Barclays Trading Head Cites Dancing, ‘Casablanca’ in Crisis View

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A sign hangs above an entrance to a branch of Barclays Plc bank in the City of London, U.K., on Tuesday, June 23, 2020. Many of the financial district’s most venerable names were built off colonial oppression.Photographer: Olivia Harris/Bloomberg
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Barclays Plc’s new trading chief sees a major difference between banks’ response to this year’s turmoil and the last global crisis: There was no doubt when the party ended.

“The music stopped -- and the dancing stopped,” C.S. Venkatakrishnan said Thursday at a virtual conference hosted by the Institute of International Finance. “The institutions who might have taken six to eight to 12 months to recognize that they were in a crisis recognized that instantly.”