Mizuho Financial Group Inc. plans to trim office space in New York and London in anticipation that some staff will keep working from home even when the coronavirus pandemic is over.
Employees in those financial centers won’t all need to come to the office every day in future, according to Hiroshi Nagamine, a senior executive at Japan’s third-largest bank. "We will reduce the space,” he said in an interview, adding that specific plans were yet to be ironed out.
Nagamine said productivity hasn’t suffered while employees have been working remotely — a view not shared by the chiefs of global financial titans from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and BlackRock Inc. to UBS Group AG, who have argued that it can be detrimental over time.