Japan’s Nomura Bank to Establish New Subsidiary Company Abroad

The largest investment bank in Japan, Nomura, is on its way to establish a new subsidiary company. The company will help clients invest in cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Nomura has around $569 billion in assets under management as of Q1 2022 and is considered one of the 10 largest banks in Japan.

On Tuesday, the Financial Times reported that people with some information about Nomura’s plans stated that the company intends to bring together several crypto services under one single company and have around 100 people on its staff by 2023.

The company will be established abroad and will at first be seated by Nomura transplants while the company tries to gather Web3 and blockchain experts to include in the firm. The company will also initially be led by the head of wholesale digital operations of Nomura, Jez Mohideen.

The bank is feeling pressure to keep up with the booming blockchain technology and digital asset industry. One executive of Nomura was quoted saying, “if we don’t do this, then it’s going to be more difficult down the line to be competitive.”

This move is not the only one for Nomura in the blockchain and crypto industry. The bank also recently started offering Bitcoin (BTC) derivatives trading to Asian clients. The trades were executed on CME Group’s platform, which handled around 6,944 Bitcoin futures contracts on May 16.

Amidst the excitement of the bank’s new project, Nomura, unfortunately, must now also deal with the prospect of losing most of its quarterly profits due to a $345 million write-down on a transaction that FT also reported on Tuesday. The transaction happened during the 2008 economic meltdown, but it is not yet clear which transaction it was.