NEW YORK: Nomura of Japan said it had hired several senior bankers to take various posts at its investment bank as the firm continued to expand its presence in the Americas.

Stephen Roti will leave Barclays to become the firm’s head of equity capital markets in the Americas.

Christopher Baldwin is departing Bank of America Merrill Lynch to lead a new investment banking team focused on real estate, gambling and hotel companies.

Anthony Viscardi is joining from Deutsche Bank to focus on the residential mortgage industry, while Timothy Wilding is leaving Oppenheimer & Co to advise chemical companies.

Finally, Daniel Rodrigues, most recently of UBS, and Arthur Rubin, a longtime banker, will focus on Latin American and South American banking assignments.

The new appointments are part of Nomura’s effort to expand its investment bank in the Americas. It more than doubled its staff between March of 2008 and March of this year, to about 2,300 people.

Much of that growth has come from hiring bankers and traders, rather than buying existing businesses, as Nomura did in Europe and Asia with its purchase of the international investment banking operations of Lehman Bros.

“Nomura is committed to increasing its investment banking capabilities in the Americas, with targeted hiring and the thoughtful growth of its product offering, in order to deliver the power of the firm’s global franchise to its clients,” said James DeNaut, Nomura’s head of Americas investment banking. “We continue to look for talented individuals to drive the strategic expansion of our operation.”

Nomura is starting to see results from that hiring spree. In the company’s most recent fiscal year, the Americas contributed 29 per cent of overall revenue from banking and trading, up from 22 per cent in the 2010 fiscal year.

In recent years, Nomura has advised on a number of transactions, including Marubeni’s US$3.6 billion purchase of the grain merchant Gavilon and Itochu’s purchase of Dole’s fresh fruit business in Asia.

(AP)