Another Nomura managing director who left earlier this year has decided to go it alone rather than join another large investment bank.
Michael Guarnieri, who was a managing director and global head of flow credit products at Nomura in New York until earlier this year, has just launched his own private equity fund. He’s now the founder, managing partner and chief investment officer, of Commercial Credit Investment Management, which he describes as a ‘start-up private credit fund’, which will target new issue mezzanine credit investments as well as some distressed credit secondary investments. The aim is to raise $500m for the fund. So far, he’s the only employee.
Guarnieri has worked at Nomura since 2009, when he joined from Lehman Brothers as global head of fixed income research. During his time there, he went on to head up its principal credit strategies group, which invests in distressed, high yield and special situations credit. He took his last role at the bank in 2013.
Nomura is in the midst of a cost-cutting drive to axe 20% of its headcount its North America business. This is, in reality, another phase in Nomura’s oscillating investment bank in the U.S., which has flitted between expansion and contraction for years. Only last month, it said it planned to hire investment bankers again after chopping its U.S.A. trading floor earlier in the year.
However, the latest round of cuts have impacted some long-serving senior staff who have seized the opportunity to launch their own business. Jens Norvig, who was Nomura’s head of fixed income research in New York until earlier this year, has now launched his own firm called Exante Data. The firm is a research consultancy, which uses big data and analytics to provide insight into macro trends.
Des Supple, who was the global head of market research based out of London, also took the decision to launch his own research boutique – Event Horizon – in August.
Before joining Nomura, Guarnieri spent 15 years at Lehman Brothers where he held various senior roles including global head of credit research – a role that involved managing a team of 125 credit researchers – and group head of its mezzanine private equity investment group, Global Mezzanine Partners.
Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com
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