Goldman Sachs is preparing to take a 108K SF Frankfurt office as a hedge against a hard Brexit, Bloomberg reports.
The floor space is in Pecan Development's 38-storey Marienturm Tower, due for completion in 2019.
Frankfurt's financial services sector cheerleaders predict up to 10,000 finance jobs could move to the city following Brexit, but so far words have not been matched by action — Bloomberg tipped Sumitomo as the first significant mover, and it took just 12K SF.
Like the fears of a Brexit rush to Dublin — regarded by some analysts as overstated — the prospects of a Brexit stampede to Frankfurt depend on disregarding London's advantages of scale, advantages that will remain despite Brexit. Whilst Frankfurt is home to local financial giants Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank, the Frankfurt financial services sector is small compared to London. For instance, London's financial services sector employs 345,000 people — the equivalent of half the population of Frankfurt.
Goldman Sachs is expected to move into a 1.1M SF London office at Farrington Road, Holborn, in 2019. It will occupy the site of a former telephone exchange at Shoe Lane. However, Reuters reports it is unclear whether it will occupy all of the space it reserved.
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