October 16, 2007 (LPAC)--Nomura Holdings Inc., the Wall Street Urinal leaked, will close its mortgage-backed-securities business, due to "the meltdown of subprime residential mortgages in the U.S."

Nomura is Japan's largest investment bank by market capitalization. It plans to take a $621 million write-down on residential mortgages and a charge of about $85 million for closing that business. Nomura will have a pretax loss of as much as $511 million for the last quarter.

Combined with previous write-offs, Nomura has now taken losses of more than $1.2 billion on residential mortgages in the U.S.

"This is an extremely regrettable result," said Nobuyuki Koga, Nomura's president and chief executive.