Overnight, the City of London and Canary Wharf became “ghost towns”, according to some of the handful of traders still making the daily commute. The areas where 494,000 financial services employees work emptied after the UK government brought in social distancing guidelines on 15 March to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

“It feels very eerie,” said the head of equities trading at a US investment bank in Canary Wharf who is still required to come into the office. “There are only a few of us left.”