10 ms·

Comments by people in the English banking ecosystem: France is completely delusional about being able to attract English financial ecosystem. They are only hesi

Comments by people in the English banking ecosystem: France is completely delusional about being able to attract English financial ecosystem. They are only hesitating between Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

vidarh 10y ago
France already has a large portion of the EU financial ecosystem. Large banks are constantly adjusting their staffing balance between their various countries, and Paris is high on the list of countries for them to hire in. Source: an ex that is currently processing staffing numbers across EMEA for a major international investment bank. Frankfurt is too small to subsume most of this business because of a difficulty getting staff that is willing to work there, and Amsterdam has a different focus. Likely they'll all get part of the pie, but that some of it goes to Paris is pretty much guaranteed.
- ido 10y ago
  Why is Frankfurt not attractive to potential employees?
  - vidarh 10y ago
    It is to some. But it's not considered metropolitan enough to many. It's not that no banks will move there - clearly they will, there are plenty there aready. It's that Paris is a better brand for a large portion of employees. For staff with ties to London, it's also near-commutable. I've worked with people in London doing weekend-commuting far longer (in travel time) that Paris. But most major banks have desks both in Frankfurt and Paris already, not just to handle local business but because it's hard enough getting top people to London (my ex even regularly tells me of her frustrations of dealing with offices in certain countries that exists solely because a single hotshot trader prefers a certain city over one of their big centres and brings in enough business for it to be worth a whole support staff to keep them happy) and so most of these banks needs presences in lots of places to be attractive. If you don't have a presence in Paris and your competitor does, you're going to lose a sufficient portion of high-value traders to competitors over it for it to be an issue.
    - sentenza 10y ago
      I'd like to point out two things regarding the size of Frankfurt. Frankfurt is no London and no Paris, this is clear. However, that's also related to the way in which Germany as a whole functions. The individual cities aren't all that big, but they are clustered in metropolitan areas. If you live in the vicinity of Frankfurt, you can just drive to Heidelberg for a Saturday night out (about an hour). Or, if you're more interested in food, theater or classical music, you have a large selection from Mainz to Aschaffenburg, all of which is easily reachable from Frankfurt. Equally, the pool of support staff you can draw from isn't recruited from the minuscule population of Frankfurt (700k), but from the whole metro region (5.5 million). I myself live at the outermost boundary of the metro region and know many people who commute to Frankfurt. The second point is that the relatively small size of the city of Frankfurt is an asset in one critical regard: Frankfurt is first and foremost a banking city (and secondly an airport city). If banks want to exert some influence over policy there, they have all the leverage they could want. This is not the case in Paris. Personally, I'd be surprised if there was anything other than a somewhat even split of relocations between Frankfurt and Paris. And I'm fairly certain that the TGV service between Frankfurt and Paris will also be extended beyond what exists today.
      - henk53 10y ago
        Frankfurt has very good train connections as well. Specifically to Cologne which is via the hi-speed tracks, but also to Amsterdam and Vienna. One big advantage of Frankfurt is that Germans are much more open to speaking English than the French, and this is an advantage that should not be underestimated. If you don't speak German, but do speak English it's possible to live in Frankfurt. To live in Paris, you have to speak French. Only Amsterdam (which has English as its official language next to Dutch) is better in that regard. In Amsterdam you don't even have to ask if someone speaks English (that's considered an insult, on the same level of asking someone whether they can read and write).
