Across Wall Street, bankers are grappling with a challenge that has little precedent as coronavirus spreads: fast-changing policies impacting how they can do their work.
Dealmakers used to spending their time globe-trotting to rack up meeting counts and seeing clients face-to-face are grounded from travel. Bankers are splitting into teams and working from home. And it's a huge change for the junior ranks, for whom 80-hour weeks in the office, Seamless dinners at their desks, and jostling for face time with senior bankers have long been a rite of passage.
Amid all that, the bankers need to stay on their A-game. Companies like airlines are rushing to draw down on revolving credit as their revenue evaporates, M&A and IPO work is drying up, and the Federal Reserve is taking drastic steps to shore up liquidity.
Illustrating just how quickly policies are changing, Goldman Sachs had announced rotating teams for bankers to come into the office that would go into effect this week. But effective Wednesday morning the bank was encouraging most people in its EMEA and Americas regions to say at home entirely until further notice.
We talked to insiders to get a first-hand look at how the sudden moves are impacting their day-to-day work. Many noted that they're working from home alongside spouses and children. And with more cities taking strict measures on restaurants, gyms, and even leaving the house, there's little choice but to hunker down.
'Trying to put out fires'
Morgan Stanley has allowed associates, analysts, and vice presidents in its Americas investment banking division to expense up to $500 to put together their own setups, an employee said.
A senior investment banker at a global bank, who was working from home on Monday, said he was still talking with clients, but he wasn't taking any in-person meetings.
"People are working and engaged, but right now it's just trying to put out fires," he said.
The primary concern for many companies at the moment is securing credit facilities and drawing down revolving lines of credit, making sure "they have sufficient liquidity to tide them over."
"You've got companies that have their EBITDA dropping not 30% to 40% overnight, but 80% to 90% overnight. What do you do then?" he said. "This is the blackest of black swans."
Meanwhile, clients and other professionals involved in dealmaking are also going remote.
"Most of our clients are remote and aren't wanting us in person right now. That's putting a little less pressure on being in the office," said an M&A partner at a top firm, who was working from home Monday.
For the most part, he said, voluntary deals are on ice for the time being.
"With the market having 10-point swings on any given day, it's very hard to execute. But people are still working and looking at opportunities," he said.
Typing while coloring
One senior investment banker based in London described the uncertainty and complications of having college-aged children living in the US amid travel restrictions imposed to curb the pandemic's spread. Universities are canceling classes or moving to virtual learning, but some students are stranded without flights back to their home countries.
"I don't know how to get my kids back," the banker said.
Younger children don't make working from home any easier, said the co-founder of a New York-based boutique investment bank.
"It's been fun typing with one hand to a client and helping my youngest son coloring with the other, then going on mute to tell my oldest to clean up his spilt milk," he said.
Multiple bankers noted that their children – from toddlers to teenagers – have already made appearances in the backgrounds of video calls.
One banker who works at a London-based boutique said meetings started thinning out last week. Some colleagues even went in on Monday, though by Tuesday, working from home was largely mandatory.
At home, the London banker says he has not had the same challenge that colleagues or those in the US have had since his two boys are at boarding school. He lives an hour outside the city and has a work-from-home setup with a desktop computer. Many colleagues have laptops. On Tuesday, he worked for four or five hours, and then took a walk with his wife, before coming back for lunch and some more work.
One change he's made is that he's instituted twice-weekly check in calls with his team, to ensure they keep a level of discipline that might be easy to lose if people are working from home and not speaking to team members.
"If this lasts two months, it will be unprecedented," he said.
