Nomura Holdings will buy ING Groep’s Taiwanese investment unit, becoming the first Japanese asset manager to operate in the market. Nomura Asset Management Co. agreed to buy ING Securities Investment & Trust Co. with a group led by the Taiwanese firm’s former chief executive officer Ashwin Mehta, Japan’s biggest brokerage said in a statement. It didn’t disclose the price of the unit, which managed $7 billion of assets as of 31 October. Nomura’s CEO Koji Nagai has pledged to make Asia a focus of the Tokyo-based company’s overseas business after completing a $1 billion cost-cutting program. ING, the biggest Dutch financial-services company, is divesting insurance and investment businesses as it repays a government bailout. Nomura and ING will complete the transaction as early as April after obtaining regulatory approval.
