Japanese Brokerage SBI to Expand IPO Team as Market Share Climbs

(Bloomberg) -- SBI Holdings Inc., the Japanese online broker that’s expanding its wholesale equities business, plans to boost its team handling initial public offerings as it seeks to sell more newly listed Japanese stocks abroad.

The firm’s securities unit plans to increase staff in its IPO team to about 20 from 12 in the next year or two, said Kazumori Morita, a managing director. “It’s important to expand our market share in value terms to deliver more newly listed stocks to our customers,” he said in an interview.

SBI was ranked sixth among managers of Japan IPOs by value last year, its highest ever position, after working on deals including SoftBank Corp.’s record offering, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The brokerage plans to open its second overseas office in Singapore in the year starting April to boost share sales to foreign institutional investors, Bloomberg reported this month.

“We want to push into more large-scale deals, and to achieve that, we will also focus on reinforcing our sales capability,” Morita said.

Tokyo-based SBI is adding people for its equity division as the retail broker looks to gain more institutional clients. The brokerage as a whole probably needs to hire “at least” 60 more people over the coming three years, including back-office workers, managing executive officer Hiroshi Udagawa said in a recent interview.

Read more on SBI’s equity business expansion

Last year, SBI underwrote IPOs in Japan valued at 369 billion yen ($3.4 billion), placing it sixth, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Nomura Holdings Inc. topped the league table after arranging 532 billion yen of deals.

To contact the reporters on this story: Takako Taniguchi in Tokyo at ttaniguchi4@bloomberg.net;Takashi Nakamichi in Tokyo at tnakamichi1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Marcus Wright at mwright115@bloomberg.net, Russell Ward

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