[ by Howard Haykin ]
 

With Nomura's Americas operations facing $210 million in cuts, the head of Americas Equities has announced he will leave the firm.  Ciaran O’Kelly, 44, hired by Nomura Holdings Inc. in 2009 to lead the expansion of equities in the Americas, will be leaving the firm. 

O’Kelly “had a mandate to spend a lot of money” when he was recruited to Nomura, and his departure comes as the priorities change."  -- Richard Lipstein, MD at search firm Gilbert Tweed International.

The cuts by Chief Executive Koji Nagai, 53, are part of a plan to make the Tokyo-based firm’s overseas operations profitable by June 2014.  Nagai took over as CEO from Kenichi Watanabe, 59, last month amid an insider-trading scandal and is pulling back after overseas operations reported 9 consecutive quarterly losses. The changes follow a 4-year struggle to build a presence abroad, beginning with the 2008 purchase of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s European and Asian units.

O'Kelly's Background. O’Kelly came over from Bank of America Corp., where he had been Global Head of Equities.  From 2009 until 2012, O'Kelly expanded Nomura’s equities business in the Americas by adding hundreds of employees in a bid to boost revenue in the region.  Prior to his 7 years with BofA, O’Kelly had been with NY-based Citigroup for 11 years - during the final 3 years at Citigroup, he served as head of equity trading.   [Bloomberg, 9/12/12]