It's impossible to win over a crying baby, or government officials, or so the Japanese say. Nobuyuki Koga, CEO of Nomura Holdings, Japan's mightiest investment bank, hardly needs the reminder. For years he preached the benefits of robust capital markets, lobbying the government for key changes to aid in their development.
Now, Koga, 54, has gotten his wish. The reform-minded administration of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is tearing apart Japan's carefully orchestrated postwar development plan, a cozy arrangement between banks and the government that all too often left capital markets -- and traditional investment banks -- on the sidelines. In December the Japanese government began a long overdue revamping of its securities laws, introducing a program that's expected to push trillions of yen into the capital markets as Japanese citizens move their money out of bank deposits and into securities. The program, called shoken chukaigyo, allows the country's banks to act as sales agents for securities companies and thereby sell stocks and bonds over the counter at branches for the first time ("shoken" means stock, and "chukaigyo" means middle agent).
这些变化,具有讽刺意味的是,现在郎和野村with the challenge of a lifetime. Long the market leader in merger advisories and IPO book running, Nomura still dominates investment banking in Japan, but the new reforms will allow unfettered access to the country's capital markets for big banking companies that dwarf Nomura in size -- and ambition. Under shoken chukaigyo, banks choose which securities firms they will work with. That's not a problem for Japan's other top-tier brokerage firms -- Daiwa Securities Group, Mitsubishi Securities, Mizuho Investors Securities Co. and Shinko Securities Co. -- all of which are linked with either a huge financial conglomerate or a banking company. Nomura, however, is the only securities firm without a ready-made shoken chukaigyo partnership in place.
The conglomerate-backed banks have hit the ground running. Most inaugurated their securities efforts in December, rolling out full-scale programs last month, the start of the new fiscal year in Japan. Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Japan's biggest bank, which launched the sale of Japanese equities and foreign bonds at 31 branches at the end of 2004, extended the service to all 472 of its branches on April 1. The country's second-largest bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., began selling foreign-issued and structured bonds -- though not equities -- at all of its outlets in December. These products, says Takeshi Morita, a spokesman for SMBC, generate "very interesting new business" and fill a gap between low-risk, low-yield bank deposits and the high-risk investment trusts that the bank was limited to selling before shoken chukaigyo was launched. The bank is using SMBC Friend Securities Co., a retail subsidiary, as its affiliate. Mizuho Bank has partnered with its sister company, Mizuho Investors Securities Co., to pursue high-net-worth customers as potential buyers for new securities products and as clients seeking investment advice tailored to individual needs.
No one expects Nomura to lose its dominant position overnight, but experts say that unless it takes decisive action -- buying a bank, merging with a rival institution or at the very least investing heavily to develop banking services -- the proud independent with the 80-year heritage could be bumped from its top spot in the markets. "Commercial banks will form the core of the Japanese financial system as deregulation progresses," says one portfolio manager at a major European money manager in Tokyo, who is avoiding Nomura shares. "Nomura will face difficulties in forming a relationship with a bank, partly because of its independent spirit and its desire to keep its name."
当野村的业绩已经显示出毒株迹象时，Shoking Chukaigyo变化是：2005年3月截至2005年3月份的财政年度的公司税前利润下降了27.5％，达到20.4亿日元（19.4亿美元），并获得股权回报只有5.2％，koga为中期目标的10％数字。相比之下，竞争对手Daiwa将其利润提升了25％，而Nikko Cordial Corp.稳定，增加了1％。
Nomura did report strong results in some areas. The retail side, for example, where the firm earns 45 percent of net revenue, turned in a solid performance, with profits up from ¥79.5 billion to ¥81.2 billion. And Nomura Asset Management Co. turned a loss of ¥1 billion in the previous fiscal year into a profit of ¥7.4 billion.
但最弱的数据来自曾经known as the global wholesale division, which included investment banking, global markets and merchant banking until it was divided into three autonomous units in March. Overall the pretax earnings of the former wholesale division empire fell 38 percent, to ¥86 billion. Nomura blamed the setback mainly on lower profits in its global markets subdivision, where profits from bond trading slumped by 50 percent.