        Swinx43 10y ago
        The language point you touch on cannot be stressed enough. I have first hand experience with this as I travel to Germany on a regular basis and find Germans much more accommodating language wise than the French. I also have had first hand experience of staff at establishments in Paris simply refusing to speak English. All in all if I had to choose as a Londoner I would prefer to move to Frankfurt or Amsterdam over Paris any day of the week.
  - dx034 10y ago
    It currently doesn't have the infrastructure. I just spoke with some Americans working in London, and while they'd generally prefer Frankfurt over Dublin, there are apparently currently no spaces in the international schools in the area. Sounds like a small issue, but can be significant, especially if you have a lot of people on management level who would need spaces there. But generally, Frankfurt is perceived very well. Less hostile towards non-French speakers than Paris (subjectively), less remote than Dublin. It's a very small city, but you're quickly in Munich/Berlin/Cologne, which helps.
    - saiya-jin 10y ago
      > But generally, Frankfurt is perceived very well. Less hostile towards non-French speakers than Paris (subjectively), less remote than Dublin. It's a very small city, but you're quickly in Munich/Berlin/Cologne, which helps. that's objective, germans generally are more keen to speak with foreigners in english than french, no matter their level
      - dx034 10y ago
        I always thought so, but my recent trips to Paris were very surprising that everyone was happy to speak English with me (even though I tried in basic French). Might be very different on the countryside, but then again, good luck speaking English on the German countryside.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        alexanderchr 10y ago
        Personal observation: most people in Paris are very happy to speak English with you - as long as you try to speak with them in French first.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        henk53 10y ago
  - daneyh 10y ago
    German workers council is incredibly restrictive on the hire-fire model that is the bread and butter of most mid-tier-BB IBs.
  - dustinmoris 10y ago
    Frankfurt does not exactly have a very appealing picture to workers in London. London is a big buzzing city and speaking to my colleagues and friends in the city they all rather quit their job than move to Frankfurt which they think of a boring/depressing small city (not my words, theirs).
    - moomin 10y ago
      City worker here: I'm guessing they haven't been. It's actually rather nice. Yeah, it's tiny, but it's fairly cosmpolitan, and the influx of 5000 city workers and their families would probably improve it further.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
KON_Air 10y ago
And maybe even Brussels. At the very least least it has better chances then Paris.
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> They are only hesitating between Amsterdam and Frankfurt At least in private equity and the related leveraged loan, structured product and similar work, New York is taking the lion's share of formerly British bankers' business.
- donmatito 10y ago
  Ah, probably. The conversation I had was regarding where they'd go in Europe
- woodpanel 10y ago
  That was my idea too. So us Europeans really did a number on ourselves with this one. Constantly agitating against the British financial services dominated economy and their catering to it. Now that they exit the club the continental idea is of course to split the booty. Talking about cooperation. Frankfurt and Amsterdam are nice cities, but why wouldn't talent prefer first-tier ones? Why not go to NYC, Singapore or HK?
  - CaptainZapp 10y ago
    Why not go to NYC, Singapore or HK? Because they need an EU base to clear Euros and to maintain passporting rights to any other EU country, once the base is established in an EU country. For this very reason Zurich (which is arguably the center of private banking) is out of the race. Switzerland is not an EU country.
