Think of giants in the finance world and images of pin-stripe suited excess and Hollywood film stars pounding their chests usually spring to mind.
But a British man – who until now has been almost entirely anonymous – has been revealed to have quietly earned a £9.5million pay packet.
Christopher Willcox, who has led Japanese group Nomura’s wholesale banking division since October 2022, was awarded the record pay package after the team he heads helped the company recover from one of its most turbulent periods.
His paycheck has made him the highest-earning executive ever at the Japanese financial group – which is nearly four times as much as the CEO.
Christopher Willcox has been awarded the highest-ever pay package for an executive at Nomura. He is understood to have been paid nearly four times as much as the CEO
Nomura – which is Japan‘s biggest brokerage and investment bank – had been struggling to curtail expenses in its wholesale business, but was able to bounce back under the leadership of the British senior banker.
The record pay package comes after the wholesales division – which oversees the group’s trading, investment banking and international wealth – recorded its first profit in a decade last year.
The £9.5million award is understood to be around four times higher than chief executive officer Kentaro Okuda’s £2.5million ($3.2million) annual pay, regulatory filings show.
Despite Willcox’s clear influence in the finance world, he seems to lead his life in private, away from the flashy lifestyles commonly associated with much of the industry’s top giants.
The 56-year-old, who is based in New York, studied economics at UCL (University College London) before going on to complete a masters at LSE (London School of Economics) in the same subject in the early 1990s.
Starting off as an economist at Citigroup’s London office in 1991, he quickly made his way up, becoming ‘head of global rates, currencies and commodities’ for the Asia-Pacific and Japan. The role saw him based in Singapore.
After 15 dedicated years at the company, Willcox headed for the big four, becoming a ‘co-head of global rates and FX’ at JP Morgan in London.
But the senior banker was always focused on the next step, and soon found himself on Wall Street working as the chief executive officer of JP Morgan Asset Management.
In 2021, he decided to take on a new challenge when he joined Nomura, and in just over a year was promoted as executive officer and head of wholesale.
Willcox was able to aid the recovery of Nomura’s wholesale division, which helped drive the company to increase its annual profits for the first time since Okuda took over as chief executive in 2020.
In fact, in April this year, it was reported that Nomura enjoyed a 670 per cent surge in net profits compared to a year earlier.
The net income in its fourth quarter of the year – which ran to the end of March – came in at approximately ¥56.8bn (£280m), a figure nearly eight times higher than the ¥7.4bn it recorded in the same period the year before.
Leonardo DiCaprio starring in the 2013 film Wolf of Wall Street
Nomura experienced an increase in annual profits for the first time since 2020 when Kentara Okuda took over as CEO
Several incidents, including the implosion of Archegos Capital, had put the bank in crisis, but the recent recovery has seen a surge in stock prices.
In Japan, the pays of any executive directors who earn more than ¥56.8bn (£492,000) are required to be disclosed by companies.
Willcox, 56, was paid around $5.5million in the six months after his promotion in 2022, and the recent boost in pay was based on performance.
His pay packet is worth more than the chief executives of British banks Lloyds and Barclays, according to The Times, who earned $4.7million and $5.9million last year.
However, the impressive figure is still lower than the large sums earned by bosses at some of America’s biggest banks. The bosses of JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs all earned more than $30million last year.
A spokesman for Nomura told The Times that the amount and structure of remuneration is approved by an independent board, and the roles and responsibilities of staff and the market pay in Japan and abroad are taken into account.