Nikko AM Reviews

The fact that the current head of the company is facing US legal action from former employees who accuse him of fraudulently taking their share options and re-issuing them to himself tells you everything you need to know about Nikko. A few years ago Nikko started to lose assets in some of their large retail based funds (primarily as a result of simply paying them out in oversized dividends), this caused a panic and a desperate reorientation towards institutional. In London the fixed income business saw a number of 'institutional' fund managers brought in, and now sit on a number of seeded funds with mediocre track records. In order to keep himself in a job the head of that team constantly pushes the idea that these are saleable internationally. Wins of passive mandates with ultra long duration hedged back into Yen using short dated forwards is now the only thing sustaining the business. Huge rift between fund management team and rest of the office with aloof and arrogant investment staff having little interaction with others. In meetings they are aggressive, expecting other staff to know their place - a common in company joke is now 'I pay your wages' after comments by one special member of that team. Global strategy is to push Asia as a unique asset class - when pretty much the whole world believes that Asia fixed income is overvalued and should be under-weighted.

Poor management hired from some larger firms but who have never worked in a growing business and no the basics, they will just delegate any tough work but reap benefits of the long lunches and business trips. Lack of fund vehicles with no support to sell these products in the marketplace so just pretty much sitting on low AUM funds with no demand from prospects. Systems are archaic but manageable due to the low number of clients and sales activity. Hard to progress unless you are older where the Yes man/senior mentality the Tokyo head office helps, you have to be at least 40 to be considered for a senior position. As mentioned before majority of people are nice but some have their own agendas to move ahead and people will talk about you behind your back. People have been dismissed and its been known well in advance with people making moves to better their own position ahead of others, it seems as if FCA rules pretty much don't apply in some cases.