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    Because the only reason anyone is talking about moving staff to inside the EU at all is because the EU can't attract them itself, so has to force those people to move through law. It's a failing strategy, long term. Can the EU "attract" employers by making it illegal for them to sell without physically being there? Sure, but that's kind of the opposite of trade.
    - pyrale 10y ago
      Can you name many countries giving the equivalent of passporting rights to foreigners ? Outside of Europe, I see no one.
new299 10y ago
I don't understand why they would move to France with a significantly non-zero probability of a Frexit. Is there something I've missed?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Probably the assumption that either Frexit won't happen, or if it does that means the EU is over anyway. The EU is supposedly a union of equals. In reality it isn't. It's run by and for the benefit of the original founding countries, in particular, for France and Germany. That's why the UK leaving is not seen as a threat to the EU's existence but France leaving is, even though in many metrics they're comparable countries. Of course Amsterdam has the same issue. The country's politics are in some ways more volatile than the UK. The most popular politician there strongly dislikes, maybe even hates, the EU. Whenever this comes up I tend to see Dutch people online saying things like "well it could never happen here because" followed by some explanation of how European moral superiority ensures that even if anti-EU candidates come first in elections nothing will ever change, as everyone else will unite in opposition, which isn't very convincing to put it mildly. Also bear in mind that we're talking about the eurozone here. Some countries have populations flirting with the idea of exiting the euro but not the EU. I suspect if one tries it they will discover they are fully under the control of the EU and are simply told that their votes will be ignored. It happens all the time in Europe.
  - tornadoboy55 10y ago
    Wilders only scores high in the polls and never in the actual elections. Stop selling bullshit.
    - tornadoboy55 10y ago
      Since I can't edit anymore: nice of you guys to put me at -3, but Wilders has had multiple election cycles where he is high in the polls but always ends either low or middling. These are facts since one can simply look up past election results.
edblarney 10y ago
Or Ireland.
- roryisok 10y ago
  As an Irish person I'd love to see us get some kind of benefit from Brexit, as we'll be the country most negatively affected by it (besides the UK itself of course). However I really can't see the financial institutions of London choosing Dublin over somewhere like Frankfurt or Amsterdam.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    Sure you can. The #1 reason bankers will shift will be due to 'passporting' issues - banks will require EU based personnel for legal reasons. In this case, I think it's easiest for London banks just to have staff in the easiest and most accessible place: Dublin. Other than that - I don't see the reason why any jobs at all would go to Europe. If they can do it from the UK, they will do that. There is no growth in Europe, it's all in Asia. Now - I believe the EU is trying to pull some Euro currency exchanges and clearing from London, in which case, there might to be another 'regulatory' reason to switch some people over. But I think this is overblown. There's nothing pretty about banking in the EU. London has not become more attractive because it's without EU regulatory limitations - and - they'll have considerable leverage with Theresa May etc. to win more concessions to make it even more competitive. It's entirely plausible that there are even more banking jobs in London after this is all settled.
    - roryisok 10y ago
      All this talk about Theresa May winning concessions... how is she going to do that exactly? The UK have no bargaining chips.
      - edblarney 10y ago
        Who said she was going to win any concessions? I said London City is going to win concessions from May in order to want to keep financial services in London.
gonzo41 10y ago
Its probably for the best. France has a history with cutting the heads off aristocrats. edit -spelling

