Vantaggi
There really aren't any pro's to working for Nikko anymore, it's a complete mess with rock bottom moral and staff constantly waiting to find out who will be chopped next.
Svantaggi
The fact that the current head of the company is facing US legal action from former employees who accuse him of fraudulently taking their share options and re-issuing them to himself tells you everything you need to know about Nikko. A few years ago Nikko started to lose assets in some of their large retail based funds (primarily as a result of simply paying them out in oversized dividends), this caused a panic and a desperate reorientation towards institutional. In London the fixed income business saw a number of 'institutional' fund managers brought in, and now sit on a number of seeded funds with mediocre track records. In order to keep himself in a job the head of that team constantly pushes the idea that these are saleable internationally. Wins of passive mandates with ultra long duration hedged back into Yen using short dated forwards is now the only thing sustaining the business. Huge rift between fund management team and rest of the office with aloof and arrogant investment staff having little interaction with others. In meetings they are aggressive, expecting other staff to know their place - a common in company joke is now 'I pay your wages' after comments by one special member of that team. Global strategy is to push Asia as a unique asset class - when pretty much the whole world believes that Asia fixed income is overvalued and should be under-weighted.