JPMorgan Chase & Co on Friday announced that it is to open a new campus for financial technology, or “fintech,” in Silicon Valley in 2020, staffed by more than 1,000 workers.
The New York-based financial giant, the biggest US bank by assets, is to build the new campus in Palo Alto, California, which is also home to Stanford University.
It announced a location in the tech-rich city for a project that is expected to break ground next year.
“The addition of a first-class location is a key step for growing our presence in the [San Francisco] Bay Area,” Bill Wallace, head of digital, consumer and community banking at JPMorgan, said in a statement. “This is an important market for us and we’re looking forward to expanding our footprint and attracting more of the area’s top talent.”
The move came as banks such as Bank of America Corp and Wells Fargo & Co cut retail branches as more consumers shift to digital banking, particularly through mobile phones.
Last year, JPMorgan acquired WePay, a tech start-up that provides payment processing to software platforms. The company has also formed partnerships with fintech companies Bill.com and On Deck Capital Inc.
More than 275 WePay employees, along with chief executive officer and co-founder Bill Clerico, are to move to the Palo Alto campus, the statement said.
In August, JPMorgan announced a push into online investing, offering 100 free trades and low fees to attract more millennial customers.
JPMorgan chief executive officer Jamie Dimon has dismissed the bitcoin currency as a “fraud,” but touted other leading fintech pursuits as potentially transformative for global finance.
The new office is to feature “a modern workplace design and amenities that matter most to employees and state-of-the-art technology to increase collaboration,” the company said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
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