Still, results from Nomura's investment banking division were a mix of good and bad news. Investment banking turned in a ¥29.2 billion pretax profit, up 70 percent, as healthier capital markets boosted income from corporate bond underwriting and IPOs. But the numbers don't tell the whole story: In the final quarter of the fiscal year, Nikko Citigroup, an investment banking joint venture between Nikko Cordial and Citigroup, edged out Nomura as the top underwriter of Japanese IPOs, with $3.1 billion worth of deals to Nomura's $2.4 billion.
Even in the face of weaker-than-expected results, and despite some pessimistic forecasts for Nomura's future in light of Japan's regulatory reforms, Koga professes to see shoken chukaigyo as an opportunity, not a threat. His view: Any loss in the firm's dominant market share will be more than made up for by a vastly bigger pie.
“如果证券投资的个人资产比例从10％加倍倍增加倍，则会有一个额外的¥150万亿日元，”他告诉机构投资者在俯瞰Nihonbashi的阳光下的办公室的采访中，是优雅的19日。亚博赞助欧冠- 古老东京核心的桥梁。“我可以终于想象渴望梦想成真。”
Koga, who has held the top job for two years -- he succeeded Junichi Ujiie in April 2003 -- insists that Nomura doesn't need to make a splashy acquisition or pawn itself off to a megabank. But alliances with equals are definitely on the agenda. In February, Nomura announced that it will offer cross-border M&A advisory services in a tie-up with London-based Rothschild group. The two firms will share client referrals, but not capital. Nomura is also expanding overseas, by hiring professionals away from U.S. investment banks to launch specialized new products, such as equity derivatives. Within Japan, Nomura and Koga are trying to meet the new competition head-on by offering a range of new, better products, such as floating-rate Japanese government bonds tailored to meet the needs of individual investors, and investment trusts designed to maximize dividends rather than capital gains.
Nomura's March decision to break up the unwieldy global wholesale division into three units, investment banking, global markets and merchant banking, each reporting directly to the CEO, was designed to give management the power to make faster decisions, and be more flexible, in a fast-changing business environment. This way, Takeshi Yanagiya, the new head of investment banking and the former head of global wholesale, will be better able to fight back against underwriting challenges from Nikko Citigroup and Daiwa. The reconfiguration will also help Nomura present a more accurate picture of its results, which currently reflect widely different performances in different sectors.
野村证券（Nomura）正寻求与全国各地规模较小的地区性机构合作，出售证券，从而结束对大型银行的挤兑。”“当然，我们面临着激烈的竞争，”Koga承认，“而且竞争会越来越激烈。”
这并不是管理层第一次被迫捍卫野村的地盘。自1925年从野村银行（Nomura Bank，后来的大和银行，现在的Resona Bank）剥离出来，成为一家羽翼未丰的债券公司，并选择避开日本银行主导的keiretsu（即以企业集团为基础的所有制）以来，该公司一直有充分的机会来磨练自己的生存本能。
Nomura's most recent near-death experience occurred six years ago, just after the disastrous fiscal year ended March 1999, when the firm got whacked by the weak Tokyo stock market, the Asian financial crisis, Russian bond defaults and big losses from an ill-advised foray into U.S. commercial-mortgage-backed securities. Already staggered by years of declining stock markets and economic malaise, Nomura lost ¥595 billion and had to rely on its capital base to survive as an independent firm.
But when Japanese stocks rallied in 1999 and 2000, Nomura came roaring back, earning ¥263 billion in profits in the fiscal year ended March 2000. It was, in fact, the only one of the Big Three firms left standing without outside help. Daiwa got a cash infusion in 1998 by entering into an investment banking joint venture with Sumitomo Bank, one of the forerunners of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group; Nikko Securities Co., now named Nikko Cordial, struck its partnership with Citigroup the same year.
