The European head of legal at Nomura has resigned coinciding with a significant restructure of the internal legal function at the Japanese investment house.

David Mee quit Nomura in late December and will leave the bank in March.His decision to leave comes as Nomura restructures its transactional legal team, with 30 of Mee's transactional lawyers set to report to the bank's head of risk management David Benson, a non-legal board member.Mee had been with the investment bank since 1993, joining from Allen & Overy.

He is yet to secure a new position.Meanwhile, in a related move, Nomura has lured back its former head of transactional legal Tom O'Riordan. O'Riordan quit the investment bank in June of last year, practising in the London office of US firm Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft in the interim.