A Nomura rates salesman who successfully sued the investment bank for unfair dismissal over a series of soured deals that led to its biggest ever single trading loss, has now moved to Italy for a new banking role.
Giovanni Lombardo, an executive director who worked at Nomura for seven years in London until September 2015, is now working for independent investment bank Intermonte SIM in a rates sales and trading role. Since the beginning of 2016, he’s also been running his own travel company in the Siracusa Area of Italy.
Lombardo is another example of investment banks’ European staff returning home after the EU referendum, but his case is different from an normal Brexit jump.
In August, Lombardo won a long-running unfair dismissal case against Nomura, claiming he was a scapegoat for the bank’s $40m loss after failed trades with Invexstar Capital Management. The fallout from the collapse of Invexstar, which was a relatively obscure bond trading firm, led to a loss around a £120m for five banks – BNP Paribas, Nomura, Morgan Stanley, ING and Mizuho. BNP Paribas lost £49m because of the deal and Nomura was owed £29m.
The case raised a lot of eyebrows about how banks managed their risk. Invexstar had a single employee, Albert Statti, who had run two brokerage firms previously – one of which lost £54m before ceasing trading in 2008 and the other collapsed in 2013 owing around £12m.
Lombardo contacted Statti when it became apparent that the firm had not come up with the cash for trades in May 2015. “Resolve this thing today,” he told Statti, according to a transcript included Lombardo’s lawsuit. “Otherwise, we’ll both end up in the meat grinder.” Nomura fired Lombardo, but the disciplinary process was judged to be littered with “defects” and he won the case in August.
As we pointed out at the time, Lombardo was paid a total compensation of £310k ($385k) during his last year at Nomura.
Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com
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