A British banker has become the highest-earning executive ever at Japanese group Nomura after he was awarded a $12million pay packet – nearly four times as much as the CEO.
Christopher Willcox, who has led Nomura’s wholesale banking division since October 2022, was awarded the record pay package after the team he heads helped the company recover from one of its most turbulent periods.
The group – which is Japan‘s biggest brokerage and investment bank – had been struggling to curtail expenses in its wholesale business, but under the leadership of the British senior banker was able to bounce back.
The record pay package comes after the wholesales division – which oversees the group’s trading, investment banking and international wealth – recorded its first profit in a decade last year.
Christopher Willcox has been awarded the highest-ever pay package for an executive at Nomura. He is understood to have been paid nearly four times as much as the CEO
The $12million (£9.5million) award is understood to be around four times higher than chief executive officer Kentaro Okuda’s $3.2million (£2.5million) annual pay, regulatory filings show.
The wholesale division’s recovery also helped drive the company to return to profit growth for the first time since Okuda took over as chief executive in 2020.
In April this year, it was reported that Nomura enjoyed a 670 per cent surge in net profits compared to a year earlier.
The net income in its fourth quarter of the year – which ran to the end of March 2024 – came in at approximately ¥56.8bn (£280m), a figure nearly eight times higher than the ¥7.4bn it recorded in the same period a year earlier.
Nomura experienced an increase in annual profits for the first time since 2020 when Kentara Okuda took over as CEO
Several incidents, including the implosion of Archegos Capital, had put the bank in crisis, but the recent recovery has seen a surge in stock prices.
In Japan, the pays of any executive directors who earn more than ¥56.8bn (£492,000) are required to be disclosed by companies.
Willcox, 56, was paid around $5.5million in the six months after his promotion in 2022, and the boost in pay was based on performance.
His pay packet is worth more than the chief executives of British banks Lloyds and Barclays, according to The Times, who earned $4.7million and $5.9million last year.
However, the huge figure is still lower than the sums earned by bosses at some of America’s biggest banks. The bosses of JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs all earned more than $30million last year.
Willcox began working at Nomura three years ago, but began his life in banking in London as an economist at Citigroup, before moving on to big four bank JP Morgan.
A spokesman for Nomura told The Times that the amount and structure of remuneration is approved by an independent board, and the roles and responsibilities of staff and the market pay in Japan and abroad are taken into account.