Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley scout Frankfurt offices for potential post-Brexit trading hub

Goldman Sachs is considering options including leasing space in the Richard Rogers designed Skylight building in the city centre

Morgan Stanley is also looking for office space in the German financial capital (Reuters)

Goldman Sachs is scouting for office space in Frankfurt that could serve as its new trading hub inside the European Union after Brexit, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The bank is considering options including leasing space in the Richard Rogers designed Skylight building in the city centre, the people said, who declined to be identified because the plans are not public. Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB), which occupies the building, is looking to cut jobs in Frankfurt, Johan Andersson, the bank’s Germany chief, told Boersen-Zeitung earlier this year.

Goldman Sachs has not signed any new leases and plans to take more space in the building it currently occupies to begin with, one of the people said. A bank spokesman declined to comment, while SEB said it’s using all its office space and it's too early to comment on a possible downsizing.

Morgan Stanley is also looking for office space in the German financial capital, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified. One option the bank is considering is renting space in the office building Taunusanlage 8, which is owned by Credit Suisse’s asset management arm. The building came to market last summer. About two thirds of the roughly 30,000 square metres (323,000 square feet) of office space are still available, enough to house about 1,500 staff, said one of the people.

The US bank is considering initially moving about 300 workers to Frankfurt or Dublin as a result of the UK’s decision to leave the EU, people familiar said in February. It could eventually move as much as 1,000 UK staff out of the country, Bloomberg News reported last year.

A spokeswoman for Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

Britain’s decision to quit the EU has prompted global banks to establish new bases inside the bloc to secure continued access to clients in the region. Goldman Sachs is considering moving as many as 1,000 employees to Frankfurt, a person familiar said earlier this year, with the UK capital set to lose as many as 30,000 financial services jobs after Brexit, according to the Bruegel think tank.

Goldman Sachs plans to start moving client-facing staff to various EU cities next year, the firm’s vice chairman of the international business Richard Gnodde said in April.

Bloomberg