"It's absolutely not true that Frankfurt is a village for finance jobs"
Sebastian Naslund says Frankfurt is a village for banking and finance jobs and that offices here are mere branch offices. As someone who works in the German city, I want to make it clear that this is simply not true.
Firstly, most pure German banks have their headquarters in Frankfurt. Secondly, international banking giants like JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, UBS, and Standard Chartered have made Frankfurt the place for their EU hubs, not Paris. In this case, it's Paris that is the branch.
This isn't all, though. Frankfurt also has the European Central Bank, the Single Supervisory Mechanism, the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and numerous other financial institutions (such as the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority) are located in Frankfurt.
Frankfurt also has major positives. Despite being a manageable size, it has a large cultural and culinary offering, beautiful residential areas and an excellent infrastructure and traffic system. There's reason why last year's quality of life survey from the Economist ranked Frankfurt 7th globally.
Frankfurt isn't a village! While Paris is a great city, Frankfurt is great in its own way. And it an easily play in the top league of European financial centres alongside London and Paris.
Matteo Lerch is a pseudonym
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