One of Japan's top three banks, Mizuho Financial Group, has fired the last remaining member of the Lehman Brothers electronic trading team it brought to Japan in 2008.
A source close to the matter told www.theTRADEnews.com that Mizuho was down-sizing its electronic trading team as part of a wider corporate restructure that will bring all Mizuho businesses within one financial group.
"There is a move for Japanese banks to become more insular, and it can also be seen with redundancies at Nomura after the merger with Instinet," he said.
As part of the restructure, Mizuho will outsource its electronic trading technology offering to Accenture, under a move that will see members of the Mizuho team migrate to the trading solutions firm.
The source said while this appeared to be driven by cost-cutting measures for the bank, it was a sign the pool of talent and innovation formed within Mizuho would be lost.
"As part of this restructure, very senior bankers who have been with Mizuho for decades are being put in charge of strategy for the securities business and are scaling back in-house electronic trading technology teams, which I think shows they are undervalued by the bank," he said.
In November 2008, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Mizuho hired the 16-strong team, led by Anthony Brooker, former Lehman head of electronic sales trading in Asia, to develop its electronic trading offering in Asia.