Nikko AM loses CEO, hires Barclays wealth head

Nikko Asset Management is reshuffling its senior executives after president and chief executive Charles Beazley stepped down for personal reasons and will move back to the UK in the coming weeks.

The Japanese firm hired Barclays’ former UK head of wealth management, David Semaya, who will join as a non-executive chairman on April 1 and is expected to become chairman on September 1.

Semaya will work out of Nikko AM’s London office until September, at which point he will relocate to Tokyo.

He replaces Tokyo-based Takumi Shibata, who has been named president and CEO. He took over his new responsibilities on January 10 but will hold the title executive chairman until Semaya joins the company. He will continue to work in Japan.

Most recently, Semaya was head of wealth management at Barclays for the UK and Ireland. He has also served as chairman of Barclays Asset Management and CEO of Europe and Asia for Barclays Global Investors. He joined the British bank in 2004.

From 2004 to 2007, he was president of BGI Japan Trust & Banking Co and before that at Merrill Lynch for 12 years, holding a variety of asset management and capital markets roles in both New York and Tokyo.

Shibata joined Nikko AM as chairman in July 2013, after the firm split the chairman and chief executive roles. (Beazley held both positions, as well as being president.) Shibata previously spent nearly 40 years at Nomura Group. He was appointed director in 1998, managing director in 2000 and COO in 2008. Other roles included president and CEO of Nomura Asset Management. He spent 12 years in London, three in Hong Kong, two each in Boston and Kobe, and 18 in Tokyo.

Beazley started at Nikko AM in London in 2006 as president of the firm’s European division and was also responsible for its international business. In 2010, he relocated to Tokyo to oversee the institutional business. He was named chairman and CEO in 2012 and one year later took on the additional role of president.

“The decision to leave Nikko AM was not an easy one for me, but I naturally chose to return to the UK in the face of family health issues that require my undivided attention,” Beazley said in a statement.