'It feels like it is fraying, it's hard, it takes a lot of inner strength and sustainability every single day to continue to focus'
Author of the article:
Bloomberg News
Silla Brush
Publishing date: Jan 26, 2021 •
A man takes part in a video conference as he works from home. Senior bankers are sounding the alarm: working from home is at risk of not working anymore.
PHOTO BY LOIC VENANCE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES FILES
Senior bankers are sounding the alarm: working from home is at risk of not working anymore.
“I don’t think it’s sustainable,” Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley said Tuesday at the World Economic Forum. JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s asset- and wealth-management boss, Mary Erdoes, agreed.
In the corporate world, “if you ask anyone today, it feels like it is fraying, it’s hard, it takes a lot of inner strength and sustainability every single day to continue to focus and to not have the energy you get from being around other people,” she said.
Both executives spoke by videoconference as the pandemic has meant the WEF has gone virtual for the first time, rather than its usual mass gathering of prominent corporate and government figures in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
“I don’t think it’s sustainable,” Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley said Tuesday at the World Economic Forum. JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s asset- and wealth-management boss, Mary Erdoes, agreed.
In the corporate world, “if you ask anyone today, it feels like it is fraying, it’s hard, it takes a lot of inner strength and sustainability every single day to continue to focus and to not have the energy you get from being around other people,” she said.
Both executives spoke by videoconference as the pandemic has meant the WEF has gone virtual for the first time, rather than its usual mass gathering of prominent corporate and government figures in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
Staley said: “It will increasingly be a challenge to maintain the culture and collaboration that these large financial institutions seek to have and should have.”
He predicted that more people would come back to offices to work, but with flexibility to work from home.
Erdoes said executives believed that part of the initial success of working from home was due to adrenalin from having to adapt so quickly.
Erdoes, citing a conversation a JPMorgan strategist had with drugmaker Moderna Inc., said it’s possible that COVID-19 could persist for a long time amid mutating strains — and instead of more videoconferencing, “the world is going to have to open up.”
Staley said small companies and consumers are increasing their deposits and decreasing their borrowing. Amid pent-up demand, economies could come roaring back in the second half of this year — “if we can wrestle the pandemic down.” He compared that possibility to the “roaring Twenties” pulling the world out of a lull after the 1918 influenza epidemic.
Erdoes had another comparison to past decades: the tech-stock froth of 20 years ago, and how it r
“Those are asset bubbles much like the crisis of 2000. They can end badly, but they don’t affect the actual economy, the actual banking system,” unlike more dangerous credit bubbles, she said.
Staley said the “ultimate economic challenge” will be when enough workers return to employment to send inflation and interest rates higher, and “governments getting to borrow for free may not continue forever.”
Erdoes warned that economic, social and governance investing shouldn’t take the lead in deciding which companies get capital. “To ask for asset allocators or banks to ask which ones are the right ones, and which ones are the wrong ones, goes against the way the legal system and the framework for government works.”
Bloomberg.com, with a file from Reuters
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