BERLIN, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- Goldman Sachs confirmed on Wednesday night that it had signed a lease for additional office space in Frankfurt, further underscoring the German financial hub's growing attractiveness for British-based financial service firms in the wake of Brexit.
"Goldman Sachs has signed a lease agreement for the upper floors of the Marienturm in Frankfurt, a new office tower currently under construction," the bank said in a statement.
The 10,000 square meters to be occupied by the U.S. investment bank in the "Marienturm" skyscraper will enable it to add 800 additional staff to its pre-existing workforce of 200 employees in Frankfurt.
Goldman Sachs had previously announced its intention to move up to 1,000 positions to the German city from London in response to Britain's decision to leave the European Union (EU). The company said that it would transfer nearly half of its 6,500 workers in London to several offices throughout the EU, including Dublin, Paris and Warsaw.
Goldman Sachs is currently still in the process of constructing a new European headquarters in London but has retained the option to sublet floor space it ultimately does not need. The bank has repeatedly urged British policymakers to negotiate a multi-year transition period to soften the economic blow of the Britain's exit from the EU.
Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein has warned that his institution would be forced to significantly reduce its British footprint if financial service firms based in the country lost access to the European Single Market.
The British financial services lobby group "TheCityUK" estimates that 70,000 jobs could be lost in the industry if Britain does not remain in the single market, while London Stock Exchange Chief Xavier Rolet put the figure as high as 270,000 in the event of a loss of euro-clearing activities.
So far, Frankfurt appears to have emerged as the victor amongst European cities vying for financial services business from London. The lobby group "Frankfurt Main Finance" reported that as many as 20 banking institutions were currently set on expanding or creating new corporate entities in the city.
Major global lenders including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and UBS, as well as the Japanese banks Nomura, Daiwa and Sumitomo Mitsubishi Financial Group have announced plans to open new offices in Frankfurt.
Frankfurt is home to three major regulatory bodies, the European Central Bank, German Central Bank (Bundesbank) and German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), giving it a potential advantage over continental rivals.
The Federation of German Industries (Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie, BDI) warned on Thursday, however, that the "Brexit" outlook for other sectors of the German economy was less sanguine.
German exports to Britain would suffer heavily in the event of a "very hard Brexit", BDI director Joachim Lang said in a statement. He voiced concern that such a deep rupture was an increasingly likely scenario seeing as the British government lacked a "clear concept" for Brexit.