In October 1999, Nomura came under attack again. Just as Internet trading was taking off, Japanese regulators ended fixed brokerage commissions. Low-commission electronic trading upstarts like Matsui Securities Co., Monex and ETrade Securities Co. walked off with many of Nomura's day-trading customers.
反击，野村设立了自己的在线经纪服务，野蛮的家庭贸易，但选择不符合脚趾的价格与它的竞争对手。相反，零售策略董事总经理Hiroaki Honda表示，它促进了经纪业务的广泛改造。Nomura通过收入分离了客户的客户，为其最富裕的客户提供了仔细绘制的策略，同时提供更少的富人，更便宜地承认。该公司随后将其销售和营销努力重定向，朝着更老，富裕，潜在的更有利可图的人口统计。该计划工作：Nomura现在拥有370万零售账户（其中1.59亿美元），高于三年前的290万。“我们必须根据财富进行清楚地分割我们的客户，以便提供他们真正需要的东西，”本田解释道。
Nomura has reduced its emphasis on commissions in general. When brokerage commissions were deregulated in 1999, notes Takumi Shibata, CEO of Nomura Asset Management, "we had two options: to go cheap or to generate more earnings per head at branches." Nomura chose the second route, focusing on asset gathering, which gives it more opportunities to provide management services that generate fees, while leveraging its sizable customer base to sell still other commission-generating products, such as initial public offerings from its corporate customers.
Koga argues that Nomura's huge market share -- and its knack for rebounding -- will allow the firm not just to survive, but to prosper, as Japan reforms its capital markets over the next two years.
尽管保险服务法（Insurance Services Law）草案将于下月完成，但全面改革计划的细节仍不多见。该草案旨在允许银行将贷款业务多元化至资本市场。金融服务机构（日本首席金融监管机构）的最终目标是将现有的四家大型银行（一旦UFJ控股和东京三菱在2005年秋季完成合并，很快将成为三家；另外两家是瑞穗金融集团和三井住友）转变为能够提供全方位服务的全能银行集团金融服务，包括银行、投资银行和证券。
日兴花旗集团（Nikko Citigroup）银行分析师野崎弘（Hironari Nozaki）表示：“根据我们从政府那里听到的消息，shoken chukaigyo计划可能只是一个进程的开始，这一进程将改变日本的金融格局。”。
政府本不可能选择一个更好的时机推出shoken chukaigyo。日本储户持有超过700万亿日元的银行存款；一年期定期存款的收益率目前约为0.03%。日本婴儿潮一代的第一大波人将在三年后退休，他们中的许多人预计将冒险投资低至中等风险的债券和股票，以期获得更高的回报。
野村资产管理公司（Nomura Asset Management）首席投资官水野隆彦（Takahide Mizuno）表示：“我们认为人们可能准备将更多资金投入证券的一个原因是，风险资产占人们持有资产的比例一直在稳步下降。”在泡沫最严重的时候，当房地产价格膨胀时，风险资产占个人总资产的65%到70%。现在他们已经降到了40%左右。”
The banks will be able to profit from the coming market shifts, thanks to their massive distribution systems. There are some 30,000 bank outlets in Japan, compared with roughly 3,000 securities company branches. Banks have demonstrated their savvy at marketing new products: First allowed to offer investment trusts (equivalent to U.S. mutual funds) in 1998, banks now sell half of all newly issued investment trusts. What's more, banks and their conglomerate parents have belatedly recognized that consumer finance -- unlike corporate lending -- holds the best prospect of profitable growth. In the past year, Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group have both made acquisitions to gain strong positions in the fast-growing unsecured-personal-loan marketplace.
