Nomura America Finance, the Japanese investment banking affiliate of Nomura Holdings of Japan, registered its first new US structured product yesterday after a nearly two-and-half year absence.

The callable leveraged steepener note 4x leveraged note linked to the difference between the 30-year and two-year constant maturity rates will pay an interest rate up to a maximum of 10% pa., paid quarterly. The note’s call feature kicks in December next year. The note is expected to strike its price later this month and has a 20-year tenor, maturing December 2033.

This is the first time Nomura has registered a structured product in the US since July 2011 when it registered a callable step-up note. A review of Nomura’s registration filings with the US Securities & Exchange Commission shows that the bank quietly registered prospectuses with the regulator back in September for the offering of various structured products including those tied to equities and equity indexes, and to currency baskets.

A Nomura spokesperson was not available for comment by press time.

In 2010 Nomura sold $31m across nine structured products in the US market, followed by sales of $24m in 2011 across 14 products. It has offered no US structured products since then up until now.

The Japanese bank, however, has been focusing on pitching its investable index QES Modelled Private Equity Returns Index (PERI) among institutional investors in the US market through a variety of structured products linked to the index.

Nomura is a significant participant in the structured products market of its homeland of Japan. In 2011 it sold JPY779bn ($7.5bn) across 55 structured products, followed by JPY583bn ($5.6bn) across 70 products in 2012, according to the SRP products database. Year to date in 2013 it is in fourth place in terms of sales in Japan, selling a smaller JPY428bn ($4.1bn) across 50 products.

This new Nomura note will appear shortly on the US products database.

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