Goldman Sachs moving dozens of compliance roles out of New York to Salt Lake

A view of Salt Lake City’s capitol.f11photo/Shutterstock

• Goldman Sachs is planning to move dozens of compliance jobs out of New York City to Salt Lake City to cut costs, according to people briefed on the plans. 
• Employees have not been told if they are affected, and an announcement could come as early as September, the people said. 
• Separately, the bank is building up its compliance team for the consumer and commercial banking division in Richardson, Texas.

Goldman Sachs is planning to move dozens of compliance jobs out of New York City as part of an ongoing plan to move back-office staff to lower cost locales. 

The investment bank has been moving staff to Salt Lake City for years and the proposed plans are another stage in that effort, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Affected employees may be told of their fate as soon as September, the people said. As the roles are shifted to Salt Lake City, New York-based employees will be given a chance to move or apply for other jobs in New York, one of the people said. 

A Goldman Sachs spokesman declined to comment. 

Banks and asset management firms have been moving employees out of high-cost locations like New York and London for years to curb expenses and this shift has continued into 2018. Earlier this year, asset manager AllianceBernstein said it would send 1,000 jobs to Nashville. Deutsche Bank AG, which has had a hub in Jacksonville, Florida for years, is once again hiring for front-office staff in the southern city, Bloomberg reported this week. 

Goldman’s global compliance department is run by Sarah Smith, who was named to the role in March of last year. A 20-year veteran of Goldman, Smith has a background in accounting and audit and earlier worked at KPMG.  

The moves in her group are part of a long-running Goldman strategy. In 2012, then-Goldman president Gary Cohn highlighted the build out of offices in what the bank has dubbed “high value” locations. In a May presentation that year, Cohn said the strategy was so advanced that already 19% of the firm’s headcount was based in lower-cost cities such as Salt Lake City, Dallas and Bengaluru. The make up is now much higher, climbing to 30% last year, according to a November 2017 presentation.

The locations tend to cost 40-75% less than New York or other expensive cities like London, Tokyo or Hong Kong due to cost of living differences, Cohn said on his those 2012 remarks. 

Separately, the bank is building up its Richardson, Texas office, about 15 miles north of Dallas. Many of the control and compliance functions for its digital bank, Marcus by Goldman Sachs, and related activities will be based there, one of the people said.

In the past week, Goldman has been advertising for at least six such jobs in Texas, according to job postings compiled by Google.

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