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.
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