Deutsche Börse will move to a new office building in neighbouring Eschborn from its current base in Frankfurt-Hausen. The building will be completed by summer 2010 and leased to the exchange as part of restructuring plans to generate annual savings of EUR100 million from 2010 onwards.
Deutsche Börse will begin moving around 1,000 its staff currently based in Frankfurt-Hausen to temporary offices 10 kilometres west in the town of Eschborn from the second quarter of this year. Its registered office will remain in Frankfurt, as will the trading floor of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, located in the Alte Börse in Frankfurt City Centre.
Deutsche Börse anticipates that the relocation, along with the takeover of International Securities Exchange ISE and the effects of the corporate tax reform in Germany, will result in a tax rate of between 25% and 27% in 2010. The company expects to achieve a tax rate of under 30% already for 2008, compared with the previous estimate of 31 to 33%.
"The reduction in the tax rate constitutes a further structural measure aimed at strengthening our international competitiveness. It is part of a strategy to improve our market position, which has already optimised our capital structure and improved our cost efficiency. This optimization goes hand in hand with the obvious advantages a new cutting-edge building can offer staff", said CEO Reto Francioni.
The lease agreement for the current office building in the Hausen district of Frankfurt, which Deutsche Börse has occupied since 2000, will expire in 2010.
The new building will be tailored specifically to the needs of Deutsche Börse. It will conform to the latest building and information technology requirements, says the Börse, and be decidedly more energy-efficient than the old building, leading to a reduction in occupancy costs. The initial plans for the new site are already on the drawing board.
As part of the same efficiency drive, Deutsche Börse announced in November plans to axe 300 jobs, primarily at its Frankfurt headquarters and its Luxembourg operations, under a restructuring and cost cutting programme designed to generate annual savings of EUR100 million from 2010 onwards.
Besides Frankfurt, Deutsche Boerse, which employs some 3,000 people worldwide, has offices in Luxembourg, Chicago, London, New York and Zurich. It has smaller offices in Moscow and Paris and in Asia, with one planned for Beijing.