Nomura Holdings Inc. paid its wholesale banking chief almost twice as much as its chief executive officer last fiscal year.
(Bloomberg) — Nomura Holdings Inc. paid its wholesale banking chief almost twice as much as its chief executive officer last fiscal year.
Christopher Willcox, whose division spans trading, underwriting and advice on mergers, received 744.9 million yen ($5.2 million) in compensation in the year ended March 31, a regulatory filing showed Wednesday. CEO Kentaro Okuda’s pay rose 9% from the previous year to 385.2 million yen.
New York-based Willcox, who took the role in October after previously heading operations in the Americas, is the highest paid among executive officers at Japan’s biggest brokerage, the filing showed.
Okuda saw his pay rise even as net income declined for a third straight year, buffeted by a lackluster dealmaking environment. The firm last month cut earnings targets while launching a review to revive profitability.
Willcox’s pay is determined by taking into account compensation in the foreign investment banking industry, a Nomura representative said. The company decides executive remuneration based on factors including return on equity and individual areas of responsibility, the representative added.
“If you compare Willcox’s compensation to that of executives at other global investment banks, it is not out of range,” said Michael Makdad, an analyst at Morningstar Inc. in Tokyo. “Rather, Okuda’s compensation is probably lower than that of the CEOs of similarly sized global peers.”
Makdad added that it would be “hard to argue that Nomura’s top executives deserve large pay increases unless performance and the stock price improve.”
Read how Japan bank CEOs are paid less than global rivals
Japan requires publicly traded companies to disclose compensation of executive officers who earn more than 100 million yen.
Top executives across Wall Street have felt the pinch as their companies’ share prices and profit tumbled last year.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. slashed David Solomon’s compensation by about 30% to $25 million, while Morgan Stanley cut James Gorman’s by 10% to $31.5 million. Deutsche Bank AG’s Christian Sewing was paid €8.93 million ($9.8 million), a 1.4% increase.
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