Deutsche Bank worries about a possible brain drain if it loses its Russian programmers in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In order to avoid this, the bank offers the approximately 1,500 IT professionals to move to Berlin. Hundreds accept the offer.
Deutsche Bank brings hundreds of programmers from its technology center in Russia to Berlin. Germany’s largest financial institution has offered all of the approximately 1,500 employees at its Russian IT center, which is spread across the St. Petersburg and Moscow locations, a job in Germany, the “Handelsblatt” reported, citing insiders. A mid three-digit number of employees have already moved to the bank’s new technology center in Berlin. Deutsche Bank declined to comment on the report when asked.
At the beginning of March, Deutsche Bank announced that it considered the operational risks from a possible closure of the technology center in Russia to be “very limited”: “It is only one of the bank’s several technology centers worldwide; a failure therefore does not pose a significant risk for the company global business operations.” Deutsche Bank operates further IT centers in Bucharest, in the USA and in India.
In the interim report for the first quarter, the DAX group struck a more cautious tone with regard to its technology center in Russia: “We are exposed to the risk that our ability to use these technology resources will be impaired or lost, e.g. due to Western sanctions, state-initiated measures in Russia or management measures.” With the relocation of staff that has now been initiated, Deutsche Bank is limiting its risk of losing specialist knowledge if tensions between the EU and Russia over the Russian attack on Ukraine make it impossible to continue operating the technology center in Russia, writes the “Handelsblatt”.
