Eddie Hobbs: Remote work is a double-edged sword for economy

Eddie Hobbs warns another banking crisis could be on the horizon, but less crushing than the banking crisis in 2008 "when Lehman Brothers went ‘super nova’ and caught everybody cold"

Eddie Hobbs says there will be a price to pay for Covid-19:  “Not everything can be saved by adding ever more debt, and the belief that this can be done on an open-ended basis and without consequences is fanciful." Photo: Enda O'Brien

While Covid-19 forced companies to switch to remote working very quickly and the migration has gone reasonably well, financial advisor Eddie Hobbs says remote working is also proving to be a ‘double-edged sword’ and in many ways a ‘big firm nirvana’.

He says the sudden death of the centralised office will see many job losses – big companies will move ‘back office jobs’ or ‘support services’ to the EU periphery to countries like Romania and Greece as multi-nationals interpret working-from-home as somewhat of “an unexpected bonanza”.