(Courtesy of the Jacksonville Daily Record) – Deutsche Bank’s long-term plans to grow its Jacksonville operations center, which employs about 2,000, seemed to fizzle as the Germany-based bank retrenched its global operations in the last two years.
But as the company looks ahead to a post-COVID-19 restructuring, it might consider moving more jobs to Jacksonville.
In an interview with the Financial Times published Dec. 14, the chief executive of Deutsche Bank’s U.S. operations said the company may move jobs out of New York City into “smaller hubs and pockets.”
Christiana Riley said Deutsche Bank could reduce its New York staff of 4,600 by half and move those jobs to lower-cost cities, the financial newspaper said.
Jacksonville is Deutsche Bank’s second-largest U.S. operation outside of New York City.
Riley said lessons learned during the pandemic as employees worked from home demonstrated the bank may not need so many people in a New York office.
Rather than have employees continue to work from home when the pandemic eases, Deutsche Bank might move more workers to hubs like Jacksonville.
A Deutsche Bank spokesman said the company would not comment on the possibility of moving more jobs to Jacksonville.
Deutsche Bank opened its Jacksonville campus in 2008 and when it added another building in 2016, then-CEO John Cryan said its offices could accommodate up to 2,800 employees.
However, Cryan was fired in 2018 and his successor, Christian Sewing, began a program of cost cutting as the bank struggled financially.
Deutsche Bank last year said it planned to cut about 18,000 jobs and reduce total global employment to 74,000 by 2022. The company reported 86,984 employees at the end of the third quarter.
In a previous interview with the Financial Times in June, Riley said the company’s cuts in the U.S. were complete.
During an investor meeting last week in Frankfurt, Sewing said the bank’s restructuring plans are going well.
“Since 2018 we have consistently delivered on or ahead of our targets,” Sewing said in a news release.
“We will maintain our discipline on cost and risk management as we now enter the third phase of our transformation: sustainable revenue growth and profitability,” he said.
Photo courtesy of Financial Times.