DUBAI: Natixis plans to increase staffing levels in the Middle East by 50 percent in 2014, a top executive of the French investment bank said, as the lender looks to gain more revenue from outside its home market.
The bank, whose parent is French retail lender BPCE, has targeted further diversification from its home market, which has suffered from sluggish growth and the eurozone crisis, as well as reduced costs in its 2014-2017 strategic plan. This foresees an increase in the split of business it generates outside France from around half now to two-thirds by the end of 2017.
Having concentrated in 2013 on building its business in Latin America and Japan, the bank will invest in the Middle East this year, said Olivier Perquel, head of financing and global markets. “We are pushing very hard all of our core businesses, with the idea that we want to have product people locally,” Perquel said at the bank’s Dubai office.
Perquel said the growth in the region would build steadily on its current business, which contributes around 5 percent of the bank’s total revenue. Natixis has around 40 staff in Dubai, as well as a small representative office in Egypt. “We want to have one or two product specialists in each of the areas that we want to push here,” he said, adding that infrastructure, aircraft finance and energy and commodity sectors were a focus.
The amount of business available in the infrastructure space — Qatar alone is forecast to announce projects worth over $200bn between 2013 and 2018 —and the growth plans of airlines such as Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways has drawn the attention of other European banks. Reuters
