One year after the collapse of US financial giant Lehman Brothers, it’s business as usual at its offices in Mumbai, but under a new owner — financial conglomerate Nomura. The Japanese firm has successfully integrated the failed US giant’s operations in investment banking and BPO wings in India with its business.

“Integration has been smooth and there has been very little voluntary turnover,” a spokesperson of Nomura said in a written statement to The Indian Express. There were around 300 people employed at Lehman Brothers’ main office at Worli while around 1,700 people work at the back office in Powai. A Nomura official, who did not wish to be identified, said there was no unusual employee exit after the takeover in October 2008.

Before the problems in the US started, Lehman was a strong player in the investment banking field, private equity business, stock broking and back-office operations that handle trading settlement duties as well as information technology (IT) research and development in India. Lehman, which set up its BPO operations in India in 2005, saw “the number of employees going up by eight times by the middle of this year (2008) and had declared its plans to grow the operations”.

Under the terms of the transaction, all employees in Asia Pacific was offered employment with Nomura. The deal did not include any trading assets or trading liabilities of Lehman. “We continue to build business momentum in India and globally as we progress to our goal of creating Asia’s pre-eminent global investment bank,” the Nomura spokesperson said.

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