TOKYO (REUTERS) - Nomura Holdings, Japan's biggest brokerage and investment bank, reported on Tuesday (April 27) its biggest quarterly net loss since the 2008 global financial crisis, after taking a 245.7 billion yen (S$3 billion) hit from the collapse of United States investment fund Archegos.

Its January-March net loss came in at 155.4 billion yen, versus a 34.48 billion yen loss a year earlier when global stock markets were battered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Before Archegos failed to meet margin calls on heavily leveraged stock bets last month, Nomura had been on track for record annual profit, bolstered by a buoyant US trading business. That was set to have been a hard-fought victory in its decade-long, stop-start efforts to successfully expand outside Japan.

Instead, it posted a net profit of 153.1 billion yen, down 29 per cent from the previous year. Most analysts had expected a profit of between 160 billion and 225 billion yen, according to Refinitiv data.

Nomura's Archegos loss, which is slightly larger than the previously flagged US$2 billion (S$2.65 billion), is the second worst after Credit Suisse. The Swiss bank booked a 4.4 billion franc (S$6.4 billion) Archegos hit in January-March and expects further losses of about 600 million francs this quarter.

Morgan Stanley lost nearly US$1 billion, while Goldman Sachs Group and Deutsche Bank exited them without losses, Reuters and other media outlets have reported.