Foreign bankers flee Tokyo as nuclear crisis deepens

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/16/us-tokyo-bankers-idUSTRE72F2MP20110316

(Reuters) - Foreign bankers are fleeing Tokyo as Japan's nuclear crisis worsens, scrambling for commercial and charter flights out of the country and into other major cities in the region.

BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA), Standard Chartered (STAN.L) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N) were among the banks whose staff have left since Friday's earthquake and tsunami, and now a nuclear plant disaster, according to industry sources with direct knowledge of the matter....

With bankers joining the growing exodus, private jet operators reported a surge in demand for evacuation flights which sent prices surging as much as a quarter. One jet operator said the cost of flying 14 people to Hong Kong from Tokyo was more than $160,000.

"I got a request yesterday to fly 14 people from Tokyo to Hong Kong, 5 hour 5 minutes trip. They did not care about price," said Jackie Wu, COO of Hong Kong Jet, a newly established private jet subsidiary of China's HNA Group.

:sarcasm:

:sarcasm:

They only hang around when the going is good.

They're on expense accounts. It doesn't come out of their own pockets

While I don't work in banking, we had people in Japan. They were supposed to be there until the end of the month, they all arrived back to DFW by yesterday.

:shrug:

While they did fly commercial, I doubt anyone cared what the price to change their flights were to get them out of Tokyo.

The original story indicated to me that the situation in Tokyo is worse than I realized, even though bankers are more likely to have the means to do what they can for themselves.

I'm glad that your coworkers arrived back safely.

I think they're going to pull him back to the States.

I think anyone that's in Japan on business, a business will be more than happy to spend any amount to get their people out of harm's way. It's not like bankers or the people I work with could actually do anything really to help. I would think it would be better for foreigners that don't live there to get the hell out so the Japanese government can focus on helping the Japanese that live there...not some business people from Dallas.