券商已经通过继续合作为shoken chukaigyo做好了准备。直到最近，除了野村证券以外，日本国内唯一一家没有本土分支机构的大型券商是日兴证券（Nikko Cordial），该公司与花旗集团（Citigroup）成立了一家合资企业。但在去年12月底，瑞穗金融集团旗下的瑞穗企业银行（Mizuho Corporate Bank）宣布将收购日兴近5%的股份，成为仅次于花旗的第二大股东。今年2月，总部位于东京的财经报纸《日本经济新闻》报道说，大和证券集团和拥有三井住友银行（Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp.）的三井住友金融集团（Sumitomo Mitsui financial Group）正在讨论合并事宜。这两个集团的首席执行官都否认谈判正在进行，但都承认有可能建立伙伴关系。大和集团和SMFG已经通过住友在投资银行合资企业大和证券SMBC公司（Daiwa Securities SMBC Co.）40%的股份建立了联系。
Even as Nomura's rivals gather force, Koga refuses to consider anything but independence. The tie-up with Rothschild will not include any stakeholdings. Instead, Rothschild will introduce Nomura to its European clients for M&A advisory services in Asia, and Nomura will direct its Japanese clients to Rothschild when they need advice on European M&A.
Koga而不是合并，Koga希望通过更智能地工作，并利用其经验丰富的顾问和经纪人提供卓越的产品，包括浮息债券，投资信托和房地产投资信托 - 产品展示野生意味着对低利息银行存款的个人投资者的祛魅。（例如，Nomura最新的高股份国内股权基金，例如，在4月4日推出并仅通过公司的分行网络销售，在本月的第三周绘制了1000亿日元的百汇。）
NOMURA IS ALSO COBBLING TOGETHER AGREEments with regional lenders all over the country, offering products ranging from syndicated loans to asset securitizations, says spokesman Tsukasa Noda. To boost its role as a coordinator for syndicated loans issued by regional banks, Nomura recently applied for lending licenses, or kashi kingyo, for 20 of its 130 branches. The move should help strengthen relations with regional banks, which tend to have a surplus of deposits and a lack of lending opportunities.
Nomura's latest efforts are off to a promising start: More than 40 regional banks have announced that they will partner with the brokerage firm. And state-owned Resona Bank has also said it will work with its onetime bond department.
尽管如此，该公司零碎的策略仍然存在风险。野村资本市场研究所（Nomura Institute of Capital Markets Research）的高级成员Sadakazu Osaki表示，实力雄厚的本地银行可以选择创建自己的小型金融企业集团，并建立证券附属公司。这种趋势可能会让野村证券（Nomura）等证券公司陷入尴尬的境地，与它们目前希望合作的地区竞争。
一些分析师还想知道，野村（Nomura）是否还能像现在这样展开必要的斗争，以避免银行倒闭。1998年，野村放弃了长期分散经营的历史，采取了更严格控制的“矩阵”管理形式。这些担忧也困扰着野村。野村副总裁兼首席运营官Hiroshi Toda在2004年4月野村董事总经理会议的总结中说：“我有一种模糊的感觉，我们假装是相扑冠军。我们不能忘记，我们赖以生存的工作证券业是一个竞争非常激烈的领域，如果我们丧失了挑战意识和战斗精神，我们一定会失败。”
Analysts have not stopped speculating about scenarios for Nomura's future that include linking with other institutions. James McGinnis, a bank analyst at Mizuho Securities, suggests the Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group group as a partnering possibility, once the merger of MTFG's Bank of Tokyo-Mitusbishi with UFJ Holdings is approved and gets under way in the fall. MTFG has declined to comment, although the group recently announced plans for a joint venture with Merrill Japan Securities Co. to serve high-net-worth retail clients. The Merrill-MTFG private banking venture, which will not launch until April 2006, would pit the Mitsubishi group directly against Nomura.
Such developments may shrink Nomura's options, say analysts, who think the firm should find a deal now, when it is still the undisputed ruler of Japan's capital markets and the banks are still clumsy novices. Nomura won't have the luxury of any further lead time because the government is moving quickly with its liberalizing measures.
如果他觉得同样的紧迫感,四郎不是admitting it. Right now he says he's eager to "work with banks to expand Japan's capital markets" and see his dreams come true. He is confident Nomura will succeed if it "responds to customer needs with flexibility and speed." Shareholders and analysts will be watching closely to see if an independent Nomura can meet their needs as well. As any sumo fan knows, sometimes even the most massive wrestler can be surprisingly nimble.