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High-ranking figures in the City of London have urged the government to proceed cautiously to ease the coronavirus blockade, saying there should be a gradual reopening of the economy.
Executives highlighted difficult decisions ahead for Boris Johnson, with some pointing to the difficult balancing act for the prime minister as he tries to continue to curb the Covid-19 outbreak as the economy kicks off.
Johnson plans to present this week an exit strategy from the blockade imposed on March 23, and is expected to describe a gradual lifting of the restrictions that have caused most people to stay home and many industries to cease or reduce. their operations.
The consensus among the FT City Network, a forum of more than 50 high-level figures, is that the government must prioritize the nation’s health needs as it facilitates closure.
Several stressed the importance of having an effective virus testing regimen through a vaccine that may not be available until next year.
Ann Cairns, executive vice president at Mastercard, said “the economy needs to reopen in a way that is sensitive to the continued goal of controlling the virus.”
“No one should compel people to return to work, but we should have a timeline and framework that looks at the gradual reopening based on real data and ideas.”
Mike Rake, former BT president, said that “lifting the blockade should be gradual by sector,” taking into account the risk posed by the virus.
But he added that at some point there will be more damage to health “caused by the blockage than the virus itself… All at an enormous and increasing economic cost.”
© Andrew Milligan / AFP
Sir Mike said the minimum condition for ending the blockade would be when the National Health Service was properly equipped, with important future milestones around virus testing and vaccines, among other things.
Catherine McGuinness, chief policy officer for the City of London Corporation, said the virus may cause a rethink of the way “rush hour” works given the need for “methods to allow for social distancing.”
“Do we need to encourage staggered shifts?” she asked. “It is likely that any reduction in the blockade will take place gradually and gradually.
“The confidence and ability of the modes of transportation will be a key consideration for returning to the workplace.”
Win Bischoff, president of JPMorgan Securities, said the end of the blockade “cannot overwhelm the NHS, it must not allow a complete return to normality or business as usual without adequate and reliable evidence for those returning to work and those associates with them”. “
But “as in war, difficult moral judgments are occasionally necessary,” added Sir Win.
© Jon Super / AP
The government will have to make a “terrible moral decision that, in practice, for the vast majority of the country to restore the necessary labor economy with viable jobs and economic structures, there will continue to be fatalities despite the strictest safeguards,” he said.
Anne Richards, executive director of Fidelity International, said the easing of the confinement would need “a balancing act of security and pragmatism, leading to harsh judgments that nobody wants to make.”
The economic damage from the blockade was “enormous,” he added.
David Roberts, president of Nationwide, said he was “very cautious about moving too fast” toward a general reopening of the economy until virus containment strategies, including testing, were in place.
He added that there needed to be a strategy to allow critical parts of the economy to restart in stages, based on a vaccine that was delayed “by at least a year and probably longer.”
Miles Celic, CEO of TheCityUK, the trade body for the financial and professional services industries, said that without a vaccine, the UK would need a flexible system to return to work.
“The government and employers must adequately prepare people for the possibility of spending months under some form of flowing and falling blockade,” he added.
Robert Swannell, former president of Marks and Spencer, said companies must look beyond the crisis, pointing to virus-induced acceleration of trends like online shopping and remote work.
“After finding a path to survival, we must reimagine what our companies and the world will look like after Covid and then move forward at high speed.”
