London Bank Traders Learn More About Their Suburban Virus Exile

(Bloomberg) -- As the coronavirus outbreak grows, London’s banks are rolling out ever more geographically sprawling contingency plans. Citigroup Inc. is pulling the trigger on a staff move south of the River Thames -- and its clients are choosing to trade their institutions’ positions on mobile apps from home.

An incident Thursday highlighted the risks banks face in the weeks to come. HSBC Holdings Plc evacuated part of a floor housing its research department in Canary Wharf after an employee tested positive. The trading floor is staying open for now, but if more people fall ill, staff could be off to a riverside site near London Bridge, adjacent to Shakespeare’s Globe theater.

HSBC is among relatively few banks whose backup site is in London’s core. JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s plan is for traders to work at a data center in Basingstoke, a 45-mile, 45-minute train ride southwest of Waterloo Station. The facility sits next to a traditional British tea shop and an arts-and-crafts studio, watched by a security guard in a JPMorgan-monogrammed blazer.

On Friday, 48 new confirmed cases in the U.K. brought the total to 163.

• Citigroup is sending some of its traders to Lewisham in southeast London, according to a person with knowledge of its plan. The rest will stay at headquarters in Canary Wharf. If one site is hit with a staff outbreak, the plan intends for the other to keep trading, the person said. Local regional and contingency plans are in place, according to a Citigroup spokeswoman who declined to elaborate.
• Barclays Plc is testing its backup trading operations in Northolt, near the west London airport used by private jets and the nation’s military, a person familiar with the plan said. The lender also has a New York-area backup site in Whippany, New Jersey.
• Nomura Holdings Inc. is testing backup operations in Farnborough, the Hampshire town almost 40 miles southwest of London best known for its annual aviation show.
• Mizuho International said it’s testing a plan that would see traders divided between working from home and a facility in Leatherhead, Surrey, in the capital’s southwestern suburbs.

Mobile Trading

Some of Citigroup’s institutional clients are staying home and making currency trades on their phones using an app, according to Alaa Saeed, the global head of foreign-exchange electronic platforms and distribution.

“I expect that trend to increase further in the coming weeks as more clients prepare to work remotely,” said Saeed. Use of the Velocity platform, which replicates what clients have on their desktop, lets users make spot trades in more than 100 currencies. It’s not used for complex derivatives, such as options.

Citigroup saw trades using the app surge almost fourfold in the week ending March 3, compared with six weeks earlier, Saeed said.

--With assistance from Eddie Spence.

To contact the reporters on this story: Stefania Spezzati in London at sspezzati@bloomberg.net;Viren Vaghela in London at vvaghela1@bloomberg.net;Donal Griffin in London at dgriffin10@bloomberg.net;Harry Wilson in London at hwilson57@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ambereen Choudhury at achoudhury@bloomberg.net, Keith Campbell, Marion Dakers

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