Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan, saying he was thinking of a commitment Tuesday, sees the possibility for about 1,000 more jobs in Jacksonville.
“As a result of opening this new building, the second half of our campus here in Jacksonville, we have capacity for about 2,800 people, and I think we should fill that,” he said, eliciting strong applause from a crowd at a ribbon-cutting.
“Why not?” he asked.
Mayor Lenny Curry sees the possibility, too.
“I have a high level of confidence Deutsche Bank will continue to invest in Jacksonville,” he said after a ceremony to mark the opening of the bank’s renovated building at 5201 Gate Parkway.
Cryan, Curry, Gov. Rick Scott, JAXUSA Partnership President Jerry Mallot and Leslie Slover, Deutsche Bank regional head in Jacksonville and in Cary, N.C., all spoke Tuesday at the event.
The 5201 building is near the bank’s main campus at 5022 Gate Parkway. Together, the two sites comprise 350,000 square feet of office space. About 800 people moved to the 5201 building and more are on the way.
Deutsche Bank says it has 1,800 employees in Jacksonville. Cryan said both campuses can accommodate up to 2,800 people, although he had no timeline for those longer range plans.
He also sees Jacksonville’s role as strong within the global bank’s footprint. Based in Germany, Deutsche Bank’s main U.S. office operations are in New York, but Jacksonville is the next largest presence.
Having taken the reins July 1, 2015, Cryan, who is British and based in Frankfurt, Germany, said it took him a while to visit Jacksonville’s campus.
When he did, there had been a “big snow dump” in New York but it was about 75 degrees in Northeast Florida.
“I thought, well this is a good day out and I realized after half a day here that not only was this an important facility for us in the context of our U.S. business, but globally,” he said.
He said he thought then and still does "that this Jacksonville site is a role model for how we at Deutsche Bank should be running our business globally."
Cryan said under the leadership of Slover and Mike Drexler, the Jacksonville operation has integrated well within the community. Drexler is Deutsche Bank’s head of Global Markets and Corporate & Investment Banking, Florida.
Jacksonville’s operation also is well run within the global financial organization, he said.
“All of our people statistics here are better than elsewhere. Job satisfaction is higher, retention rates are higher, mobility is great,” he said.
Deutsche Bank opened in Jacksonville in 2008 with 100 employees. With four incentives packages from the city and state, the company has added hundreds more and is committed to adding another 350 jobs by year-end 2017.
According to the state, about 100 of the latest pledged employees have been hired to date.
Deutsche Bank does not run a retail bank in Jacksonville. Instead, the Southside operation has evolved from a single function operation center to a multi-divisional regional office, which Slover said in March was like a microcosm of the New York footprint.
Divisions in Jacksonville include global markets, which is the sales and trading business; corporate and investment banking, asset management, wealth management, the operations teams that support those businesses, global transaction banking, information technology, finance, cybersecurity, compliance, legal, group audit and anti-financial crime.
Cryan also wants to continue expanding a diverse workforce. “When we build out the business, I think we should hire from Florida, but I think we should also bring people from the rest of the U.S. and actually the rest of the world,” he said.
And, he said, Deutsche Bank has been doing some of that.
“I guess they are doing jobs that Floridians could do, but I think that adds to the diversity here in the office and I think it’s part of our general program globally to improve mobility, which will improve the way that we engage with the communities in which we operate,” he said.
Cryan told those from New York State not to “get too worried. We want to grow the business. And in banking these days, there’s not too much talk of growing,” he said.
While Cryan emphasized growth, and not necessarily department relocation, Scott said “Corporate offices are really nice here, too.”
A former UBS chief financial officer, Cryan was brought into Deutsche Bank leadership to help overhaul the bank. The Wall Street Journal reported in late July that it continued to face challenges.
“With 100,000 employees — more than 45,000 of them in Germany — Deutsche Bank is trying to fend off stronger U.S. rivals chipping away at its global investment bank, including in its backyard. It is challenged by a saturated retail-banking market at home and tough new regulations that make its powerhouse global trading business less profitable,” the Journal reported.
Deutsche Bank is a commercial entity, Cryan reminded those at the ribbon-cutting, and to be successful, it needs to employ people.
“People are the bank and if the bank is represented by the people in Jacksonville here at the bank today, then this bank is an awful lot better than sometimes it looks from the outside,” he said.
“So, well done to all of you,” he told the employees.
Cryan thanked the city and the state, offering Deutsche Bank’s assistance. “Whenever we can repay you in appropriate ways, we will always seek to do so and we can all look forward to a bright future and a growing office under Leslie’s stewardship,” he said.
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