Societe Generale on sales hiring push in Tokyo amid bond market revival

SOCIETE Generale has hired four senior salesmen in Japan as it seeks to capitalise on the country’s invigorated bond market along with local banks’ appetite for higher-yielding investments.

Former NatWest Group manager Isao Sam Namba is among the additions to the French lender’s Tokyo securities unit, said Tomoyuki Sasai, head of global markets sales, confirming information obtained by Bloomberg. Namba will lead a new department that focuses on selling interest-rate products.

“One of our strategic priorities is strengthening Japan business,” Sasai said.

Namba developed “strong relationships” with hedge funds and other global investors through years of selling yen bonds and other fixed-income products, which will help the bank capture overseas demand for Japanese government debt, Sasai said. Societe Generale plans to add more people next year to sell interest-rate products to Japanese customers, he said, without further elaborating.

The move adds to signs of increased activity among international banks in Japan as the country’s escape from decades-long deflation fuels a bond trading boom. JPMorgan recently hired a former Goldman Sachs banker to head yen rates trading in Tokyo, a business that has grown more profitable thanks to the Bank of Japan’s unwinding of ultra-easy monetary policy.

Besides Namba, Societe Generale Securities Japan also recruited Akihide Kobayashi from UBS Group, who will help oversee sales of structured products and other assets for regional lenders in Japan. Bankers who have ties with small local banks are in demand partly because those lenders are hungry for high-yielding assets in the face of limited improvement in Japanese lending margins.

The other hires are Takayuki Endo, a former Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities banker who will lead sales of non-yen bonds while reporting to Namba; and Kei Ohara from Goldman Sachs, who has joined the financial institution cross-assets solutions team to help market products to insurers, distributors and asset management companies.

The four are all directors. Namba’s focus is on selling Japanese government bonds and other yen interest-rate products for both domestic and overseas customers. His predecessor Satoshi Yoshioka left the French firm for Credit Agricole.

Societe Generale’s hiring in Japan comes after it cut hundreds of jobs at its Paris headquarters and sold units as chief executive officer Slawomir Krupa tries to focus on the most profitable businesses. Krupa replaced several top managers in late October, as he sought to draw a line under a disappointing performance at the French retail business.

Net income at the bank’s Japan securities subsidiary rose 37 per cent last year to 5.4 billion yen (S$48.5 million), the highest in three years, as gains from bond trading grew, according to the latest available data. The lender, which celebrated its 50-year milestone in Japan last year, had 214 employees at that unit at the end of December 2023, up from 200 a year earlier. BLOOMBERG