SHANGHAI — Bankers and traders are huddled in offices in Shanghai, sleeping on camp beds and subsisting on instant noodles or packaged meals to keep China’s financial center afloat amid a longer-than-expected COVID-19 lockdown.
While the wheels of Shanghai’s financial markets are still mostly turning, there are signs the city’s extended lockdown is causing some disruption, including the suspension of some listing plans and the yuan’s trading volume at more than two-year lows.
Employees settling into offices were given air mattresses, pillows and blankets and relied on limited facilities. “Colleagues have to share a shabby shower room in the building,” says a foreign banker who asked not to be named.
Since March 28, an estimated 20,000 finance professionals and other workers have locked themselves in office towers in Shanghai’s Lujiazui district after the city instituted a virus testing lockdown.
Strict restrictions on the movement of residents in eastern Shanghai, which were only intended to last four days, were later extended to the whole city, and there is no end in sight.
For Shanghai’s state-dominated financial sector, ensuring business continuity during the lockdown is a goal not to be missed.
Bank of Communications Chairman Ren Deqi urged staff to avoid business closures at an internal meeting on Tuesday, likening the political mandate to a “military order.”
Camp beds and tents have been set up in offices and meeting rooms to allow on-duty staff to sleep overnight, according to photos from the lender, China’s fifth-largest.
State-owned broker Haitong Securities Co said its chairman Zhou Jie chose to stay in their offices with 150 key employees to ensure smooth operations. The company urged its employees, who were members of the Communist Party, to “step forward” in the fight against the virus.
FINANCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Shanghai on Friday announced a record 21,000 new cases and a third straight day of COVID-19 testing for its 26 million residents.
The city’s key financial infrastructure operators, including the Forex Center Foreign Exchange Trade System, bank card processor China UnionPay and the Shanghai clearinghouse, have all unveiled emergency measures to keep business running.
Shanghai is also home to numerous brokerage houses and wealth managers, and the city processed about 2,500 trillion yuan ($393 trillion) worth of financial transactions last year.
Hedge fund manager Shen Yi said he and several employees have to stay in the office during the lockdown to ensure smooth trading and regulatory compliance with a focus on risk management.
The citywide lockdown restricted access to his firm’s back-up office, Shanghai Shenyi Investment Co, and he is therefore considering setting up a new office outside of Shanghai, the former Goldman Sachs trader said.
However, bankers and traders said access to food and other essentials such as bottled water has not been a problem as businesses and local governments have prioritized supplies to prevent shortages affecting many other residents.
Shen said a caterer sends out boxed rice lunches every day. “We just eat a little bit simpler,” he said.
It’s a scenario some traders who worked from home — and had to find their own meals — said they were beginning to envy.
“To be honest, these days I’m more worried about groceries and vegetables than about work,” said one such trader, who asked not to be named.
($1 = 6.3637 Chinese Renminbi Yuan)
(Reporting by Winni Zhou and Brenda Goh; Additional reporting by Samuel Shen; Editing by David Holmes)
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