Markets: Rocks departs Nomura

Tim Rocks, the equity strategist known for his “Rocks on stocks” weekly note, has been swept up in the wave of equity analyst redundancies by Nomura in Sydney as the investment bank seeks to cut costs and provide focused research on Australian mining, health-care and financial services companies.

Rocks, who worked previously at Macquarie Group and Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Asia and Australia, will not be replaced, says a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. Australian stocks strategy will now be done in Hong Kong and Singapore by a team, the person says.

Last month Nomura brought its Australian business in line with a global reorganisation that has favored fixed income and investment banking while seeking to only provide research in areas the investment bank thinks it gets a good reception from fund managers.

Nomura has gone from covering about 80 per cent of the market value of the ASX to now covering about 60 per cent. Nomura will not provide details on how many people now work at the firm in Australia compared with the number that worked there at the beginning of the year.

Rocks had been at Nomura a short time. He was lured away from Bank of America in November 2012 and given the title of managing director when Nomura sought to build its equity business in Australia to compete with market leaders Citigroup and UBS. Nomura has made little headway in winning equity market share in Australia and, after just a few months, decided to radically change direction and scale back the number of people it employed in its equities unit.