Morgan Stanley Japan Investment Banking Head Nakamura to Retire

(Bloomberg) -- A Morgan Stanley veteran who has led the U.S. bank’s highly-ranked merger advisory team in Japan for more than a decade is retiring. 

Haruo Nakamura plans to leave the firm next year after having served as head of Japan investment banking since 2006, according to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg News. He will also resign as Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co.’s chief executive officer of investment banking, handing the job in March to Kensaku Bessho, the memo said. Morgan Stanley spokeswoman Mika Watanabe confirmed its contents. 

Nakamura is ending his 32-year Morgan Stanley career just as corporate Japan wraps up its busiest year on record for mergers and acquisitions. The U.S. bank has been vying this year with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for the top ranking for advising deals involving Japanese firms, according to Bloomberg data, a spot Morgan Stanley has won three times during the past decade. 

The planned personnel changes at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities will become formal after the securities firm completes the required processes, Watanabe said. The company is one of the two joint ventures created in 2010 by Morgan Stanley and Japan’s biggest banking group to handle, among other things, merger advisory and brokerage services. 

Bessho is currently serving as the firm’s head of M&A in Japan. Nakamura will support the transition before he retires.

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