Canadian financial services firm TD Securities has picked Dublin as its bond trading hub inside the European Union.
The Ontario-based firm, a unit of Toronto-Dominion Bank, is to expand its Irish operation to ensure that it has a base within the EU after the UK leaves the bloc in March 2019.
TD, Canada’s largest lender by assets, currently has 300 staff in London and just two in the Irish capital but now plans to increase staff levels in Dublin to ten by January as it seeks to build up its fixed-income capabilities, which are the firm’s most important European business line.
Until last year, TD, which has had an operation in Dublin since 1998, had planned to scrap its Irish business but reversed the decision following last June’s Brexit referendum in the UK.
Speaking at the announcement in Toronto yesterday, Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that a decision on the total number of jobs for TD’s Dublin hub would “depend on the nature of Brexit”.
“This is a great win for Ireland as we seek to deepen and expand the range of financial services companies who are investing in Ireland,” he said.
“As we face into the challenges of Brexit, we are determined to pursue and seize new opportunities and investment projects from key companies worldwide.”
Peter Walker, TD Securities’ vice-chairman and regional head of Europe and Asia-Pacific, said that the expansion of the firm’s Dublin office “will position us well for all outcomes of Brexit negotiations”.
TD’s decision to scale up operations in Dublin as a response to Brexit follows similar decisions by Barclays, Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Standard Life to move or create new jobs in Dublin.
As the likelihood of the UK leaving the EU’s single market as well as its customs union increases, London-based financial services firms, including US and Japanese banks as well as asset management firms, stand to lose valuable passporting rights to do business across the 28-nation bloc.
Frankfurt, the seat of the European Central Bank, is widely seen as the front runner to attract Brexit-related investment and jobs from London.
Deutsche Bank has recently said it would move 4,000 jobs from London to Frankfurt, while Japanese banks Daiwa and Sumitomo Mitsui are planning to establish subsidiaries in the German city.
In May Standard Chartered said it was in contact with the German financial regulator about creating a subsidiary in Frankfurt, where it already has offices.
©2017 funds europe
