A senior British banker has become the highest-earning executive ever at Nomura after the Japanese group paid him $12 million last year — almost four times as much as his boss.
Chris Willcox has led Nomura’s wholesale banking division since October 2022, overseeing the group’s trading, investment banking and international wealth management operations.
The division posted its first profit in a decade last year, helping Nomura to increase its profits and make a welcome return to growth after several years of dwindling profitability, not aided by the bank’s exposure to the implosion of Archegos Capital.
In Japan, companies are required to disclose the pay of any “executive directors” earning more than ¥100 million ($620,000). In the six months immediately after his promotion in 2022, Willcox, 56, received about $5.5 million. The $12 million compensation for his first full year in his new role was a record for a Nomura executive, although Nomura bankers who were not executive officers are understood to have received more in years gone by.
Willcox’s remuneration compared with annual pay of $3.2 million for Kentaro Okuda, Nomura’s chief executive officer, regulatory filings show. Although that was much less than Willcox’s compensation, it was a third more than he received last year and a record high for a Nomura chief executive, Bloomberg, which first detailed the pay packages, reported.
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Willcox was also paid more than the chief executives of the British banks Lloyds and Barclays, who took home $4.7 million (£3.68 million) and $5.9 million (£4.64 million) respectively last year.
However, he remains some way behind the bosses of the big American banks, who are among the highest-paid bankers in the world. James Gorman, chief executive of Morgan Stanley, Jamie Dimon, the boss of JP Morgan, and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs all earned more than $30 million last year. Jane Fraser, the Scottish chief executive of Citi, was paid $26 million.
Willcox began his banking career as an economist in Citigroup’s London office in the early nineties. He moved to JP Morgan shortly before the global financial crisis, working his way up the ranks to run its asset management business in New York, which is where he remains based.
He joined Nomura three years ago and, since his promotion shortly after arriving, is one of only seven executives at the firm.
Willcox has been a key part of the team trying to revive Nomura’s fortunes after a turbulent few years. The company took a near-$3 billion hit from the failure of Archegos, the family office of the former star fund manager Bill Hwang which went under in 2021 after a risky stock market bet on ViacomCBS, the US media giant, went wrong. Nomura was among the handful of banks that had extended credit to Archegos.
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The Japanese group has also had to deal with the banking crisis in the US last year and the collapse of Credit Suisse.
There have been signs of improvement, however, and that has been reflected in Nomura’s share price, which is up 46 per cent so far in 2024.
Most of Willcox’s pay is based on performance, either in the form of cash bonuses or stock options, which become more valuable if the share price rises.
A spokesman for Nomura pointed out that the level and structure of remuneration is approved by an independent board, which takes into account the roles and responsibilities of individuals as well as the market pay in Japan and overseas.
