Investment Banks Gobbling Up Trading Floor Space

JPMorgan has been on a tear lately, announcing new plans for its global investment banking and European investment banking headquarters -- complete with massive trading floors in each facility.

The firm says it will build its 1.3-million-square-foot international headquarters at Site 5 in New York's World Trade Center complex. The new 40-story building will be home to about 7,000 investment bank employees, and it will, of course, feature six trading floors, each up to 60,000 square feet with "state-of-the-art technology," according to the firm.

In addition, JPMorgan has plans to build the biggest trading floors in London at its new offices there. It intends to develop more than 1 million square feet of space and consolidate its investment banking operations into its new European headquarters. The building will house four trading floors expected to be more than 72,000 square feet each and will accommodate more than 5,000 investment bankers.

Goldman Sachs also is in the process of building a brand-new building in lower Manhattan. The 43-story tower is slated for completion in 2009 and will feature more than 2.1 million square feet of space for 9,000 employees, complete with six trading floors. Those new trading floors will measure up to 72,000 square feet each and have room for more than 900 traders per floor, according to published reports.

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