Banks Ratchet Up Coronavirus Contingency Planning

By Julia-Ambra Verlaine

Banks are ratcheting up contingency plans in case they have to shut down trading floors to prevent the coronavirus from rapidly spreading among employees. UBS is preparing remote systems to book trades over the coming days and senior managing directors have been asked to send home employees who seem sick, despite volatile and active markets.

The Swiss bank has created a dedicated team in charge of the back-up plans, which includes disbanding the global markets trading floor into groups that would work at a location in Stamford, Conn., remotely, or in New York headquarters.

Employees on trading floors at J.P. Morgan and UBS are pre-emptively requesting to work from home as U.S. coronavirus infections rise--leaving managers in a difficult position.

Some traders question the viability of working remotely given regulations prohibit transacting outside supervised offices, where phone lines are recorded. They also doubt whether laptops could handle systems that usually run on eight screens or more.

Write to Julia-Ambra Verlaine at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 03, 2020 11:12 ET (16:12 GMT)

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