It is not a happy day for Nomura’s PR department, or for Nomura's recruiters: The Times has got an unfortunate story claiming ‘City workers’ are being ‘driven out of Nomura for not being male or Japanese.’

The story revolves around two female non-Japanese people, one of whom worked as a senior analyst at Nomura and the other of whom worked in Asian equity sales. Both once worked for Lehman and appear to have been in the same department. They are alleging that they were discriminated against and that (bizarrely) male colleagues talked about their “honkers.”

Nomura is denying the allegations. However, they sit uncomfortably with an article in the Wall Street Journal this summer, which claimed that female Harvard graduates joining Nomura were told how to make tea and brush their hair.

Enrico Bombieri, head of JP Morgan’s investment bank in London, is following Bill Winters out the door. (Bloomberg)

John Mack for BofA CEO. (WSJ)

Vontobel has doubled size of its London equities brokerage team, wants to grow more. (Financial News)

UBS rebuilding in fixed income. (Guardian)

Hester’s doing it for the “sense of accomplishment.” (Guardian)

Polverino will still get his guarantee. (The Times)

Nasty French bank merger rumours. (Financial Times)

Is Barclays preparing the way for a break-up? (Financial Times)

Lloyds will pay Merrill Lynch, UBS, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Cazenove and HSBC £187m for underwriting its CoCos. (The Times)

Two thirds of quants think their supervisors don’t understand what they’re up to. (Finextra)

Profit is not satanic. (Alphaville)

To breed or not to breed? (Hplus)