Nomura is among several global banks shaken by transactions with Archegos, an obscure investment firm set up to manage the fortune of trader Bill Hwang. Japan’s biggest brokerage, which lost some $2.9 billion on its dealings with Archegos, has hired external lawyers to conduct a “comprehensive, impartial review,” according to a presentation to investors Tuesday, and appointed a new head of its U.S. subsidiary earlier this week.

Shares of Nomura rose as much as 2.9% on Wednesday morning in Tokyo and were trading up 1.8% at 11:50 a.m., taking declines to about 18% since the Archegos debacle emerged.

Nomura’s losses from trades with Archegos exceed the $2 billion it flagged a month ago and have complicated its global ambitions. The bank logged a fourth-quarter net loss of 155.4 billion yen ($1.4 billion), its biggest since the global financial crisis.

In a surprise appearance at Tuesday’s earnings briefing, Chief Executive Officer Kentaro Okuda signaled he will persist with plans to build a presence in the U.S. even after the Archegos meltdown, saying there is no major change in the firm’s overall strategy for its wholesale business.

The remarks underscore Nomura’s long-standing ambitions to succeed in the U.S., home to the biggest banking fee pool, to stave off stagnation in Japan. To help with the push, Okuda named Wall Street veteran Christopher Willcox as co-head of its troubled Americas unit and pledged to add more non-Japanese outside directors.

Some analysts agree that the Japanese firm might be able to embark on a path to recovery after its earnings had handled most of the negatives such as the Archegos losses and impairments.

“Nomura sees Archegos as an idiosyncratic event and so they’re going to tweak their risk management framework” but leave their strategy unchanged, Michael Makdad, an analyst at Morningstar Inc., said on Bloomberg Television on Wednesday. “For the near term the business environment for Nomura looks quite good,” he said, citing a strong investment banking pipeline and volatility-fueled trading.

The Financial Times reported Brech’s suspension earlier. Aoife Reynolds, a spokeswoman for Nomura in London, declined to comment. Brech also declined to comment. Caperonis, Kurek and Lyons did not respond to requests for comment via LinkedIn.