Cardiff is well placed to create more jobs in financial services, the UK head of finance giant Deloitte has said. The group’s finance and administration centre of excellence officially opened in the city’s enterprise zone on Wednesday.

David Sproul said the lower cost of office space gave Cardiff an edge over Birmingham and Manchester. Half of the promised 700 staff are already in place; the remaining jobs will be created over five years.

It comes as ministers said they had supported 10,000 new finance and professional jobs in Wales since 2011. As for the future, Mr Sproul added:

“There’s no reason that we couldn’t be twice as big here as we look forward and have 1,500 people here instead of 700.”

The company – which has a technology centre of excellence in Belfast – had looked at a number of cities before opting for Cardiff as an “attractive” location.

He said:

“We knew we could get a broad range of graduates, it was a great location in terms of office facilities and also in terms of commuter distance back into London – for those who need to see clients there it’s only two hours on the train.”

SOURCE: bbc.co.uk