Barclays Confirms Virus Case at Canary Wharf Building
Barclays Confirms Virus Case at Canary Wharf Building
(Bloomberg) -- Barclays Plc said that an employee at one of its London office buildings tested positive for coronavirus, adding to a growing list of financial firms sending staff home as the outbreak spreads.
The employee is based at 5 North Colonnade in Canary Wharf, which houses Barclays’ corporate and investment bank and is near the firm’s Churchill Place headquarters. The staffer has been in self-imposed quarantine since March 9, Barclays said Wednesday, and the bank is deep-cleaning the area where the employee was based.
The bank said colleagues and clients who had close contact with the employee are being advised to self-quarantine. “We are operating business as usual; we continue to monitor the situation closely and will take further action as appropriate,” Barclays said.
In New York, an employee in the bank’s trading operations has been self-quarantined since March 3 after testing positive for coronavirus.
Firms across London are geographically dispersing teams, with some staff heading to backup sites while others work 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. Across London, banks are moving traders to the city’s outskirts; JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s backup site is in Basingstoke, 45 miles ot to the southwest.
(A previous version of this story was corrected to more accurately specify the building where employee was diagnosed.)
To contact the reporters on this story: Stefania Spezzati in London at sspezzati@bloomberg.net;Viren Vaghela in London at vvaghela1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ambereen Choudhury at achoudhury@bloomberg.net, Keith Campbell
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