Daiwa hires head of equity-linked origination

Daiwa Capital Markets has hired Oliver Nighjoy as head of equity-linked origination for Asia-Pacific ex-Japan in a move that shows the firm is serious about expanding its equity capital markets franchise in the region to include primary CB issuance.

According to sources, Nighjoy is set to start his new job at the Japanese bank in Hong Kong today, only a few weeks after Daiwa hired Jackie Chien from Citi to build out its equity syndicate desk and six months after it brought on board Jonathan Orders as head of ECM for Asia ex-Japan. Nighjoy will report to Orders.

The firm, which is the investment banking arm of Japanese brokerage and financial services company Daiwa Securities Group, outlined an ambition to build an investment banking and equities business focusing on the rest of Asia at the end of 2009, and since then it has been hiring aggressively to meet its target.

In July last year it also acquired KBC Group’s global convertible bonds and Asian equity derivatives businesses for approximately $1 billion. The CB business included a complete range of secondary market services for issuers and investors, including market making in more than 1,200 global CBs, but wasn’t involved in primary issuance. However, a Daiwa spokesman told FinanceAsia at the time that the bank was planning to use the KBC platform to move into CB origination in Asia.

The hiring of Nighjoy means it is now putting the resources in place to make that happen.

Nighjoy, who joins as a managing director, has 10 years of equity-linked experience, most recently from Macquarie where he worked for five years as head of equity-linked for Asia, a role that saw him arrange not only CBs, but combination offerings, private club transactions, pre-IPO bonds, liability management exercises and structured derivatives deals as well. Before that he spent another five years in the Hong Kong CB team at Deutsche Bank. He has also worked with the Australian Securities Exchange.

He left Macquarie last year and has had some time off from the industry before accepting this job with Daiwa.

According to sources, Daiwa has also hired King Tan, who used to work with Nighjoy at Macquarie. He joins as an associate director and will continue to support his former boss on equity-linked issues at the Japanese firm.