The_Times__6_March_2020

the times | Friday March 6 2020 2GM 43

Business

A growing number of financial services
companies are taking action to protect
staff from the danger of contact with
coronavirus as the disease continues to
spread.
S&P Global yesterday confirmed has
sent all its 1,200 staff home after being
visited by someone with the disease.
The company, which provides credit
ratings, benchmark prices and analyt-
ics, said it had taken the move as a pre-
caution and employees at its Canary
Wharf office should work from home
until further notice.
HSBC has also sent more than 100
London staff home after a worker test-
ed positive for the coronavirus, the first
known case at a big company in
Europe’s main financial hub. The bank
also has an employee in China with the
virus who is in a stable condition, ac-
cording to an internal memo from Noel
Quinn, the bank’s interim boss.
Finance companies are readying out-
of-town offices and isolating some

Households and small businesses are to
be offered debt relief by Britain’s banks,
building societies and credit card
providers if their money dries up during
the Covid-19 outbreak.
UK Finance, which represents all the
big lenders, said that its members would
offer support for affected small compa-
nies and individuals in the form of over-
draft extensions and repayment relief.
The commitment follows indications
that the Bank of England and the Trea-
sury were designing some kind of
bridging finance for small businesses
hit by supply chain disruption.
Andrew Bailey, the incoming gover-

Lenders will offer relief in case cashflow dries up

nor of the Bank, told MPs yesterday

that small companies would need help

to ensure that they did not go bust by

running out of cash as a result of prob-

lems caused by the outbreak. “The

Bank is already working on what these

tools could look like; the right way to

incentivise lending to support supply

chain finance,” he said.

Mr Bailey and Mark Carney, the

outgoing governor, have both said that

a rate cut could come before the Bank’s

scheduled meeting on March 26. The

Bank was “still looking at the evidence

and what the shock is likely to be”, Mr

Bailey said. “Monetary policy can

always move in a timely fashion.”

UK Finance said its members would

help by delaying loan repayments, ex-

tending loan terms and providing

larger overdraft facilities on current

terms to affected customers. Similar

“forbearance” measures were used in

the 2009 recession.

If households suffered a drop in

income or faced unexpected expenses

or bills, lenders were “ready and able to

offer support to their customers who

are impacted directly or indirectly by

Covid-19”, Stephen Jones, chief execu-

tive of UK Finance, said. “That could

include increasing an overdraft or

allowing repayment relief for loan or

mortgage repayments.”

UK Finance urged households and

companies to contact their finance pro-

vider as early as possible. Its announce-

ment came as it revealed that gross

mortgage lending fell for the first time

since 2010 last year and affordability

slowed activity.

Eric Leenders, managing director of

personal finance at UK Finance, added

that “the remortgage market remains

competitive, although the shrinking

number of customers coming to the

end of their fixed-rate deals will start to

impact volumes”.

He said that non-mortgage house-

hold borrowing remained “muted, with

some people instead opting to increase

their mortgage borrowing as a

more cost-effective way of managing

their finances”.

Philip Aldrick Economics Editor

Time to fear as

007 delay hits

cinema chains

Dominic Walsh

The delay to the release of the new

James Bond film No Time to Die due to

coronavirus has not only left 007 fans

feeling shaken and stirred.

Shares of Britain’s two publicly quot-

ed cinema operators both fell by more

than 10 per cent as investors fretted

over the impact on box-office takings.

The film’s eagerly anticipated open-

ing next month has been pushed back

to November on both sides of the At-

lantic, sending shares of Cineworld

tumbling by 24 per cent at one point

before they rallied to close down 18p, or

13 per cent, to 121½p.

Everyman Media Group, owner of

the Everyman chain, lost 31p, or 14.4 per

cent, to 184p. The Restaurant Group,

which operates Frankie & Benny’s and

Chiquito restaurants on multiplex cine-

ma parks, was also caught up in the sell-

off, losing 10p, or 10.8 per cent, to 83p.

In a statement late on Wednesday,

the film studios MGM and Universal,

and the Bond series producers Michael

G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, said

that “after careful consideration and

thorough evaluation of the global thea-

trical marketplace, the release of No

Time to Die will be postponed until

November 2020”.

