(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

 

NEW YORK - Traders on Wall Street make a living by taking risks. But measures to control the ongoing pandemic are taking some decisions out of their hands – like whether to risk catching Covid-19 by returning to their desks. Offices are much fuller in China and even Tokyo than in New York. What sounds like “safety first” for some spells frustration for others.

Take Goldman Sachs, the $70 billion bank led by David Solomon. Only around a fifth of its staff are back in the office in the Big Apple, according to people familiar with the firm. In China, basically everyone is back in their cubicle. In Japan, it’s around 70% and in Hong Kong 50%. Even in London, where new restrictions could follow the imposition of a tiered system of localized rules, nearly a third of employees are no longer working from home.

The pattern at Goldman is echoed at other banks, and is driven by the varying states of the pandemic in different places. Bankers at international firms in India, where Covid-19 is raging, are essentially all still working from home, except for skeleton staff at branches. Traffic data from satellite-navigation outfit TomTom provides a broader view. Beijing congestion recently topped comparable 2019 levels for the first time since the pandemic hit. London congestion is building back up, while New York is still much less busy than it was.

Finance types mostly expect to work somewhat more at home and less in the office in the future, according to this year’s Global Financial Centres Index report based on a survey by Z/Yen Group and the China Development Institute. But no more so in North America than, say, Asia – the outlier is Western Europe, where respondents thought they’d be at home nearly 60% of the time.

It may be that New York’s financiers are itching to get back to their Manhattan desks. Aside from a daily change of scene, the benefits of in-person work include networking and reinforcing corporate cultures. But for those who see evaluating risk as their expertise, the return to near-normal probably can’t come fast enough.

 

CONTEXT NEWS

- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed a three-tiered system of further restrictions on parts of England on Oct. 12, including shutting pubs, to curb an acceleration in Covid-19 cases. The new regime attempts to standardize a patchwork of often complicated and confusing restrictions imposed across the country.

 

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

(Editing by John Foley and Amanda Gomez) ((richard.beales@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: richard.beales.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))