Risk.net
Risk Awards 2021: pre-spring cleaning allowed Citi to meet client needs when Covid hit markets
Citi s interest rate derivatives team
Risk.net montage/Citi
On a Sunday afternoon last February 23, Deirdre Dunn was driving over the newly built Kosciuszko Bridge in New York when she dialled into a conference call with Citi’s rates volatility team to discuss the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak.
A day earlier, Italy had ordered lockdowns in 10 northern municipalities. Colleagues on the ground in Asia had been sounding the alarm for weeks. The team quickly concluded the virus posed a serious global threat.
“It was within that week that we really galvanised everyone around the scope of what we thought this crisis could bring, ” says Dunn, Citi’s co-head of rates. “[We] tried to be prepared and do what we could in order to operate cleanly and sensibly and be able to deliver for our customers in the volatility that ensued.”