Citigroup Inc is building a new trading floor in Paris as the Wall Street giant prepares to nearly double its staff in the French capital.
The new floor in its existing building — located steps from the Avenue des Champs-Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe — would help Citigroup increase staffing for its trading division to 250 in the coming years, up from 130, said Fabio Lisanti, head of the bank’s trading business across Europe, excluding the UK.
The new floor is set to include at least 85 desks.
“It’s going to be a mixture of hiring and moves,” said Lisanti, who moved to Paris this month. “We will be bringing more traders here. The growth will come from trading and all the support functions around those — operations, legal, compliance — all the things that a trading floor needs.”
The expansion in Paris comes as Citigroup and rivals continue to grapple with life after Brexit, which forced Wall Street’s biggest banks to adjust operations to ensure they were trading European assets — from government bonds to interest-rate products to equities — within the 27 countries that remain in the EU.
“London remains the main trading hub for us,” Lisanti said. “But we have and will move certain risk management and risk books in Europe. We’ve already moved quite a few and there’s more to go.”
Citigroup ended last year with about 400 staffers in Paris, up from 170 immediately after Brexit.
Citigroup is just one of dozens of US financial firms that, after decades of using London as a gateway to Europe’s single market, are now opening offices or bolstering existing operations on the continent to keep their access to the bloc.
Paris has emerged as a key destination for banks, as its local traders, trained at the country’s elite universities, also often worked on the structuring of Societe Generale SA’s and BNP Paribas SA’s most complex derivative products.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc has grown from about 170 staff in 2017 to 350 at the end of last year in the country, with further hires expected next year. Morgan Stanley set up a research center to support its trading activities last year, while JPMorgan Chase & Co, whose Paris headquarters was a relative backwater with 250 staff until Brexit, boosted its local headcount to 800 at the end of last year and expanded its office footprint with a new modern extension.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
RSS