As New York prepares to reopen offices, the Wall Street will bear new post-pandemic look, but employees are likely to only trickle in and it may be next year before everyone is back at their desks
A masked worker enters Bank of America's offices in Manhattan, April 9, 2020. New York is starting to ease restrictions on businesses, and the world’s biggest financial firms are preparing to bring thousands of employees back to their offices. (John Taggart/The New York Times)
NEW YORK — Grab-and-go packaged meals may replace midday generous buffets and three-figure lunches. Plexiglass could divvy up trading floors the size of football fields. Heat maps, accessible on a mobile app, will help identify the restrooms with the smallest crowds.
But when Wall Street reopens its doors to employees, the talent will only trickle in.
New York is starting to ease restrictions on businesses, and the world’s biggest financial firms are preparing to bring thousands of employees back to their offices starting this month. But even with sophisticated face-mask sensors in the lobby, temperature checks and touch-free elevator rides, it will be well into next year before most workers are back at their desks and the center of global finance begins to feel like its old self again.
“We’ve really underscored to people that returning to the office will be different from what they’ve left,” said Andrew Komaroff, chief operating officer of asset management firm Neuberger Berman, where in the coming weeks, about 150 workers are expected to voluntarily return to the firm’s New York headquarters, which normally has 1,400. “It’s not going back to where we were at the end of February.”
Even as Wall Street has evolved away from frantic traders clutching bits of paper, it has maintained its raucous energy. Hoards of workers stream from packed subway trains and ferry terminals each morning to shout and cajole their way through complex transactions with big money on the line. But the post-virus financial industry is likely to lose some of its thrum, not only because of its trickle of returning employees but because of the added inconveniences they will face.
©2019 New York Times News Service