Richard Gnodde, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs International (NYSE:GS), has spoken further of plans to move hundreds of people out of London before any Brexit deal is struck.
“We are going to start to execute on those contingency plans,” Richard Gnodde told CNBC on Tuesday.
“For this first period, this is really the period as we put in place contingency plans, this is in the hundreds of people as opposed to anything greater than that,” he said.
This is a big move for Goldman Sach’s, where a significant bulk of operations are in the UK. Goldman has around 6,000 employees and provides services including broking and market-making in securities foreign-exchange trading and corporate finance across Europe.
According to Gnodde, the Wall Street bank will start hiring more people in Europe before moving people from London and investing in more infrastructure and technology.
“This is all in the context of contingency planning,” he said. “What our eventual footprint will look like will depend on the outcome of [the Brexit] negotiations and what we are obliged to do because of them.”
“Whatever the scenario, whatever the outcome, London will remain for us a very significant regional hub and a very significant global hub,” he added.
Goldman Sach’s is not the only major bank to consider moving operations since the referendum. Stuart Gulliver from HSBC has said that up to 1,000 roles will move to Paris in two years when Brexit is finalised (LON:HSBA). The Swiss bank UBS has also suggested that 1,000 members of its UK staff could move to possibly to Frankfurt or Madrid (NYSE:UBS). US bank JP Morgan has also said 4,000 UK jobs are at risk.
However, Goldman’s bank is continuing to work on building its new nine-storey London Headquarters, with the aim of moving in in 2019.