Brief: JPMorgan Chase & Co. sent some of its Manhattan workers home this week after an employee in equities trading tested positive for Covid-19, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. News of the infection, on the fifth floor of the company’s 383 Madison Ave. building, was communicated to employees on Sept. 13, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing information that isn’t public. That was less than a week after more workers began returning to offices after the Labor Day holiday, and just days after the biggest U.S. bank told senior traders they’d be required to return by Sept. 21. The case shows the challenges banks face as they try to bring more staff back to the office after months of remote work. JPMorgan has been among the boldest banks in calling workers back, and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon spoke earlier Tuesday about his concerns that extended work-from-home could have its own consequences.
Brief: Jamie Dimon says it’s time to get people back to work. The JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief executive officer, who’s been going into the bank’s offices since June, said he sees economic and social damage from a longer stretch of working-from-home. Governments should be focused on cautiously reopening cities, learning from earlier mistakes made in hasty attempts. “Going back to work is a good thing,” Dimon said in a virtual panel discussion at the Singapore Summit. It makes sense to “carefully open up and see if we can get the economy growing for the sake of everybody.” Dimon told analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods that the firm has noted productivity slipping from employees working at home, the analysts said in a Sept. 13 note to clients. That, along with worries that remote work is no substitute for in-person interaction, is part of why the biggest U.S. bank is urging more workers to return to offices over the coming weeks.
Brief: Global investors have disproportionately reduced spending on commercial real estate in Asia Pacific compared with other regions amid the pandemic and the outlook remains challenging, according to a report. Total volume of commercial property acquisitions, including office, retail and hotels, was about 65% of the levels recorded in the last two years, the Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements said in its quarterly review. By contrast, volumes in the Americas fell just 25% in the first half of the year, while those in Africa, Europe and the Middle East were little changed due to some large deals. “Cross-border investors may be particularly flighty when they face a large global shock such as the Covid-19 pandemic,” the BIS said. “It is then that their impact as marginal investors makes itself felt.” A surge in cases following the virus outbreak forced countries like China and Singapore to impose stringent border controls and lockdowns in the early days of the pandemic, making it harder for investors to seal real estate deals. Even as they’ve reopened their economies, those countries are still cautious in easing travel restrictions amid a resurgence in global virus cases that threatens to derail containment efforts.
Brief: Activist-focused managers comfortably outperformed other strategy types last month, as the hedge fund industry continues to recover from the Covid-19 turmoil with solid August gains and positive year-to-date returns, new eVestment data shows. Activism-focused hedge funds rose 7.88 per cent in August. Known - and sometimes feared - for their often-combative approaches to investing, which include a range of tactics and methods to effect board level change and improve shareholder value, such funds have now made 3.25 per cent on average this year, eVestment said. That number is still down sharply from their 17.46 per cent gain last year, which itself represented a stellar comeback following a torrid 2018, when activists lost more than 10 per cent for the year. Overall, new eVestment metrics show that most hedge fund types and strategies are now in positive performance territory this year. Hedge funds added some 2.5 per cent on average in August, bringing their year-to-date returns to 2.21 per cent. That suggests the industry is broadly regaining its footing following a challenging few months amid the coronavirus crisis.
Brief: Citigroup Inc. will resume job cuts starting this week, joining rivals such as Wells Fargo & Co. in ending an earlier pledge to pause staff reductions during the coronavirus pandemic. The cuts will affect less than 1% of the bank’s global workforce, the bank said in a statement. With recent hiring, overall headcount probably won’t show any drops, the bank said. “The decision to eliminate even a single colleague role is very difficult, especially during these challenging times,” Citigroup said in the statement. “We will do our best to support each person, including offering the ability to apply for open roles in other parts of the firm and providing severance packages.” The bank said it has hired more than 26,000 people this year, and over one-third of those jobs were in the U.S. The lender had roughly 204,000 employees at the end of the second quarter. Banks have resumed job cuts in recent weeks after pledging, en masse, to pause such actions earlier this year. Many firms are pushing to cut costs as the pandemic has dragged on, threatening lenders with higher credit costs and crimping revenue growth.
Brief: New data from by Buy Shares indicates that 14 selected major global banks cumulatively lost USD635.33 billion in market capitalisation between December 2019 and August 2020, largely the main as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Wells Fargo recorded the biggest slump with a percentage change in the market capitalisation at -56.26 per cent followed by Spain’s Banco Santander at -46.16 per cent. JP Morgan Chase’s change in market capitalisation was -30.16 per cent. During the period, Japan-based Mizuho Financial Group had the least change at -11.33 per cent. Intervention by central banks cushioned most facilities from a further slump. “The drop in valuations for the selected banks could have been much worse if there was no intervention from central banks. The immediate measures taken by regulators to ease restrictions on liquidity and capital, banks have proved beneficial," says Buy Shares. "Although the measures put in place by authorities helped banks, they still face some immediate pressures on their capital and liquidity position, as the length and severity of the outbreak remain uncertain.” An overview of the individual market capitalisation shows that JP Morgan still holds a superior position at USD437.2 billion in December 2019 and USD305.44 billion as of August 2020. In December last year, Wells Fargo market cap stood at USD227.5 billion and in August it stood at USD99.5 billion.