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Citi Starts Bringing London Staff Back to Canary Wharf

Citigroup to Start Bringing London Traders Back in Coming Weeks

(Bloomberg) --

Citigroup Inc. will gradually start bringing a portion of its staff back to its London offices over the coming weeks as British leaders ease social-distancing restrictions.

The Wall Street firm plans to bring back less than 10% of its 5,000 London staff, beginning next week, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named discussing private information. Citigroup’s traders and other employees in its markets and securities services unit will be among those in the first wave. While some investment-bank staff have been told to expect to continue working from home, others from the division will also be among the earliest to return.

“Over the long term, we shall return to working from central locations, and we are cautiously and carefully taking steps in that direction,” David Livingstone, chief executive officer of the firm’s franchise in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told employees in a town hall Thursday. “We are confident we have the necessary precautions and protocols in place to support the phased re-population of our London office.”

Citigroup and its rivals JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are crafting their plans to safely return employees to empty office towers after sending them home in March, when the deadly coronavirus pandemic spread across western nations. Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Mike Corbat has said the bank will be mindful of local conditions, with no blanket approach applied to offices around the world.

“As we start to think about returning people to the office, it’s going to be driven by data,” Corbat said in a Bloomberg “Front Row” interview. “It’s going to be slow. It’s likely to be granular. It’s going to be site by site. And within those sites, it’s going to be job by job.”

After more than two months of lockdown, the U.K. government is now seeking to ease restrictions in the days and weeks ahead to restart the economy. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson laid out a tentative plan that could allow the “phased reopening” of shops beginning in June and parts of the hospitality industry in July.

As social-distancing measures look set to persist, banks face logistical difficulties, such as how to let staff enter buildings at peak hours and whether to rethink seating arrangements that normally pack desks closely together. Some firms’ in-house canteens will stay closed to limit the risk of contagion.

Some traders have kept going to the office throughout the pandemic, usually using private transportation, but the banks are screening staff for high temperatures before they are allowed entry.

Citigroup’s headquarters for Europe, the Middle East and Africa are located in Canary Wharf, London’s eastern financial district. The area, which has hundreds of stores, bars and restaurants, is normally teeming with 125,000 workers.

The U.S. bank told workers earlier this month it would allow an additional 600 people to resume working from its offices in Hong Kong after the city relaxed social-distancing measures. The firm urged employees there to keep a two-meter distance from one another “as much as possible,” and urged them to stagger their commutes and lunch breaks to avoid crowding.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.