing or about to go through mergers and acquisitions, spinoffs, asset sales or legal challenges. Katie Spring, a spokeswoman in Citadel’s Chicago head office, confirmed the decision today.
Hedge funds globally are cutting jobs, limiting withdrawals and liquidating funds as a credit crunch and a 46 percent drop in the MSCI World Index in 2008 put them on course for the worst year on record. Hedge funds have lost 18 percent this year, according to Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc.
Reuters Tokyo – Japan’s Nomura Holdings is to buy the Asian operations of Lehman Brothers, a source with direct knowledge of the deal said on Monday, outbidding other banks seeking to scoop up the bankrupt U.S. bank’s Asian assets.
The source did not say how much the deal was worth, nor did he say if certain Lehman units were excluded from the agreement.
Nomura and Britain’s Barclays Plc have also bid for parts of Lehman’s business in Europe, as administrators seek to save as many jobs and salvage as much business as possible from the wreckage of what was Wall Street’s fourth biggest investment bank.
