After a gruelling eternity of Zoom meetings, Euromoney recently took to the road to re-engage face-to-face with the global banking industry. The experience has been illuminating.
In August, we visited several banks in New York City for the first time since the pandemic. Following understandably exhaustive pre-appointment online questioning of our health, we arrived suitably sanitized in eerily quiet Manhattan office blocks that are usually filled with a cavernous cacophony of chatter. It was a far cry from the traditional battle through a packed bank lobby and fight to get into a crammed elevator to a distant executive floor.
We are often in the city for Awards for Excellence pitch meetings, where some banks try to squeeze as many people into the room as they can, perhaps to indicate the attention and resources that they devote to the particular business line they are pitching for. This time it was slightly disconcerting to frequently find oneself at one end of a very long boardroom table with a single banker, scarcely visible, at the other.
What was undeniable was just how much more rewarding and productive an in-person interview was after the limitations of the remote alternative
It was also unsettling to be led across mostly deserted trading floors with just a few hardy individuals plugged into their stations.
What