John St John, former global head of equity capital markets at Dresdner Kleinwort, has resurfaced at Nomura as an adviser to its equity capital markets team. It is his sixth different role in as many years.

St John, who is credited with having invented the controversial practice of competitive flotations, has been brought in to work with Christian Thun-Hohenstein, co-head of investment banking, and Marcus Le Grice, head of equity capital markets business. A source close to Nomura said Le Grice had personally hired St John. The two have never worked together but are friends. The source said: "John has no specific remit and is working for us on an ad-hoc basis but is generally advising Marcus and Christian on the equity capital markets business." In March, St John joined London-based corporate finance boutique Chiliogon, where he remains a director, nine months after he left Dresdner. He is one of the best-known names in the European equity markets and has headed the ECM businesses of Salomon Brothers, Lehman Brothers and Commerzbank. In 2001 he joined online share-trading firm EO as chief executive but did not stay long after the company was hit by the dotcom crash. The competitive initial public offering, in which banks are only awarded a bookrunner position days before a deal is launched, was first used in 2004 on the flotation of French telephone directories company Pages Jaunes by France Télécom. It has become more popular and was used most recently by UK travel group Hogg Robinson. But the method has attracted criticism and was the subject of an investigation by the UK market regulator, which examined last year's flotation of UK satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat to see whether it put pressure on analysts to produce favourable research to help win a deal. Over the past two years Nomura has been developing its equities business and has made equity underwriting a focus.