serious damage to international banks, a top banker has warned.

Dr. Andreas Prindl, chairman of Nomura Bank International Plc in London, the hub of the banking services for the Japanese-owned Nomura Group, told the local centre of the Chartered Institute of Bankers (CIB) on Friday that a single currency could result in heavy cocsts for banks.

Nomura is one of the world's largest brokerage and investment banks, using a global network to advise companies, governments and financial institutions on a wide range of financial and strategic issues including banking, asset management, leveraged leasing, real estate and mergers and acquisitions.

The group's London bank is small with $400 million in capital and $5 billion in assets.

While he had no problems with a common market, Dr. Prindl said that all European banks, and probably those worldwide, would be affected if Europe adopts a single currency.

"A common market makes enormous sense,'' he said. "America, in that sense, is also a common market. But to have a United States of Europe, a single currency, a single bank, a single government, seems to me highly questionable.

We might lose more than we gain.'' Initially, said Dr. Prindl, it will mean more costs for banks, because they would have to change all of their systems and their books to a new, as yet unnamed, currency.

There would be a lot less foreign exchange earnings and less possibility of speculation. There also would be much more bureaucracy.

"I think we will make less profit if we have a single currency. I think the UK might be marginalised by this and London will be very badly hurt, if all the bureaucracy connected with the single currency moves to Frankfurt.'' He offered a guarantee that the proposed single currency won't happen in this century and that it would be a long time into the future before the various countries could agree on such a single currency.

One reason for that guarantee, he suggested, is that various countries would have to share some relatively common economic statistics, such as equally low national debt and low inflation. There are wild divergences at present.

He sees huge conceptual problems with a dozen countries now in, and another dozen that are trying to join, the new, unified Europe.

"The economic benefits look like they are pretty small. There are benefits of efficiency, and benefits of invoicing and accounting and all that. But the costs look like they are going to be a lot greater.

"First of all, monetary policy is going to be a massive thing. How can you have a monetary policy across a group of countries like the current twelve that are part of the European community. There are enormous differences among those countries, but with a single currency each would have to have the same monetary policy.'' Dr. Prindl, also commented on the state of the Japanese financial system, which is in a state of collapse. The admitted loan losses in the banking system are $500 billion.

"That is double what the American S&L crisis was. But $500 billion is the admitted loss. The actual losses are probably a trillion. That's a lot of money. There are hidden assets in Japanese banks. There are large amounts of capital in Japanese banks, but it will take many, many years to work its way through.'' He warned that many Japanese banks still appeared to be at the brink of failure. The market, he said, has turned on them.

An author and former president of the CIB, the banker also updated the problems of banking in Britain, not the least of which was the recent loss of 100,000 banking jobs. He predicted the industry will lose another 50,000 to 100,000 more jobs in the near future.

But he also has to be concerned about losing key staff to cross town competitors.

"It seems to me that headhunters are constantly out there trying to take away my traders and analysts all the time. The market is such that these youngsters get very, very, very high salaries. Even though I think I'm paying them too much, they can go across the street for 25 percent more. There seems to be less loyalty around.'' British banks are also suffering under a weighty regime of regulations, with the Bank of England adding more rules and restrictions every time there is a problem like the collapse of Barings Bank or the BCCI scandal.

"Every time they make a mistake, they then come and give us more regulation, so that those things don't happen again. That's fine.

"But we spend at Nomura House more than 1 million a year just to meet regulatory requirements.'' He also remarked on how such developments were affecting the one and a quarter century-old CIB, especially in terms of declining membership.

British banks are not in a hiring mode, especially for unskilled, school-leaving labour. He couldn't foresee when hiring would return. And those that are being hired were specialist personnel.

These factors will impact on the CIB for some time in the future, he said, adding that new steps are being taken toward professional development at the Institute.