Citigroup is on the verge of signing a €100m deal to develop a major new office site in the heart of Dublin to significantly increase the size of its European headquarters as post-Brexit banks increase their presence across the EU.
The US bank, which earlier this year announced it would hire 300 additional staff in Ireland for risk, assurance, finance, technology and operations positions, has been looking for a suitable location for several months after outgrowing its current office and it has set up sale six months ago.
According to several people familiar with the matter, the company is currently in the final stages of finalizing a deal for a new 300,000-square-foot office in Dublin’s Docklands — home to the headquarters of tech companies including Google, Amazon and Meta.
The deal could be finalized as early as this month, industry sources said. The new location is almost a third larger than its current 230,000 square foot Dublin location.
“This process is ongoing and we have no updates at this time,” Citi said in a statement.
Two people with knowledge of the bank’s plans for its Irish business said the need for larger office space in Dublin was due to plans to grow the business organically, not moves from London. Ireland’s commercial property market is recovering strongly despite the country’s high costs.
Since Brexit, global banks have ramped up operations in Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Dublin, shifting hundreds of billions of dollars in assets out of London.
Only around 7,000 jobs have been relocated from London to the EU so far, despite initial forecasts of tens of thousands of relocations.
The longer-term blow to London, however, will come from recruitment elsewhere than the UK capital.
Citi, which has had a presence in Ireland since 1965, employs more than 2,500 people in Ireland and made Dublin its European headquarters in 2016 in the run-up to Brexit. From the Irish capital, it oversees activities in 22 countries.
Citi recently narrowed its search for a new home to the last major vacant Docklands site co-owned by Ireland’s Ronan Group and US-based Fortress Investment Group.
The Ronan Group, which has built large offices for other big companies including Salesforce and Facebook, declined to comment.
According to industry sources, Citi also has a right of first refusal on an additional 130,000 square feet on the same site should it wish to expand. It put its existing 230,000 square foot Dublin office up for sale for €120 million.
Wall Street and City of London investment banks are under pressure from the European Central Bank to allocate more staff and capital to eurozone financial markets, rather than relying on off-bloc operations like London and New York.
In May, ECB supervisor Andrea Enria warned that “empty shell structures . . . are a very real concern.”
Citi’s decision to increase its Dublin office space comes at odds with moves by other global lenders to reduce office space as more employees work from home in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Swiss bank UBS and France’s Société Générale have each sublet floors at their London headquarters to respond to employees’ more flexible approach to office work.
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Citi has strengthened its three main EU hubs in Dublin, Frankfurt and Paris since Britain voted to leave the bloc in 2016, but has made it clear that it intends to maintain large operations in London despite Brexit.
Citi’s largest European offices are still in London, which employs 9,000 people. The bank is in the process of modernizing its 42-storey headquarters in Canary Wharf, London, as part of a three-year £100m overhaul of 25 Canada Square. Citi bought the skyscraper in 2019 for £1.2bn as part of a global strategy to own, not rent, its large office buildings to cut costs.
Citi will not renew the lease at 33 Canada Square when it expires in five years, consolidating all employees in the main tower.
Separately, James Bardrick, Citi’s country officer for the UK, told Bloomberg that the bank intends to hire 400 more staff for its Belfast office, which employs 3,700 people and is the city’s largest financial services employer.
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