Amidst a wave of cost-cutting measures that are enveloping the financial services industry in such locales as London, many banks are opting for more competitively priced operations and are thus moving their trading venues to other countries.
As a result, Credit Suisse has opened a new front office trading floor in Dublin on the back end of its operations-cutting move in London this past November, which included the loss of up to 2000 jobs across its fixed income and foreign Exchange (FX) sector.
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Credit Suisse AG Dublin Branch was ultimately facilitated by the Central Bank of Ireland, which announced last month that it had authorized the bank to establish a branch in Ireland. Consequently, the new trading floor will be located at Kilmore House in Spencer Dock.
The new office represents Credit Suisse’s first trading floor in Dublin, which will cater to the prime services business – Taoiseach Enda Kenny will be heading the operations. More specifically, the new trading floor will include upwards of one hundred new positions, with forty risk and capital professionals and sixty support staff manning the operations. The move also helps strengthen Ireland as an important hub for the bank’s Prime Services Business in Europe.
In addition, the new floor will focus on a variety of components from the Prime Services business, including Prime Brokerage, Prime Financing and Securities Lending on a global scale. Credit Suisse’s Dublin operation will also help manage trading, capital, and Risk Management for the overall business, while existing sales personnel and relationship managers will remain in London due to client proximity.
It will be interesting to see if other banks follow suit and move specific operations to Dublin, especially in the aftermath of such pronounced downsizing in London. Back in late October, Deutsche Bank portended that its shifting operations would see a reduction of its workforce by 9,000 full-time jobs by 2020 along with an intention to shed assets in excess of $4.4 billion – this was promptly followed by similar measures from Standard Chartered and Barclays.
According to Taoiseach Enda Kenny in a recent statement on the new office: “Today’s welcome announcement of the creation of 100 jobs by Credit Suisse and the opening of its Dublin branch is very significant.”
“It represents a strong endorsement of Ireland's reputation as a leading location for international financial services, building on the very strong job creation achieved in the sector in 2015 as a result of the Government's International Financial Services Strategy, IFS 2020. Supporting job creation in financial services is part of our long term economic plan to keep the recovery going," he reiterated.
“We are delighted to officially open the first Credit Suisse trading floor in Dublin today. This marks a first for Ireland and for Credit Suisse. The broad talent pool and efficiencies that the capital city has to offer made the decision to deploy operations in Dublin an easy one. Today’s opening further demonstrates our ongoing commitment to continue optimally serving our clients,” added Tim O’Hara CEO of Global Markets, Credit Suisse, in an accompanying statement.
