Nomura's bankers and equities traders will deserve their bonuses this year. FICC less so
While other, mainly American banks have released their Q4 and 2025 full-year results, Japanese bank Nomura has released its Q3 results, also for the quarter ending December 2025. They were pretty good – mostly.
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The happiest times were for Nomura’s investment bankers and equities traders. Across 2025 (the calendar year, not the financial year – Nomura’s financial year ends in March), revenue from the former was up by 6% on last year and the latter up by 22%. The equities result was particularly notable – the bank noted that its equities revenue reached a second consecutive record high. Banking revenue also reached an all-time high.
The bank credited the strong equities performance to “robust” performance in execution services and equity products. The strength of banking revenue came from strong equity capital markets performance in Japan.
There was less good news for the firm’s fixed income traders. Full-year revenue for 2025 declined by 5% compared to 2024, mostly due to a fall in the first quarter of the year of 14%. At the time, the bank blamed the decline on a fall in its rates and credit businesses, but they didn’t make up the shortfall across the rest of the year. All eyes on Q4.
Luckily, Nomura’s bonuses have historically been paid in May, which is after the end of their financial year in March. That painful quarter might be discarded in calculations.
Nomura’s results were overshadowed by an ugly loss in Europe, as well as compensation scheme costs related to acquiring Macquarie’s asset management business. Japan Times said that the firm’s crypto asset business also posted a loss, and noted that the firm had a crypto subsidiary in Switzerland. Hedging against FX also impacted that loss, the firm said.
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