Eastern allure for State Street

A recent article on the website Investment and Pensions Europe (www.ipe.com) doesn't bode particularly well for the thousands of fund administration staff employed by State Street in locations such as Dublin, Edinburgh and Luxembourg.

IPE reported State Street chief executive Ron Logue as saying there was an opportunity to move processing operations to Eastern Europe in order to cut costs.

"We see Eastern Europe as two different types of opportunity," Logue was reported as saying in an interview on Bloomberg TV. "One is in terms of product manufacturing, processing at a lower factor cost than in some areas in Western Europe."

However, Hannah Groves, senior vice president at State Street in Boston told eFinancialCareers.com there are no plans to move jobs to Eastern Europe. "There is the potential to do processing work in Eastern Europe," she says. "But we see it as an opportunity for expansion, rather than moving jobs out of existing locations."

State Street employs around 650 people in Ireland alone, and recently announced plans to expand its Irish workforce by 10%. It is the largest fund administration provider in the country, reportedly accounting for more than 20% of Ireland's $1 trillion fund servicing business.