Japan's top stockbroking firm Nomura has announced a record $7.3 billion annual loss, stung by financial turmoil and the cost of buying large parts of failed Wall Street bank Lehman Brothers.
Nomura's net loss rose more than 10-fold to 709.4 billion yen ($7.3 billion) in the year to March compared with a year earlier.
The company said it had lost 150 billion yen from financial market trading and taken 230 billion yen in one-off costs, including those linked to its purchase of chunks of Lehman Brothers.
Nomura last year snapped up Lehman's operations in Asia, Europe and the Middle East after the investment bank became the most visible corporate casualty of the financial crisis.
Nomura has also been hurt by Iceland's financial implosion and exposure to an alleged vast fraud by Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff. It has moved to scale down, or depart, non-core businesses to reduce its costs.
In the fourth quarter alone, it posted a net loss of 217.1 billion yen.
