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Goldman Revives Geneva Office as Bank Targets 25 Staff

Goldman Revives Geneva Office as Bank Targets 25 Staff

(Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is reviving its presence in Geneva, aiming to expand its staff to 25 in the next three years in a vote of confidence in the city, Le Temps reported, citing an interview with the bank’s Swiss head.

The bank is adding five people now, and will welcome two asset management specialists and two wealth managers, the newspaper cited Stefan Bollinger as saying. The wealth managers will target customers with at least $10 million to invest and each will handle 25 to 40 clients, Le Temps said.

The move would be a boost a Geneva, which has seen its banking numbers decline. Some wealth management business has moved to Asia, while Swiss lenders have come under siege from foreign prosecutors targeting their citizens stashing money in the country. Employment in Geneva’s banking sector fell from a 2012 peak of 20,750 to about 18,300 in 2017.

Goldman’s employees relocated from Geneva to Zurich in 2016, but the bank never closed its Geneva office, Bollinger told the newspaper. The bank is bulking up its Geneva office partly to comply with new Swiss rules so that it can operate elsewhere in Switzerland if the Zurich branch ran into any difficulty, Bollinger told Le Temps.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hugo Miller in Geneva at hugomiller@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Nicholas Larkin, James Amott

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