Goldman May Cut London Staff by 50% on Brexit, Handelsblatt Says

(Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. may cut its London staff in half to 3,000 workers while transferring some to other locations as it prepares for the U.K.’s exit from the European Union, Handelsblatt reported, citing unidentified people in the financial industry.

A spokeswoman for the bank said it hasn’t made any decisions.

The company is considering moving as many as 1,000 employees including traders and compliance managers to Frankfurt as the firm shifts operations across the Continent and to New York, the newspaper said. Some people in trading operations who develop new products would probably move to the company’s New York headquarters, it said.

Investment bankers focusing on corporations in France and Spain would work from those countries, the publication said. And so-called back-office staff would probably go to Warsaw, it said.

“No decision has been taken and the numbers mentioned are none we would recognize,” company spokeswoman Nicole Mommsen told Bloomberg after the report. Goldman Sachs has said for months that it’s still studying implications for the industry as the U.K. negotiates its withdrawal, a process known as Brexit. The firm reiterated that position in October, when the Sunday Times said the company was preparing to shift 2,000 staff if Brexit costs banks easy access to Europe’s single market.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said earlier Wednesday in an interview on Bloomberg Television that his firm is still waiting to see how the U.K. handles its break with the EU before making decisions on how to adjust London staffing.

“It looks like there will be more job movement than we hoped for,” Dimon said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dakin Campbell in New York at dcampbell27@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Eichenbaum at peichenbaum@bloomberg.net, David Scheer, Dan Reichl