Oppenheimer Holdings Inc. (NYSE:OPY) has announced it intends to double the size of its investment banking arm in Europe. This comes as a big surprise because large banks and financial firms have been cutting thousands of jobs in their investment units over the past year.
Barclays PLC (NYSE:BCS) (LON:BARC) announced in January that it will likely cut jobs in its investment unit. Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) slashed investment jobs back in November, and the list of firms cutting investment positions just goes on and on, stretching all the back to at least April of last year.
Financial News reports that Oppenheimer Holdings Inc. (NYSE:OPY)’s European expansion is expected to happen over the next five years. The firm is planning on expanding its services into Europe. At this point the firm’s European offices only offers equity research on companies in the U.S. and helps clients trade in the debt and equity markets in the U.S. The expansion will enable it to bring all of the services it offers to U.S. clients over to Europe. Currently the firm only has 58 employees in London, and most of them work in fixed-income and equities research.
Oppenheimer Holdings Inc. (NYSE:OPY) began trading on the London Stock Exchange earlier this week, trying to make a name for itself in the region. The listing also enabled it to trade several products in the U.K., like exchange-traded funds and cash equities.
Oppenheimer isn’t the only North American company making moves to push into Europe. Other Wall Street firms have made some acquisitions, which took them into the region. Cantor Fitzgerald bought some assets from Seymour Pierce, a broker in the U.K. Last year Canaccord Genuity also acquired Collins Stewart-Hawkpoint, a stockbroker in the U.K.
