Shanghai lockdown: traders from Standard Chartered to Citigroup keep markets ticking while stuck at home
- Brokers at large investment banks are executing trades remotely from home, with IT staff manning systems in the offices to keep the operations going smoothly
- Stock, forex and bond trading volumes in Shanghai have fluctuated since the rolling lockdown was put in place
Banks in Shanghai have undertaken the unusual step of allowing traders of their treasury operations in a range of asset classes from fixed-income financial products to foreign exchange to trade from home, taking an unprecedented measure to keep China’s financial centre ticking while observing a stringent citywide lockdown amid a Covid-19 outbreak.
“Our business is operating as usual as we continue to support our clients through this pandemic,” Ji Yang, executive vice-president and head of global markets for China at Citigroup, said in an email.
“We have ensured that colleagues who work from home are well equipped to do so. Some colleagues have volunteered to stay behind in the office so that we can maintain the efficiency our clients are accustomed to.”
The city of 25 million people remains locked down after more than a week of what began as a rolling shutdown that was supposed to end on April 5. Shanghai, the new epicentre of China’s latest coronavirus outbreak, saw cases rise for the seventh straight day to a record 21,222 cases on Thursday, taking the overall figure to 131,000 since the current outbreak started on March 1.
01:38
Original Wuhan ‘ground zero’ hospital workers aid Shanghai in battle against Covid-19
“We only require a handful of IT people to stay in the office to solve any IT problems,” said a Standard Chartered official, who did not want to be named. “Most other staff, including traders, are working from home to keep trading going as usual by remote.”