Abstract
As far back as the Edo period (1603–1868), rice futures were already being traded at the Osaka Dojima Rice Exchange. Japan in those days was clearly highly innovative, given that it was more than 100 years before Europe began conducting similar financial transactions at the end of the 19th century. However, it was North America and Europe that led the way in derivatives, starting in the 1970s. Through the remarkable developments in the field of financial engineering, complex derivatives and other financial instruments have only become widely used in the last 20 or 30 years. Today, with its extensive use of mathematics, the discipline is probably better described as “mathematical finance”. Indeed, without mathematical application finance would not be as sophisticated or globalized as it is now (although the development of rules, legislations and other infrastructure has also been vital).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The Nomura Group has endowed chairs and research centers at universities in Japan and abroad, contributing to society. In 2007, to commemorate the 2006 Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize awarded to Dr. Kiyoshi Ito, Nomura Holdings endowed a research division known by the acronym KIMF at Kyoto University. The division, which operated from 2007 to 2010, comprised two subdivisions belonging to the university’s Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences and Institute of Economic Research, respectively. Offshore, the company has established the Nomura Centre for Mathematical Finance within the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford.
- 2.
Leverage is the reciprocal of the equity capital ratio, using the lever principle to increase investment efficiency. Debt can be used to procure funds to create asset holdings many times greater than equity capital, boosting the expected return on equity (if the credit risk is excluded).
- 3.
Value at Risk is the maximum expected loss over a certain period of time within a certain confidence interval. VaR is used in practice to determine standards for the necessary amount of equity capital.
- 4.
“The Greeks” are the quantities representing the sensitivities (partial differential) of the price of financial instruments to a change in the underlying asset prices or parameters on which the value of an instrument is dependent.
- 5.
The amount of exposure to the credit risk of borrowers, counterparties, etc.
- 6.
“No arbitrage” means that reliable positive excess returns cannot be obtained without risk.
- 7.
However, this fact was known before econophysics, and the hypothesis that stable distribution and some law have a dominant effect, with some parameter such as a physical constant existing, seems a little thinly backed.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Japan
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Watanabe, K. (2013). Nomura Holdings, Inc.. In: Giga, Y., Kobayashi, T. (eds) What Mathematics Can Do for You. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54346-6_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54346-6_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Tokyo
Print ISBN: 978-4-431-54345-9
Online ISBN: 978-4-431-54346-6
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)