Nomura Hires Goldman Sachs Managing Director to Boost Tokyo Stock Derivatives Sales

Nomura Holdings hired Ami Connolly, a managing director formerly at Goldman Sachs, to strengthen its stock-derivatives sales business in Tokyo, the latest move by Japan's biggest brokerage to pull senior client-facing talent from Wall Street rivals.

The Connolly hire is part of a wider pattern. Nomura also brought on Lou Rosenfeld, a veteran mortgage-backed securities salesperson and former Goldman Sachs managing director, to bolster its U.S. business. Rosenfeld started earlier this month in New York as a managing director. Nomura declined to comment on the Rosenfeld hire, and Rosenfeld did not respond to a request for comment. No comment from Nomura or Connolly was available on the Tokyo appointment.

Rosenfeld's career traces a familiar Wall Street arc. He cut his teeth at Bear Stearns before the financial crisis, then spent three years as a managing director at Goldman Sachs before moving to fixed income asset management specialist Good Hill Partners, where he held a senior managing director title. He was most recently at Credit Suisse, where he was reportedly caught in a broader series of staff reductions late last year.

The hires reflect Nomura's ambition to compete across multiple geographies simultaneously. The firm is also actively pursuing a new round of hires to resuscitate its European business. That expansion push comes as Nomura carries regulatory baggage from the pre-crisis era: the firm agreed to pay $480 million in fines to resolve decade-old civil claims that it misled investors about the quality of residential mortgage-backed securities it marketed in the years before the financial crisis.

For Goldman MDs watching a colleague move to a Japanese firm, the Connolly hire signals that Tokyo-based derivatives desks are a credible destination for senior exits, not just the typical private equity or hedge fund route. Nomura's willingness to absorb Goldman talent at the managing director level, across both Tokyo and New York, suggests compensation packages competitive enough to pry away people accustomed to Goldman's bonus structure.

Rosenfeld, for his part, offered a philosophy at the 2011 graduation ceremony for his alma mater, George Washington University, that reads differently now that he has cycled through Bear Stearns, Goldman, Good Hill, Credit Suisse and Nomura: "Love what you do and the future it holds for you," he told graduates. "There's no shame in trying out an industry and realizing it's not for you.