One of Wall Street’s leading firms will soon have a foothold in the West Midlands after Goldman Sachs announced that it would open an office in Birmingham this year.
The new office will create hundreds of jobs and will be a technology hub for the US bank, which initially plans to base jobs from its software engineering division in Britain’s second biggest city.
Gurjit Jagpal, a managing director in Goldman’s engineering division, said that most of the staff would be hired locally with only about 10 per cent transferred from the bank’s London office and elsewhere. Goldman Sachs aims eventually to have several hundred employees at the new office, working in different parts of its business.
The move by one of the world’s most powerful investment banks is a boost for Britain’s financial services industry, which is traditionally centred on the City of London. There have been concerns that Brexit will prompt banks to move jobs from the UK to the EU, although the number of jobs that have shifted has been lower than feared.
The bank employs about 6,500 staff in the UK, most of them in London. While it also has a small call centre for its Marcus retail savings business in Milton Keynes, this will be its first big move out of London.
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Jagpal, 48, said it had picked Birmingham because of its wealth of local graduate talent as well as its thriving start-up scene and easy commute to London. “It has a very strong and diverse talent pool. It’s home to several universities and there’s about a dozen more within an hour’s travelling distance,” he said.
The move enhances Birmingham’s status as a destination for big banks. HSBC opened a head office for its UK business in the city in 2018 and Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, also has a significant presence there.
