Deutsche Bank could 'conceivably' move half its 4,600 New York staff to smaller US hubs over the next 5 years, its head of Americas said

• Deutsche Bank could move thousands of New York employees to smaller hubs in the US, the chief executive of the bank's Americas business told the Financial Times Sunday.
• Christiana Riley said the German bank could "conceivably" cut its New York headcount in half over the next five years, moving staff to "smaller hubs and pockets" in the US.
• No plans have been finalized. Deutsche Bank declined to comment to Business Insider.
• A spokesman for Deutsche Bank told Bloomberg News Sunday the bank is thinking about how it can allow more staff to work from home, as it moves its New York operations to a smaller office in the Time Warner Center near Central Park.

Deutsche Bank could move up to half of its 4,600 Manhattan employees to smaller hubs across the US in the next five years, the boss of the bank's Americas business told the Financial Times Sunday.

Christiana Riley said she was optimistic that the city will remain "to a degree, a hub" for banks. "You will continue to have significant amounts of institutional capital sitting in and around New York that will make it meaningful for there to be a centralised presence in New York ... But that isn't maybe going to be relevant for all of those people," she said.

Riley said the pandemic "has taught us a tonne." She expects banks to increasingly base their employees in hubs throughout the US, mostly in low-cost areas, instead of adopting the "work from anywhere" approach favored by tech companies. Twitter and Google are among a long list of companies who have announced long-term remote working plans for staff.

If it adopted this hub model, Deutsche Bank could "conceivably" cut its New York headcount in half, she said.

There are no concrete plans in place yet, and any moves depend on the German bank developing more "smaller hubs and pockets" across the US, she said.

Following Riley's comments, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank, Daniel Hunter, told Bloomberg News Sunday the bank was discussing how it can allow more staff to work remotely as it relocates its operations in the city to the Time Warner Center near Central Park in New York City.

Bloomberg reported in May that Deutsche Bank was planning to leave Wall Street for 1.1 million square feet of office space at Columbus Circle in the third quarter of 2021, citing a memo by Tom Patrick, the former head of Deutsche Bank's Americas business.

Although the new offices sound huge, it would mark a decrease in the company's New York footprint by 30%, as flexible working arrangements allow staff to spend some of the week working from home, per Bloomberg.

Deutsche already has 2,000 staff in Jacksonville, Florida, in its human resources, compliance, and risk teams, and 600 staff in Cary, North Carolina, per the FT.

Deutsche Bank declined Business Insider's request for comment.

Read more: Inside the daily routine of a Deutsche Bank managing director, who used to travel 10 days a month for work and moved from Manhattan to upstate New York during the pandemic

If Deutsche Bank shifted a substantial number of people out of the city, the bank would join other New York-based firms such as Goldman Sachs, which is considering moving its asset management operations to Florida, people with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg December 6.

As the coronavirus pandemic changed the world of work, Deutsche Bank was considering letting staff permanently work two days a week from home, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg November 26.

The Frankfurt-headquartered bank told Business Insider at the time it was looking at a "hybrid model that will combine working from home as well as in the office," but that no decisions had been made.

Deutsche Bank announced in July that it was cutting 18,000 jobs by 2022.