JP Morgan is on track to pick Frankfurt as its main European location for trading market securities post Brexit, with Dublin in line to secure hundreds of back- and middle-office roles, according to sources.
The largest US bank by market value, at $307 billion (€281 billion), it will shift a number of London banking jobs to Dublin, Frankfurt and Luxembourg as it prepares for the UK’s exit from the European Union, the company’s head of corporate and investment banking, Daniel Pinto, said in an interview with Bloomberg in Saudi Arabia this week.
“We will have to move hundreds of people in the short term to be ready for day one, when negotiations finish, and then we will look at the long-term numbers,” Mr Pinto said. A spokesman for the bank confirmed Pinto’s comments to The Irish Times, but declined to elaborate on them.
However, sources said that the group’s plans for Ireland, where it can trace its operations back to 1926, are focused on expanding existing back-office functions in Dublin, rather than adding front-office roles. JP Morgan Bank (Ireland) is mainly involved in providing administration and accounting services to hedge funds and mutual funds as well as treasury and cash management services to clients globally.
Speculation
There had been a degree of speculation during the past month that JP Morgan could double its current 500-strong Irish workforce as a result of Brexit, as it emerged the bank was in talks to buy a building being developed in Dublin’s south docklands, which could accommodate more than 1,000 workers. However, sources said initial Brexit-related figures will be much lower than that.
JP Morgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, said before the Brexit referendum last June that the bank could move up to 4,000 of its 16,000 UK workforce in the event of voters opting to quit the EU. In January, he said the final number of job relocations could be higher.
Pinto said the group has to plan for a scenario where the UK companies lost their right to passport financial services across the single market. “We’ll have to wait to see what kind of deal can be achieved and see what we need to do from there,” he said.
Standard Chartered
Separately, Standard Chartered, the Asia-focused but London-headquartered banking group, told shareholders at the group’s annual general meeting on Wednesday that it is in talks with regulators about making Frankfurt its European base once the UK leaves the EU.
“The choice of Frankfurt is very natural as we have a branch there and we do euro clearing there,” group chairman Jose Vinals said.
Frankfurt, home of the European Central Bank and its supervisory centre for euro-zone lenders, is beginning to emerge as a favoured location for international banks as they pick post-Brexit EU hubs. Goldman Sachs is also known to be among banks actively considering making Frankfurt its main EU base.
Meanwhile, Barclays is said to have picked Dublin as its future European base, which may involve the movement of 150 jobs from London to Dublin. Credit Suisse and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are also looking at expanding their existing operations in Ireland.