Comments by people in the English banking ecosystem: France is completely delusional about being able to attract English financial ecosystem. They are only hesitating between Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

vidarh 10y ago

France already has a large portion of the EU financial ecosystem. Large banks are constantly adjusting their staffing balance between their various countries, and Paris is high on the list of countries for them to hire in. Source: an ex that is currently processing staffing numbers across EMEA for a major international investment bank. Frankfurt is too small to subsume most of this business because of a difficulty getting staff that is willing to work there, and Amsterdam has a different focus. Likely they'll all get part of the pie, but that some of it goes to Paris is pretty much guaranteed.

ido 10y ago
Why is Frankfurt not attractive to potential employees?
- vidarh 10y ago
  It is to some. But it's not considered metropolitan enough to many. It's not that no banks will move there - clearly they will, there are plenty there aready. It's that Paris is a better brand for a large portion of employees. For staff with ties to London, it's also near-commutable. I've worked with people in London doing weekend-commuting far longer (in travel time) that Paris. But most major banks have desks both in Frankfurt and Paris already, not just to handle local business but because it's hard enough getting top people to London (my ex even regularly tells me of her frustrations of dealing with offices in certain countries that exists solely because a single hotshot trader prefers a certain city over one of their big centres and brings in enough business for it to be worth a whole support staff to keep them happy) and so most of these banks needs presences in lots of places to be attractive. If you don't have a presence in Paris and your competitor does, you're going to lose a sufficient portion of high-value traders to competitors over it for it to be an issue.
  - sentenza 10y ago
    I'd like to point out two things regarding the size of Frankfurt. Frankfurt is no London and no Paris, this is clear. However, that's also related to the way in which Germany as a whole functions. The individual cities aren't all that big, but they are clustered in metropolitan areas. If you live in the vicinity of Frankfurt, you can just drive to Heidelberg for a Saturday night out (about an hour). Or, if you're more interested in food, theater or classical music, you have a large selection from Mainz to Aschaffenburg, all of which is easily reachable from Frankfurt. Equally, the pool of support staff you can draw from isn't recruited from the minuscule population of Frankfurt (700k), but from the whole metro region (5.5 million). I myself live at the outermost boundary of the metro region and know many people who commute to Frankfurt. The second point is that the relatively small size of the city of Frankfurt is an asset in one critical regard: Frankfurt is first and foremost a banking city (and secondly an airport city). If banks want to exert some influence over policy there, they have all the leverage they could want. This is not the case in Paris. Personally, I'd be surprised if there was anything other than a somewhat even split of relocations between Frankfurt and Paris. And I'm fairly certain that the TGV service between Frankfurt and Paris will also be extended beyond what exists today.
    - henk53 10y ago
      Frankfurt has very good train connections as well. Specifically to Cologne which is via the hi-speed tracks, but also to Amsterdam and Vienna. One big advantage of Frankfurt is that Germans are much more open to speaking English than the French, and this is an advantage that should not be underestimated. If you don't speak German, but do speak English it's possible to live in Frankfurt. To live in Paris, you have to speak French. Only Amsterdam (which has English as its official language next to Dutch) is better in that regard. In Amsterdam you don't even have to ask if someone speaks English (that's considered an insult, on the same level of asking someone whether they can read and write).
      - Swinx43 10y ago
        The language point you touch on cannot be stressed enough. I have first hand experience with this as I travel to Germany on a regular basis and find Germans much more accommodating language wise than the French. I also have had first hand experience of staff at establishments in Paris simply refusing to speak English. All in all if I had to choose as a Londoner I would prefer to move to Frankfurt or Amsterdam over Paris any day of the week.
- dx034 10y ago
  It currently doesn't have the infrastructure. I just spoke with some Americans working in London, and while they'd generally prefer Frankfurt over Dublin, there are apparently currently no spaces in the international schools in the area. Sounds like a small issue, but can be significant, especially if you have a lot of people on management level who would need spaces there. But generally, Frankfurt is perceived very well. Less hostile towards non-French speakers than Paris (subjectively), less remote than Dublin. It's a very small city, but you're quickly in Munich/Berlin/Cologne, which helps.
  - saiya-jin 10y ago
    > But generally, Frankfurt is perceived very well. Less hostile towards non-French speakers than Paris (subjectively), less remote than Dublin. It's a very small city, but you're quickly in Munich/Berlin/Cologne, which helps. that's objective, germans generally are more keen to speak with foreigners in english than french, no matter their level
    - dx034 10y ago
      I always thought so, but my recent trips to Paris were very surprising that everyone was happy to speak English with me (even though I tried in basic French). Might be very different on the countryside, but then again, good luck speaking English on the German countryside.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - alexanderchr 10y ago
        Personal observation: most people in Paris are very happy to speak English with you - as long as you try to speak with them in French first.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - henk53 10y ago
- daneyh 10y ago
  German workers council is incredibly restrictive on the hire-fire model that is the bread and butter of most mid-tier-BB IBs.
- dustinmoris 10y ago
  Frankfurt does not exactly have a very appealing picture to workers in London. London is a big buzzing city and speaking to my colleagues and friends in the city they all rather quit their job than move to Frankfurt which they think of a boring/depressing small city (not my words, theirs).
  - moomin 10y ago
    City worker here: I'm guessing they haven't been. It's actually rather nice. Yeah, it's tiny, but it's fairly cosmpolitan, and the influx of 5000 city workers and their families would probably improve it further.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

KON_Air 10y ago

And maybe even Brussels. At the very least least it has better chances then Paris.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

> They are only hesitating between Amsterdam and Frankfurt At least in private equity and the related leveraged loan, structured product and similar work, New York is taking the lion's share of formerly British bankers' business.

