C Citigroup Inc

By Julie Steinberg 

This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (April 8, 2020).

Alison Harding-Jones has established a rule for her three children to live by as she works from a home office during a national lockdown: "If you're making a cup of tea, you make Mommy one and bring it in."

Ms. Harding-Jones, Citigroup Inc.'s head of mergers and acquisitions for Europe, Middle East and Africa, has been holed up for 2 1/2 weeks in Aldworth, England, because of the pandemic. The village is about a 90-minute drive and train journey from Citi's London offices and the flat she uses during the workweek.

She has traded in-person meetings with clients and colleagues for more time with family and 12-hour days in a home office previously used by her husband, who accompanies Ms. Harding-Jones as they socially distance. Also present are the children, four dogs and six chickens, whose eggs are shared with other villagers.

"It sounds like something out of Dickens," she said in an interview.

For 25 years Ms. Harding-Jones, who is originally from Pembrokeshire, Wales, has typically spent three days of every week on the road. In her current role since 2017, she has routinely jetted around the region advising corporate or private-equity clients buying companies or selling their own.

These days, it's a challenge just traveling around her own house. One misstep, and she'll accidentally appear in her youngest daughter's TikTok videos.

"I think there's not a moment of her life that's not made into a TikTok, " Ms. Harding-Jones said of her 12-year-old. "I have to be careful not to be in the background when I go into the kitchen."

The days of face-to-face meetings have stopped and the steady flow of M&A activity has slowed for now.

Such meetings are hard to replace because they are essential to striking deals, going over sensitive documents and pitching for new business. But conversations with clients continue -- of the 18 appointments on her calendar one day last week, about half were calls with clients, Ms. Harding-Jones said.

The coronavirus pandemic, in a way, has eased interaction, she said. "It's much easier to get hold of people and have a real conversation because everyone on a human level is looking for interaction."

Work on active deals has slowed as companies assess the impact of the pandemic on their businesses and performance. Bankers are trying to understand how the acute focus on fighting the spread of infection will affect regulatory approval processes and the timing of deals already announced.

Ms. Harding-Jones's conversations currently focus on how clients are doing internally, how their competitors are holding up and the impact of the virus generally. She also discusses preparing for consolidation in certain industries, such as industrials and energy, and potential buying opportunities.

There will be Covid-19-related adjustments in the future to companies' numbers, she said, "but no one knows what that looks like" yet.

While she expects the transactions she is shepherding to close, there might be some in the market where a party tries to renegotiate as "valuations have very definitely moved," she said. "There will no doubt be some fallout."

Ms. Harding-Jones, who is also vice chairman of the region's corporate and investment bank, says she has been surprised at how efficient she can be without having to commute. She is at her desk by 7:45 a.m., and is on a constant stream of calls with clients and Citigroup colleagues until around 7:30 p.m.

She tries to take quick breaks to walk the dogs. The three Irish terriers and one flat-coated retriever bark during at least one out of every three phone conversations, she estimates, forcing her to mute the call and run them out to the garden.

The family has been taking walks in the countryside and eating most of its meals together. Ms. Harding-Jones has also found time to bake, making bread for the second time ever, she said, as well as lemon meringue pie, carrot cake and a quiche.

"Everything was a rousing success except for the carrot cake, which I think the dogs ate," she said. "It mysteriously disappeared and when I quizzed them on how much they had eaten I didn't really get a clear answer."

Ms. Harding-Jones says she is surprised positively by some of the changes. Still, she asks: "Can we really keep doing this for three, four, five, six, weeks? I don't think it's necessarily going to get easier."

Write to Julie Steinberg at julie.steinberg@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 08, 2020 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)

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