Takumi Shibata has long been considered among the most brilliant of Nomura's rising stars. "He's without doubt one of the most able at the bank," says one British banker who has known him since 1988. "Analytical, decisive, and absolutely the right man considering Nomura's strategy of giving the international business such a large sway within the firm."
The eldest of three brothers, Shibata was born in Yokohama in 1953, the son of a merchant seaman who'd survived three sinkings by allied torpedoes during World War II. The young Shibata had early opportunities to mix with gaijins. "Opposite us lived a family of White Russian refugees and next door an American family with a boy the same age as me. The fact that you have played with non-Japanese people at an early age eliminates possible feelings of there being a barrier."
He read economics at Keio University, Japan's oldest private university, where he also continued his high-school English studies - at the expense of gliding, a hobby he pursued with a passion but whose classes were held on the same evenings. It was a decision, he says, which "changed the whole course of my life".