Deutsche Bank is looking at the potential impact of the UK exiting the European Union on its business, including whether relocating some of its UK operations to Germany would be beneficial.

As the new UK government promises to organise a referendum on the country’s presence in the EU in the next two years, the business world is starting to ponder how damaging a “Brexit” would be. Deutsche Bank has now established a working group, formed of senior executive from its strategy, risk, UK management and research departments, to assess that.

According to a Financial Times article confirmed to GTR by a Deutsche Bank spokesperson, the bank has been approached by clients looking for advice on the topic in the past few months, but the working group is separate, and still in early stages.

No decision has been made yet, but the group will do scenario-based planning on implications on the bank’s presence in the UK, including whether it would be best for certain activities to be repatriated to the eurozone, and specifically to Germany.

GTR understands that the bank’s structured commodity trade finance deals in the Emea region are all administered from Amsterdam, which means a Brexit would not affect that department.

Deutsche Bank has 16 locations in the UK, down from 21 five years ago, with just under 9,000 employees.

The bank declined to comment further.