Portugal’s combination of high-quality expertise in technology and finance was the key driver behind Arcesium’s decision to locate its first continental European office in Lisbon, the data management provider has revealed.
The Atlantic coastal city of 3 million people came out as the top pick from a list of 50 European cities considered by the New York-headquartered company, managing director David Nable told Data Management Insight.“What we were particularly attracted to in Portugal, besides, of course, the climate, was the talent pool across both the financial and technology domains,” Nable said. “The talent pool is great, the business climate is attractive, the time zone support is there – it is really a good match for our business and for our clients’ business.”
New Hires
The office, located on the city’s prestigious Avenida da Liberdade, will eventually house around 50 staff, focused on building data solutions for the company’s financial clients. Arcesium hopes to have half that number in place by the end of this year and be fully staffed by 2025.
The Portuguese office will be managed by Arcesium managing director Ranvijay Lamba and will serve customers within the European Union. Among the services the company will deliver from Portugal is its newly launched Aquata platform, which has been designed to help financial institutions integrate data and data tools into the core of their business operations. Locating within the 27-nation bloc eliminates the additional legal and regulatory requirements of doing so from the company’s established office in London.
Arcesium was formed in 2015 and initially served a handful of clients that were located within its Midtown, Manhattan, neighbourhood. It now has around 2,000 software engineering staff around the world serving customers that oversee more than US$4.3 trillion of assets.
Economic Opportunity
The company enters Portugal as the southern European nation rides a robust economic wave. GDP rose 2.3 per cent in 2023, compared with a 0.6 per cent average across the 20 euro-currency nations. Inflation is forecast by the Bank of Portugal to drop to 2.9 per cent this year and unemployment is near a record low at 6.5 per cent. The firm is in good company too; its American compatriots are the largest group of foreign direct investors in the country, committing €2.3 billion in 2023, according to US State Department data.
Nable said Arcesium had weighed the relevant benefits of cities across continental Europe on multiple factors including real estate values. It was Lisbon’s broad-based skill sets that won over the American company after it had spoken to recruiters and talent consultants.
“Oftentimes you’ll find a centre that’s really good for technological talent, but they don’t really have the financial domain – they don’t know the specifics of supporting or working with asset management banks,” he said. “Alternatively, you find the opposite, where you’ll have deep accounting and operational talent pools, but not the technology talent pool.
“Portugal, and Lisbon in particular, was a pretty clear winner for our ambitions.”
Expansion Plans
Staff have already been hired from within the local labour market, filling urgently needed customer-facing, engineering and customer engineering roles.
“The intention was to hire locally – we have a long queue of people who would love to relocate,” Nable said. “But the foundational business concept is to hire local talent. That’s why we chose to open in Portugal.”
The Portuguese move is part of a longer-term expansion programme at Arcesium. Recently, the company moved its New York headquarters and its London office into larger, more modern premises. A widening of its footprint in India – Arcesium’s technology and operations hub is located in Hyderabad – is in the pipeline as are plans to open more offices in North America and also in South America.
“Opening new offices really relates to the nature of where we’re growing, how we’re growing, where we want to source talent and how we want to support our clients,” Nable said.
- Arcesium head of institutional asset management Mahesh Narayan will be among speakers at A-Team Group’s Data Management Summit New York on September 26. Book your place at the event here.
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