When Siddharth (known as "Sid") Prasad joined Nomura's London office in 1989 straight from the London School of Economics (LSE), his idea was to spend a couple of years gaining experience before returning to his native India. But 11 years on, despite all the turmoil that Nomura has been through, including the posting of a $6 billion loss in March 1999, Prasad is still there. In August last year he became co-head (with Seiichiro Miyaoka) of global debt primary markets, the first business at Nomura to be organized along global lines.
"I've had opportunities at Nomura I might not have got at other firms," he says. A reputedly committed and hardworking individual, he talks about his job with enthusiasm and at terrific speed. "Nomura is like an unpolished jewel," he says. "We're a very substantial firm, yet we don't have a high profile.
"There have been scandals and we have gone through a lot of pain. But the mere fact that we have survived shows our resilience."
Siddharth Prasad, 34, was born in Lucknow, India. His father, a civil servant, was frequently on the move, so in order not to interrupt their schooling, Siddharth and his sister were sent at the age of five to Dehra Dun, one of India's leading boarding schools.