Top-Ranked Japan Banks Analyst Quits Citigroup to Be Professor

by Toshiro HasegawaAnna KitanakaShingo Kawamoto

7:43 PM PDT

(Bloomberg) -- Hironari Nozaki, who topped a ranking of Japan banking analysts for more than a decade, said he’s leaving Citigroup Inc. to become a university professor.
Nozaki will quit the U.S. brokerage at the end of this month and start as a professor of finance at Kyoto Bunkyo University from April 1, he said by phone. Mika Nemoto, a spokeswoman for Citigroup in Tokyo, declined to comment. Nozaki spent 14 years as an analyst, and 14 years working in banks before that, he said. He was chosen as the No. 1 strategist in the category by Nikkei Veritas and its predecessor publication in each of the past 11 years.
“I’ve been thinking about a career in academia,” Nozaki, 51, said. “If you look at the structure of financial assets in Japan, you can see that the country’s financial literacy is low. I want to help nurture people, including in finance.”