donmatito 10y ago
Ah, probably. The conversation I had was regarding where they'd go in Europe
woodpanel 10y ago
That was my idea too. So us Europeans really did a number on ourselves with this one. Constantly agitating against the British financial services dominated economy and their catering to it. Now that they exit the club the continental idea is of course to split the booty. Talking about cooperation. Frankfurt and Amsterdam are nice cities, but why wouldn't talent prefer first-tier ones? Why not go to NYC, Singapore or HK?
- CaptainZapp 10y ago
  Why not go to NYC, Singapore or HK? Because they need an EU base to clear Euros and to maintain passporting rights to any other EU country, once the base is established in an EU country. For this very reason Zurich (which is arguably the center of private banking) is out of the race. Switzerland is not an EU country.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Because the only reason anyone is talking about moving staff to inside the EU at all is because the EU can't attract them itself, so has to force those people to move through law. It's a failing strategy, long term. Can the EU "attract" employers by making it illegal for them to sell without physically being there? Sure, but that's kind of the opposite of trade.
  - pyrale 10y ago
    Can you name many countries giving the equivalent of passporting rights to foreigners ? Outside of Europe, I see no one.

new299 10y ago

I don't understand why they would move to France with a significantly non-zero probability of a Frexit. Is there something I've missed?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
zigzigzag 10y ago
Probably the assumption that either Frexit won't happen, or if it does that means the EU is over anyway. The EU is supposedly a union of equals. In reality it isn't. It's run by and for the benefit of the original founding countries, in particular, for France and Germany. That's why the UK leaving is not seen as a threat to the EU's existence but France leaving is, even though in many metrics they're comparable countries. Of course Amsterdam has the same issue. The country's politics are in some ways more volatile than the UK. The most popular politician there strongly dislikes, maybe even hates, the EU. Whenever this comes up I tend to see Dutch people online saying things like "well it could never happen here because" followed by some explanation of how European moral superiority ensures that even if anti-EU candidates come first in elections nothing will ever change, as everyone else will unite in opposition, which isn't very convincing to put it mildly. Also bear in mind that we're talking about the eurozone here. Some countries have populations flirting with the idea of exiting the euro but not the EU. I suspect if one tries it they will discover they are fully under the control of the EU and are simply told that their votes will be ignored. It happens all the time in Europe.
- tornadoboy55 10y ago
  Wilders only scores high in the polls and never in the actual elections. Stop selling bullshit.
  - tornadoboy55 10y ago
    Since I can't edit anymore: nice of you guys to put me at -3, but Wilders has had multiple election cycles where he is high in the polls but always ends either low or middling. These are facts since one can simply look up past election results.

edblarney 10y ago

Or Ireland.

roryisok 10y ago
As an Irish person I'd love to see us get some kind of benefit from Brexit, as we'll be the country most negatively affected by it (besides the UK itself of course). However I really can't see the financial institutions of London choosing Dublin over somewhere like Frankfurt or Amsterdam.
- edblarney 10y ago
  Sure you can. The #1 reason bankers will shift will be due to 'passporting' issues - banks will require EU based personnel for legal reasons. In this case, I think it's easiest for London banks just to have staff in the easiest and most accessible place: Dublin. Other than that - I don't see the reason why any jobs at all would go to Europe. If they can do it from the UK, they will do that. There is no growth in Europe, it's all in Asia. Now - I believe the EU is trying to pull some Euro currency exchanges and clearing from London, in which case, there might to be another 'regulatory' reason to switch some people over. But I think this is overblown. There's nothing pretty about banking in the EU. London has not become more attractive because it's without EU regulatory limitations - and - they'll have considerable leverage with Theresa May etc. to win more concessions to make it even more competitive. It's entirely plausible that there are even more banking jobs in London after this is all settled.
  - roryisok 10y ago
    All this talk about Theresa May winning concessions... how is she going to do that exactly? The UK have no bargaining chips.
    - edblarney 10y ago
      Who said she was going to win any concessions? I said London City is going to win concessions from May in order to want to keep financial services in London.

gonzo41 10y ago

Its probably for the best. France has a history with cutting the heads off aristocrats. edit -spelling