Nomura Holdings on Monday reported a meager profit in the latest quarter as the large Japanese bank continues to deal the fallout from an insider trading scandal and the weak industry conditions.
Nomura said its net profit totaled 2.8 billion yen ($35 million) in the three months ending Sept. 30, compared to a 46.1 billion yen loss for the same period last year.
The Japanese firm said it had benefited modestly from rising sales in its fixed income business. The unit helped to offset a sluggish performance in the firm's equities unit, which has been hampered by the country's struggling stock market.
The earnings announcement was the first by Nomura's chief executive, Koji Nagai, who took over in July after his predecessor, Kenichi Watanabe, was forced to resign in the wake of an insider trading scandal.
Mr. Watanabe and the bank's chief operating officer, Takumi Shibata, left Nomura after the firm acknowledged that some employees had leaked informati on on public offerings to a number of fund managers, who then profited from trading on the stocks ahead of the expected drop in the share price.
In the aftermath of the scandal, the Japanese bank has scaled back its international operations, in a reversal of its expansion efforts following the financial crisis. In 2008, Nomura bought the Asian and European operations from Lehman Brothers after the American investment bank collapsed.
Last month, Nomura announced a broad reorganization plan that includes around $1 billion of cost reductions. The bank said around 45 percent of the savings would come from its European operations, while the firm's Americas unit would provide a further 21 percent of the reductions. The savings include $450 million related to job losses, according to a company statement.
On Monday, Nomura said it had reduced its global workforce by 1 percent, to almost 35,000, by the end of Sept. 30.
The Japanese bank's wholesale business, w hich includes its investment banking division, reported a small 200 million yen net profit in the three months through Sept. 30, compared to a 71 billion yen loss in the same period last year.
The firm said sales from its fixed income unit more than doubled, to 88.6 billion yen, over the period, while revenue from the bank's equities business fell 4 percent, to 32.1 billion yen.
By the end of trading in Tokyo on Monday, shares in Nomura had fallen less than 1 percent.
