Foreign embassies and multinational companies in Japan were on Tuesday scrambling to make sense of the escalating crisis and how to help staff after the earthquake, tsunami and explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
The Chinese embassy offered to help evacuate its citizens from four of the areas worst hit by the tsunami – Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaragi and Iwate. A posting on its website said it would help Chinese citizens to leave the area “due to the uncertainties and severe situation due to the Fukushima nuclear plant accident”.
The move followed a warning from the French embassy on Monday to its nationals to leave Tokyo, citing concerns about further earthquakes. On Tuesday the US advised its citizens to defer non-essential travel to Japan.
In Tokyo’s main shopping areas, many stores and restaurants remained closed on Tuesday in preparation for the power cuts and because of disruptions to public transport. Meanwhile, multinational companies are taking action to relocate staff and wind back operations in Tokyo.
Rolling power cuts across the capital on Tuesday hastened contingency planning by some companies located outside the central business district, which for now has been spared power cuts.
Pimco, the world’s biggest bond fund, suspended trading operations in Tokyo and is moving them to other locations, including Sydney.
Société Générale, the French bank, started relocating more than 200 staff from Tokyo, while Pictet, the Swiss money manager and one of the biggest pension managers in Japan, also decided to move staff. Other financial groups, including US asset managers BlackRock and Fidelity, have adjusted their trading desks in the US or regional hubs such as Hong Kong or Singapore to enable Japanese staff to relocate and trade out of other offices.
Blackstone, the US private equity firm, is understood to have relocated its Tokyo staff outside the city, while its handful of expatriate staff have relocated to Hong Kong, the US and Singapore. Sixteen other US and European banks issued a statement saying they had not undertaken any closures or staff evacuations.
Foreign and Japanese investment banks were mostly maintaining a “business as usual” stance because it was impossible to tell staff to work from home. However, Tokyo-based investor Mark Pearson summed up the concerns of many business people: “Even if the risk of Tokyo being affected by radioactive contamination is still low, I’d feel safer over 500km away from there than 230km, if we’re talking about nuclear plant explosions.”
Austria said that its embassy would leave Tokyo and move to Osaka because of the “unpredictability” of efforts to stabilise the Fukushima nuclear reactor.
A number of German industrial companies said they were flying out foreign employees and their families. Bosch, which employs 8,000 people at 36 sites in Japan, said it had flown out 200 employees and relatives. The engineering and car parts conglomerate said it had restarted most of its production after suffering only minor damage at its plants.
BMW, the German carmaker, said it had offered to evacuate all its expatriates in Japan. About 50 employees and their families had returned to Germany, leaving only a handful in the country.
Ericsson, the world’s biggest provider of mobile network infrastructure, said it was evacuating non-essential expatriate staff and their families back to their countries. Executives of Maersk Line, the shipping company, which has six offices in Japan, were also relocated to Singapore with their families.
Indian IT outsourcing companies such as Infosys began to evacuate their staff from Japan, one of the key markets for outsourcing. One person familiar to the situation said companies had begun to make plans to return employees to India, separately of any Indian government response to the crisis.
Chart’s Inc, the property and casualty arm of US insurer AIG and one of the biggest foreign employers in Japan, with more than 10,000 staff, began to move some managers and staff to offices in Osaka, Okinawa and elsewhere in Japan. Its core management team stayed in Tokyo, the company said.
Big Japanese manufacturers told the Financial Times that they had taken no specific staff measures beyond those on Friday. That included the suspending of some production by manufacturers such as Sony, Canon, Toyota and Honda. But some electronics companies are moving staff from the Kanto region near Tokyo to facilities elsewhere in Japan.
Source: www.ft.com
The Chinese embassy offered to help evacuate its citizens from four of the areas worst hit by the tsunami – Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaragi and Iwate. A posting on its website said it would help Chinese citizens to leave the area “due to the uncertainties and severe situation due to the Fukushima nuclear plant accident”.
The move followed a warning from the French embassy on Monday to its nationals to leave Tokyo, citing concerns about further earthquakes. On Tuesday the US advised its citizens to defer non-essential travel to Japan.
In Tokyo’s main shopping areas, many stores and restaurants remained closed on Tuesday in preparation for the power cuts and because of disruptions to public transport. Meanwhile, multinational companies are taking action to relocate staff and wind back operations in Tokyo.
Rolling power cuts across the capital on Tuesday hastened contingency planning by some companies located outside the central business district, which for now has been spared power cuts.
Pimco, the world’s biggest bond fund, suspended trading operations in Tokyo and is moving them to other locations, including Sydney.
Société Générale, the French bank, started relocating more than 200 staff from Tokyo, while Pictet, the Swiss money manager and one of the biggest pension managers in Japan, also decided to move staff. Other financial groups, including US asset managers BlackRock and Fidelity, have adjusted their trading desks in the US or regional hubs such as Hong Kong or Singapore to enable Japanese staff to relocate and trade out of other offices.
Blackstone, the US private equity firm, is understood to have relocated its Tokyo staff outside the city, while its handful of expatriate staff have relocated to Hong Kong, the US and Singapore. Sixteen other US and European banks issued a statement saying they had not undertaken any closures or staff evacuations.
Foreign and Japanese investment banks were mostly maintaining a “business as usual” stance because it was impossible to tell staff to work from home. However, Tokyo-based investor Mark Pearson summed up the concerns of many business people: “Even if the risk of Tokyo being affected by radioactive contamination is still low, I’d feel safer over 500km away from there than 230km, if we’re talking about nuclear plant explosions.”
Austria said that its embassy would leave Tokyo and move to Osaka because of the “unpredictability” of efforts to stabilise the Fukushima nuclear reactor.
A number of German industrial companies said they were flying out foreign employees and their families. Bosch, which employs 8,000 people at 36 sites in Japan, said it had flown out 200 employees and relatives. The engineering and car parts conglomerate said it had restarted most of its production after suffering only minor damage at its plants.
BMW, the German carmaker, said it had offered to evacuate all its expatriates in Japan. About 50 employees and their families had returned to Germany, leaving only a handful in the country.
Ericsson, the world’s biggest provider of mobile network infrastructure, said it was evacuating non-essential expatriate staff and their families back to their countries. Executives of Maersk Line, the shipping company, which has six offices in Japan, were also relocated to Singapore with their families.
Indian IT outsourcing companies such as Infosys began to evacuate their staff from Japan, one of the key markets for outsourcing. One person familiar to the situation said companies had begun to make plans to return employees to India, separately of any Indian government response to the crisis.
Chart’s Inc, the property and casualty arm of US insurer AIG and one of the biggest foreign employers in Japan, with more than 10,000 staff, began to move some managers and staff to offices in Osaka, Okinawa and elsewhere in Japan. Its core management team stayed in Tokyo, the company said.
Big Japanese manufacturers told the Financial Times that they had taken no specific staff measures beyond those on Friday. That included the suspending of some production by manufacturers such as Sony, Canon, Toyota and Honda. But some electronics companies are moving staff from the Kanto region near Tokyo to facilities elsewhere in Japan.
Source: www.ft.com
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