Radicant, the first Swiss digital bank dedicated to sustainable investment, has chosen Lisbon as the location for its European innovation center.
Radicant’s new hub – to be founded in 2021 – has leased a floor of the building on Avenida Infante Santo, n.2, where Teleperformance has been located, from Arena Construções Imobiliárias, the owner of the property. This is where 45 software developers and cloud engineers from Radicant, which has 57 employees in Switzerland, will work.
The choice of Portugal comes after the digital bank decided to “extend” the “recruitment effort to other European countries” and that the climate, the “diversity of the population” and the “ease of the Portuguese to speak several languages, especially English”, were criteria taken into account, explains Diogo Silva, General Manager of Radicant’s innovation center in Portugal.
The expansion of the bank – part of Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank, one of the 24 cantonal banks – comes four months after the dismissal of its founder and CEO, Anders Bally, following the publication of an internal e-mail in which he criticized the media and local politicians.
Radicant’s move to Portugal was managed by consultancy Savills, which tells ECO that Portugal “has recorded strong technological growth, positioning itself as one of Europe’s leading technology hubs, which makes it very attractive to companies”.
And, according to Sofia Costa, office consultant at Savills, despite the fact that more and more companies are practicing teleworking, offices “continue to be an essential factor in the new paradigm”. However, Sofia Costa stresses, “it is fundamental to pay attention to workspace trends” and “offer more attractive spaces to employees”.