Ivor Jones, a leisure analyst at Peel

Hunt, said he expected further release

schedule changes. “Films are expensive

to produce and promote and, with many

Asian cinemas closed and the prospect

of, at best, reduced audiences else-

where, other producers of major films

may choose to delay release,” he said.

Cineworld was founded in 1995 and

was listed on the London Stock Ex-

change in 2007. It operates 786 cinemas

with 9,988 screens in the UK, Ireland,

central and eastern Europe, Israel

and America.

JCB resumes

full week at

UK factories

Callum Jones

JCB has reinstated a full production

schedule at its British factories but

warned of new threats to its supply

chain.

The company, which is one of Brit-

ain’s biggest manufacturers, said yester-

day that workers at its domestic plants

had returned to a full 39-hour week.

It cut staff hours last month in what it

called a “very unfortunate” decision

that affected 4,000 staff at 11 sites.

Graeme Macdonald, chief executive

of JCB, said: “This is not a moment for

celebration, but it is a step in the right

direction. There has been some im-

provement in the shipment of compo-

nents from China but new threats are

emerging from our supply chain in

other parts of the world, notably Italy

and South Korea.”

The Staffordshire-based maker of

excavators, earthmovers and farming

equipment is owned by the Bamfords,

one of Britain’s richest families. It has

more than 10,000 staff and 11 of its 22

factories are in the UK.

JCB will monitor developments

“very closely on a daily basis”, Mr Mac-

donald said, “and take any necessary

measures to protect the business”.

China appears to be advancing from

more than a month of industrial para-

lysis, with the International Monetary

Fund estimating this week that factories

were functioning at 60 per cent capacity.

SIMON DAWSON/REUTERS

The streets of London could become less busy as firms take precautions similar to HSBC, below, which sent home more than 100 staff after one tested positive for Covid-19

City firms send staff home in bid

to keep outbreak from spreading

teams to ensure they can keep trading if

the virus spreads in more financial cen-

tres. Italy’s Unicredit also told some

staff to go home after two new infec-

tions were reported among its employ-

ees, one in Germany and one in Italy.

JPMorgan said yesterday that it was

moving traders in New York and

London to a number of locations. The

US bank runs a disaster recovery site in

Basingstoke, southwest of London, and

has an alternative building in central

London near Blackfriars bridge.

Goldman Sachs has been testing a

back-up site in Croydon, south London,

while Barclays has an office in Nor-

tholt, in northwest London, that it is

planning to use as a back-up.

The virus’s possible impact on the

finance industry is worrying regulators,

who fear the absence of important staff

could lead to liquidity problems in

markets if firms cannot operate their

trading operations normally.

The rising number of cases continues

to hit companies across all sectors. The

German fashion retailer Hugo Boss

and the London-listed insurance-to-

cruises business Saga were among the

latest to be affected.

Hugo Boss warned that the crisis

would knock its first-quarter

sales, especially in Asia.

China has been the epi-

centre of the outbreak

and the Asia-Pacific

region accounted

for 15 per cent of

sales last year. The

brand has been hit

by a combination

of stores being

closed or restrict-

ing opening hours

and a fall in shoppers.

Hugo Boss said it was

also “currently recording

a noticeable decline in sales

in other key markets”.

Starbucks said last night sales in

China would fall by about 50 per cent in

the second quarter and quarterly reve-

nue would be up to $430 million lower.

Foxconn, the Taiwanese suppler to

Apple that assembles iPhones, yester-

day posted an 18.1 per cent year-on-year

slump in revenues in February, its third

consecutive monthly fall and heaviest

for seven years. The company

expects to return to nor-

mal production in

China by the end of

the month.

Saga, which fo-

cuses on the over-

50s market,

warned that the

virus had knocked

its travel division

last month. Its

tours business has

experienced a rise in

cancellations and for-

ward bookings for 2020-

21 were down about 20 per

cent compared with last year.

Saga’s cruises business has also suffered

an increase in cancellations.

However, the company said that it

expected its insurance division to be

“largely unaffected” by the outbreak.

Ben Martin Senior City Correspondent

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