With London still reeling from the shock of last week’s referendum, all eyes are on whether banks will transfer jobs to mainland Europe. For the foreseeable future, the answer seems to be no – but this doesn’t mean they’re not quietly strengthening their existing teams on the ground.
Take Citigroup, the US bank has just hired Steffen Schmidtke from Bank of America Merrill Lynch for its equities sales desk. Schmidtke previously spent two years at BAML and five and a half years at Credit Suisse.
Citigroup is known to be building its equities business in Europe.The U.S. bank promoted Murray Roos, the ex-co-head of European equities at Deutsche Bank to global co-head of equities in May. Roos has been hiring for Citi’s business as the bank seeks to strengthen its position in equities.
Citi’s London-based sales and trading business pays handsomely. Recently released accounts suggest average compensation across front office and infrastructure staff was £245k ($349k) in 2015. Citigroup sold its German banking operation after the financial crisis in 2008, but retained around 500 corporate and investment banking employees in the country.
For the moment, Citi’s Frankfurt office appears predominantly staffed by sales and client coverage staff. The question now is whether it decides to locate sales roles in Germany too.
Following the result to last week’s referendum, Citi CEO Michael Corbat sent a memo to staff saying there would likely be no change to the way the bank does business in Europe for at least two years, or until the UK formally exits the EU.
Source : Sarah Butcher, efinancialcareers.com
