Nomura to sell $3.2 bn of shares at 3% discount

Nomura Holdings Inc, Japan’s largest brokerage, said it will raise ¥312.8 billion ($3.2 billion) in its first sale of common stock in 20 years by offering shares at a 3 per cent discount to their latest price.

The company will sell 750 million shares to local and overseas investors at ¥417 apiece, according to a statement filed at the Ministry of Finance on Wednesday. Shares in the company, which said Feruary. 23 it aimed to raise about ¥291.2 billion, closed at ¥430 on Wednesday on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Chief Executive Officer Kenichi Watanabe is shoring up capital after the company posted a record ¥342.9 billion loss in the three months ended December 31, its fourth straight quarterly deficit. Nomura’s shares have slumped 41 per cent this year after Watanabe said businesses bought from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc in Asia and Europe may cost his Tokyo-based company $2 billion to integrate.

“Nomura managed to clear the target at a relatively low discount, while other financial firms failed to do so or offered higher discounts,” said Azuma Ohno, a Tokyo-based analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG. “Nomura’s management now has to show investors how it will use the money to grow.”

T&D Holdings Inc, Japan’s largest publicly traded life insurer, said on Tuesday it would offer a 4 per cent discount in a share sale to raise ¥53 billion.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc, Japan’s biggest bank, said November 18 it planned to sell as many as 1 billion shares, worth ¥546 billion at that day’s closing price. The bank said December 8 it would sell the shares at ¥417 apiece, raising ¥417 billion, after the stock had fallen 21 per cent.

Watanabe is taking a pay cut and may sell unprofitable units as Nomura tries to weather a deepening recession in Japan and a global slump that’s cut the value of companies on the world’s stock markets by 20 per cent this year. He’s raising about $8.4 billion of capital after about $3.9 billion of losses and writedowns tied to the global credit crisis.

In December, Nomura raised ¥410 billion from Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance Co, Shinkin Central Bank and individual investors.