Nomura Holdings Inc. said Friday it booked a group net loss of ¥709.4 billion in the last business year, partly due to increased costs from its takeover of parts of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Trading losses and asset writeoffs stemming from the global financial turmoil also impacted Nomura's results.

It was the second consecutive business year the nation's largest brokerage fell into the red. Nomura posted a group net loss of ¥67.8 billion in business 2007.

During the last business year that ended in March, Nomura incurred ¥230 billion in expenses, including costs related to the Lehman acquisitions and impairment charges on affiliates, trading losses of ¥150 billion and writedowns on merchant banking and real estate-related illiquid assets of ¥150 billion, the brokerage said.

Nomura's sales fell 58.3 percent to ¥664.5 billion, while its pretax loss was ¥779 billion, up from ¥64.6 billion in the same period last year.

Although Nomura is not optimistic about the current economic situation, it said it would do its best to return to profitability as soon as possible.

"This year, we have seen financial turmoil triggered by subprime mortgage problems," said Masafumi Nakada, Nomura's executive managing director and chief financial officer.

"Though we cannot be optimistic yet about the environment even in the current business year, we will make full efforts to bring about an early profit recovery," he told reporters in Tokyo.