Piper Sandler Companies has received French regulatory approval to trade equities and has opened a Paris office, the Minneapolis-based investment bank said today (Thursday). The permission passports across the European Union, so one authorization reaches clients in every member state.The entity behind it, Piper Sandler Europe SAS, was entered in the Paris trade and companies register on 19 August 2024, according to the French corporate registry. Its registered address is 10 Place Vendôme.For a firm weighing an EU arm, the number worth noting is not the office but the wait. Incorporating the French company took days. The approval to trade under it arrived just over two years later, from a supervisor widely counted among the most protective regulators in Europe to satisfy.The Paris Desk Was Staffed Before It Could TradeRegistration and authorization are separate steps in France, and the register records only the first. Piper Sandler did not say when it filed with the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR), so the time between submission and clearance is not established by the announcement.What is on the record is the desk. Ben Allen, head of sales and trading for Piper Sandler Europe, will lead the Paris office. He left Credit Suisse after 15 years in equity sales and was already running the European desk from Paris in March 2025, eFinancialCareers reported at the time.Deb Schoneman, president at Piper Sandler, said "demand for our industry-leading U.S. equity research and execution capabilities continues to grow internationally."[#highlighted-links#]Two hires came with today's announcement. Louis Renaudie joins as senior equity sales from BNP Paribas, where the company said he worked on US and international equities distribution in Paris.Louis Carpentier joins as a senior equity sales-trader. He was previously in global equity trading at Edmond de Rothschild, and before that at Société Générale Private Banking France."This approval is a critical step in our broader European expansion," Allen said.Where US Firms Are Putting Their EU EntitiesTradeStation set up its own Dutch company under the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), opening US equities, options and futures to clients in 30 EEA countries from Amsterdam in June.Alpaca bought its way in, rebranding the UK firm WealthKernel as Alpaca Europe in 2025 and then passporting investment services into 29 EEA countries from a single Spain-authorized entity in July. Piper Sandler built a French company from scratch and waited for the ACPR.The company said its research platform ranks among the top 10 investment banks worldwide for the size of its US equities coverage universe, citing Thomson Reuters' Starmine.It also said the buyside voted it the top small and mid-cap liquidity provider in the 2025 Extel US Equity Trading Study. Both are survey placements supplied by Piper Sandler.This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.