Nomura Holdings, Japan's biggest brokerage, will likely book a net loss of $7.2 billion for the last financial year due mainly to costs related to buying Lehman Brothers' operations, said a report.

Shares in Nomura fell nearly 4 per cent today (April 23) after the Nikkei business daily report. The expected loss exceeds an average analyst estimate for a 626.3 billion yen loss in the year ended March, according to a poll of six brokers by Reuters Estimates.

The 700 billion yen loss would be one of the largest likely to be posted by a Japanese company for the last financial year.

Nomura has also been hit hard by trading losses, exposure to Iceland and accused swindler Bernard Madoff. It was forced to raise about 280 billion yen in March through a share issue.

Nomura said in a statement that it did not disclose the earnings figures and would announce them on Friday.

Nomura bought Lehman's Asian, European and Middle Eastern assets in September, shortly after the New York brokerage collapsed.

In addition to costs associated with retaining ex-Lehman staff, a large chunk of the expected loss stems from valuation losses on commercial real estate, loans and shareholdings, the paper said.

Nomura also appears to have been hit with write-downs on inventories of securities for sale to investors, the Nikkei said.

While companies like Citigroup Inc and other US banks are making use of eased fair-value accounting standards, Nomura has chosen the sternest valuation methods for its assets, the paper said.

At times, this created friction with auditors, who favoured less severe write-downs, the paper said, citing multiple sources close to the matter.

Nomura shares were down 3.85 percent at 575 yen at 0127 GMT.

The benchmark Nikkei average was down 0.6 percent. – Reuters