Nomura CEO Set to Apologize Weeks After Former Employee’s Arrest
Nomura Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Officer Kentaro Okuda will hold a press conference on Tuesday to apologize weeks after a former employee was arrested in Japan on suspicion of robbery and attempted murder.
(Bloomberg) -- Nomura Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Officer Kentaro Okuda will hold a press conference on Tuesday to apologize weeks after a former employee was arrested in Japan on suspicion of robbery and attempted murder.
Okuda will appear with three other senior managers at 4 p.m. in Tokyo to explain remedial measures to journalists, according to a statement. He told an annual gathering of investors earlier in the day that he was sorry about the matter while pledging to take both short- and longer-term steps to prevent any recurrence.
The incident in Hiroshima in western Japan is one of the two scandals that have shaken Nomura’s reputation lately. Prosecutors brought charges against the 29-year-old man, alleging that he drugged an elderly customer and the person’s spouse, stealing cash from their home and setting it on fire. The suspect was working for Nomura’s wealth management division at the time of the incident in July and has since been dismissed.
“We would like to deeply apologize for the great inconvenience and concern we have caused to our customers and stakeholders,” Go Sugiyama, head of wealth management, said at the Nomura Investment Forum.
Sugiyama said Nomura will implement a slew of measures to prevent a recurrence, such as having managers speak directly to clients before wealth-management staff members visit their homes. His team will also “further strengthen” various steps already undertaken to pre-empt improprieties, including compliance and ethical training for employees, he said.
Japan’s financial regulator has urged Nomura to examine the cause of the incident and come up with measures to prevent similar cases, Bloomberg reported last month.
The development is the latest example of Nomura entering the regulator’s cross hairs. Other than this case, the Financial Services Agency fined Nomura in October for manipulating Japan’s government bond futures market in 2021. The revelations, for which Okuda apologized, prompted some clients to take bond trading and underwriting business to rivals, though some have since returned to Nomura.
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First Published:3 Dec 2024, 11:56 AM IST
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