UK_P_Nomura_1

This article was first published in the April 2016 UK edition of Accounting and Business magazine.

Before the conversation, we gallery tour. Huw Howell shows some of the art that Nomura, the multinational investment bank, has in its impressive office by the Thames in London. 

The view from our high vantage at One Angel Lane is as stunning as the paintings. It’s a bright sunny day, and the Thames in all its pomp is laid out before us. Later we’ll stand on the roof garden Nomura has for its employees, squinting into the setting sun while the photographer finishes. 

But acquiring art for Nomura is not the day job. That currently is programme director for a global data programme. He has spent over two decades at the bank. His first role was in internal audit: ‘Five days a week at Nomura and then one day a week studying for finals.’ But since then he has had a dozen other roles, and he describes the organisation as ‘incredibly diverse; Nomura allows you to grow and take many paths’.

He notes how the firm has a culture of longevity; but while people may stay, they don’t remain in the same role or even in the same place, and that approach helps to build relationships. Paths will cross, and Howell sees working with people in different ways over the years as a bonus. ‘They know your strengths and weaknesses.’ Related to that culture is the company’s ability to see errors as an inevitable part of the learning experience. ‘You are not afraid to try,’ says Howell.

Keeping fresh

Having such a large number of roles has helped him to stay fresh and relevant both to the bank and the banking industry. That entry point role (internal audit) was fantastic says Howell, because all the skills of the accountant – understanding controls and processes – are of value to the organisation, while in return the newly qualified accountant quickly learns about the financial environment in all its international complexity. He describes internal audit as somewhere between a risk and control function, and a talent factory for the firm. His other roles include setting up a prime brokerage business as part of equity trading; a business management role; trading risk; corporate risk – at the time the bank, and indeed the industry, was building out and embedding its risk function; finance – running management information systems (MIS), budgeting and an accounts payable function; and global head of operational risk. The list is as impressive as it is long. 

His current role is as part of the senior management team that is leading the bank’s work on BCBS 239, which is the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s demand for risk-data aggregation and risk reporting. Nomura currently has 500 people on the programme, and Howell says it is devoting much time and energy to getting it right. ‘Post-2008, banks’ ability to aggregate and report on risk was seen as fragmented. It is an industry-wide effort to collate the information quickly in times of stress.’

Crash test

That data programme is of course a direct result of the financial crash, when Nomura’s headline-grabbing role was to buy Lehman’s European and Asian arms two weeks after the bank had been declared bankrupt. At the time, Howell was working in a chief operating officer function in client relationship management. Looking back at that period, Howell says: ‘For Nomura it was a statement, taking it to a more prominent and higher profile. It was an exciting time for Nomura in terms of size and scale and – from the perspective of integration – it was something that the firm did pretty well.’ Success, helped by a robust technology platform. 

Running a global programme with 500 people worldwide requires serious logistics to get right. Add in time zone, culture, language and delivery expectations, and it becomes an enormous job: ‘We are being asked to interpret regulations and deliver to those and that is a challenge.’

Those logistics are a reminder of how much the world and the City have changed over the decades. In Howell’s time he has seen a marked increase in the scale, size and diversity of internationalisation, with the introduction of the euro as a seminal moment, and the march of technology has changed the job. 

More recent change, shown by Howell’s current role, has been the need for businesses in the City to better demonstrate their risk and control management.

Another output from the financial crash has been a renewed emphasis in the banking industry on culture and behaviour, an area where accountants like Howell have much to contribute from their professional development. Always there, but not always coherently expressed to politicians, regulators, customers and wider society. He sees the industry as better for the actions it has taken over the last three to five years. 

At the end of our interview, Howell talks about his own art. A still-life oil painting using a palette knife was his Art ‘A’ level project. He doesn’t know where the painting is now. Perhaps his loft needs to be searched thoroughly and the rediscovered piece gifted to Nomura. The bank could add to its prestigious collection of art – and other, equally impressive assets. 

Peter Williams, accountant and journalist