A British banker has pocketed a record $12m (£9m) payout from lender Nomura – three times more than that of his Japanese boss.
Veteran banker Christopher Willcox scooped the highest-ever payday for an executive working for the Japanese finance giant after the lender swung back to profit.
Mr Willcox runs the company’s wholesale bank from New York, making him responsible for mergers and acquisitions (M&A), trading and underwriting activities, all of which typically reap the largest rewards in the world of banking.
He was paid $12m for the year ending March 2024, up from $5.5m the year prior, according to a new Nomura filing.
Mr Willcox’s payout may raise eyebrows internally, given that it is significantly higher than that of Kentaro Okuda, the Nomura chief executive, who received 506m yen last year (£2.5m).
Part of the disparity is attributed to the strong dollar versus the yen, with Mr Willcox being paid in the former while Mr Okuda receives the latter.
The payout also reflects a reversal in fortunes for the Japanese bank, which made a 166bn yen profit last year, up from 93bn yen in 2023.
Mr Willcox’s division was one of the main profit drivers, with his pay largely performance-linked.
The British-born banker was the first non-Japanese citizen to be appointed as an executive officer at Nomura after joining in May 2021.
Elite global banker
He previously worked at JP Morgan, including a role as chief executive of its $1.9 trillion fund management business.
Before that he worked for Citigroup, having joined as an economist in London in the early 1990s.
He is a trustee of the US-based Tenement Museum, which highlights the working-class roots of migrants who came to live in New York City.
The payday puts Mr Willcox into the upper echelons of elite global bankers although he lags behind some of his Wall Street peers.
David Solomon, Goldman Sachs chief executive, earned $31m last year, while Jamie Dimon, the JP Morgan boss, reaped $36m.
His payout also dwarfs the rewards on offer for UK bank bosses, with CS Venkatakrishnan, the Barclays chief executive, earning £4.6m and Charlie Nunn, of Lloyds, earning £3.7m.
Mr Willcox is one of only seven executive officers at the Japanese bank.
The executive officer is the most senior title at Nomura and the bank must disclose how much they are paid under banking rules.
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