Poland’s government expects JPMorgan Chase & Co. to open an operational center in Warsaw, swelling the ranks of banks attracted by Poland’s lower costs amid competition by European cities for jobs set to move away from London.

The U.S. bank, which is poised to hire “several thousand people,” according to Polish Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, adds to list of foreign lenders that have been relocating some mid- and back-office positions to the formerly communist European Union member.

“The world’s largest bank will have a headquarters here and will hire several thousand people in management, risk management and logistics, which is good as these are well paid jobs,” Morawiecki told public radio Trojka on Friday. “The deal is done."

UBS Group AG has set up a global hub in Krakow, while Goldman Sachs, which is planning to halve its London staff to 3,000 workers, will expand in Warsaw to “several hundred” people over the next three years, Handelsblatt has reported. Morawiecki said this year that Brexit could bring as many as 30,000 business service-sector jobs to Poland.

Jennifer Zuccarelli, a spokeswoman at JPMorgan in London, declined to comment. A spokeswoman said in January that the bank was "always reviewing our options to improve our real estate strategy for back-office functions" and that the process had "nothing to do with" Brexit.
Outsourcing Centers

Business outsourcing centers opened by foreign corporates have added 198,000 jobs in Poland, including 32,000 in the 12 months to March, with many of them in the financial industry, according to the Association of Business Service Leaders in Poland. That compares with 275,000 people employed in the traditional financial sector as of the first quarter, according to the Central Statistical Office.

New positions in the banking industry in Warsaw offer salaries from $1,400 to $5,050 per month, according to ABSL. That compares with the average annual salary of about $62,000 in financial services in the U.K., according to job recruitment agency Reed.

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Eurofins SSC center is focused primarily on financial-accounting operations. By the end of 2018, they plan to employ 200 employees. For them, this is a stage of intense growth. At the center, 13 people are working on the migration of Polish business processes to the Katowice branch. Company will also focus on other European countries. By the end of this year Eurofins plans to hire about 40 employees who will handle financial operations in new locations..

Uber is expanding its back-office presence in Poland, with a new Business Support Centre in Lublin. Uber will hire 40 specialists to support its business operations in Krakow. General Director of Uber in the CEE region Robbie Khazzam said that Poland is the 3rd largest market for Uber in Europe.

More than impressive. BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager with $5.4 trillion in assets under management. Now this US-based company intends to open an innovation center in Budapest, Hungary, "to deal with product development and the management of client data."

The Hungarian government has also offered BlackRock approximately $1-million in funds for employee training. According to Patrick Olson of BlackRock, the company chose Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, because of "its education system, quality of infrastructure, security, and quality of life."

Budapest is one of the major flagship cities in the region of Central & Eastern Europe, and stories like this are a win-win for everybody -- on both sides of the Atlantic. ​Be sure to see the full article at Hungary Today, here.