On Tuesday, Nomura Securities Co Ltd said its US and British units had combined losses of $350 million on their holdings of Russian government bonds as of the end of August.

Nomura said in a statement the losses were incurred due to the recent financial crisis in Russia.

A Daiwa spokesman said weakness in Russian bonds resulted in a shortage of about 6 billion yen ($43.7 million) in the value of bonds given by Russian Financial institutions to Daiwa Securities as collateral, but added that this did not constitute a loss.

"We have no impact (from weak Russian bonds) at this moment because it is a drop in value of collateral, not a loss. We are planning to have an arrangement to offset such a drop," the Daiwa spokesman said.

A Nikko spokesman said its losses were "negligible".

"We know that losses at our European unit (onholdings of Russian bonds) were not big. Absolutely no impact from that," the Nikko spokesman said, without giving the actual figure.

Nihon Keizai Shimbun said on Wednesday that Nikko may have losses of 500 million yen ($3.64 million) at its European unit.