Who would have thought that a bank from jobs-for-life Japan would become the prime player in the high-level game of recruitment musical chairs that is sweeping across Asia?

Nomura’s takeover of Lehman Brothers in Asia-Pacific saw it offering jobs to almost all the US firm’s 3,000 staff in the region. While about 2,600 have chosen the safe option, a few hundred Lehmanites are hurling themselves onto the hiring market, leaving gaping holes in the Nomura mother ship.

And with plenty of senior staff among the Lehman defectors, Nomura can’t exactly go for graduate replacements. Instead, it’s been pushed into a poaching spree, which is triggering a chain of job moves between banks.

Take the case of Anthony Steains. He turned down Nomura's offer and left Lehman (where he was head of industrials investment banking) to join private equity firm The Blackstone Group. Nomura then went headhunting and got its hands on high-profile banker Shaheryar Chishty from Citigroup. And so it goes on, much to the delight of otherwise underemployed headhunters.

At a time when most banks are trimming headcounts and most candidates are paralysed with caution, where would we be without Nomura?