Nomura faces rare vote over shareholder’s name-change proposal

Nomura Holdings has received a shareholder proposal that it will put to a vote for the first time in 13 years at a general meeting next month, as activism in the nation’s stock market heats up.

The proposal seeks to change the company’s name to Nomura Securities Group, according to a notice of the meeting. The shareholder is not identified but is a former employee of Nomura’s brokerage unit, according to a source familiar with the matter.

A name change would help the company return to the principles of its founder, Tokushichi Nomura, after the firm went through a series of scandals, according to the shareholder. Those include manipulative trading in bond derivatives, which led to the company getting hit with a regulatory penalty and being temporarily left out from corporate bond deals.

The board of Nomura is opposed to the proposal, according to the notice. The brokerage, which is commemorating its 100th anniversary this year, said it operates financial services globally beyond the securities business and its current name is widely recognised as the holding company of a financial services group.

Activist investors are pressuring Japanese companies to boost shareholder returns, in line with a push by the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the government to make the nation’s equity market more attractive for global investors.

Many more stockholder activism campaigns in Japan are likely even after the proxy season wraps up in June, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Yasutake Homma.

In general for shareholder proposals, there likely are a fair number of cases where issues are resolved through dialogue with investors before general meetings, said Hideyasu Ban, another Bloomberg Intelligence analyst.

“Companies may also persuade shareholders to withdraw their proposals ahead of time,” Ban said. “It is possible that no proposals have reached the stage of a vote as a result of such efforts.”

Nomura’s founder was born in 1878, also the year in which the Osaka and Tokyo stock exchanges were founded. He left behind a series of principles including that the company’s mission is to “enrich the nation through the securities business”, according to the firm’s website. BLOOMBERG