In June of that year, Mr. Kataoka went to the United States to observe securities industry procedures there and gain a better perspective on how to go about setting up the Securities Department as an independent entity. He knew exactly where to find a successful model. In New York, he called on Charles E. Mitchell, president of the National City Company, a firm which had acquired the bond department of the National City Bank in 1916. Mitchell had overseen the transformation of the bank's bond department into a separate securities company and he provided Kataoka with a clear-cut rationale for the move: "The reasons behind our decision to divorce the bond department from the bank were to raise employee morale and avoid some of the many restrictions we were subject to as a bank." Kataoka also heard details of how the split had been organized and of how smoothly it had gone. What he learned fortified his determination to carry out such a move at Nomura.
