Nomura Securities has hired industry veteran Alexis Lasser to head up its private placement business. Her appointment is an attempt to further strengthen the Japanese bank’s already existing team, said a source familiar with the situation.
Lasser, who is on garden leave, joins Nomura from Standard Chartered, where she had served as head of illiquid and private placements since July 2009. Previously, she spent more than a decade at Lehman Brothers, where she was the head of the bank’s private capital markets group when it was bought by Barclays Capital in September 2008.
Nomura has not been very competitive on the private placement league tables except for a presence in the plain vanilla debt category. Its most recent transaction was as co-agent with BBVA to Spanish issuer Grifols, which raised $600 million in 2009. In 2007, Nomura helped Kazakhstan-based issuer Astana Finance raise $155 million.
Nomura declined to comment on Lasser’s appointment.
