Citigroup’s Japan HQ, staff to shift

Bloomberg

Citigroup Inc. will move its Japan headquarters and about 1,200 employees to a new building in Tokyo by the end of the third quarter, according to people familiar with the matter.
The New York-based firm will officially move the location of its main Japan office to the Otemachi Park Building from the Shin-Marunouchi Building on August 28, said the people, who asked not to be identified. Employee relocations will start then and the workers—including bankers, analysts, sales and traders—are scheduled to be in the 9th, 10th and 11th floors of the new building by September 30, they said.
The shift will bring Citigroup’s Japanese brokerage and banking operations together, helping to strengthen the businesses after the bank closed down its consumer-banking and card divisions in late 2015. The firm has hired about 20 bankers, analysts, economists, sales staff and traders in Japan in the past year.
The 29-story Otemachi Park is located across the road from the Imperial Palace grounds and was completed in February. The building is equipped with fitness, shower and napping facilities, along with serviced apartments and a day-care centre, according to the website of developer Mitsubishi Estate Co. Mika Nemoto, a Tokyo-based spokeswoman at Citigroup, confirmed the schedule for the relocation, without commenting further.
Foreign banks in Japan have mainly located in Otemachi or the adjoining Marunouchi districts, with a few clustered in Roppongi a few kilometres to the southwest. Morgan Stanley’s Tokyo office is in Otemachi, while JPMorgan Chase & Co. and BNP Paribas SA have their headquarters in Marunouchi, close to Tokyo’s main railway station. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Barclays Plc are in Roppongi.
Tokyo office vacancies fell to a nine-year low in June, helping push up rents, according to real estate broker Miki Shoji Co.