The U.S. mutual fund market could hardly look less inviting to an asset management firm eyeing expansion opportunities. Investors withdrew $234 billion more from equity mutual funds than they deposited into them in 2008, according to the Investment Company Institute in Washington, as the Standard & Poor's 500 index took a 38.5 percent nosedive. Still, Nomura Asset Management Co., the money management arm of Japanese brokerage Nomura Holdings, which picked up the Asia, Europe and Middle East investment banking and equities operations of the bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings in late September, is making its move. "A global asset management firm cannot do without a presence in the world's largest mutual fund market," says Shigeru Shinohara, president and CEO of New York-based Nomura Asset Management USA. "We see a long-term opportunity in the crisis."
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