Workers at Blackstone Group, Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) and BNP Paribas are leaving Japan as the government battles to cool nuclear reactors damaged by last week’s record earthquake.
Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm, closed its Tokyo office for a week and offered the 28 employees there to move to another place of their choice with their families on a temporary basis, a person with knowledge of the matter said. BNP Paribas, France’s biggest bank, sent around 10 workers in Japan to Hong Kong and Singapore, spokesman Daniel Boyd said.
As Prime Minister Naoto Kan called for calm in the wake of Japan’s worst disaster since World War II, expatriates and their employers were left trying to assess whether efforts to prevent a nuclear spill would be successful. Citigroup is among companies getting requests from employees to relocate, while BMW and ICAP have taken steps to move workers to safe locations.
The death toll from the earthquake and the tsunami it unleashed rose to 3,676 as of 8 am local time, according to official police figures.
Companies are moving to ensure the safety of workers after Tokyo Electric Power Co’s stricken nuclear power plant 220 km north of the capital was rocked by explosions. A fire broke out at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant today, and Tokyo Electric said it can’t rule out the possibility of damage to the cores of two reactors at the facility.
Citigroup has received requests from several senior employees at its trading operations in Tokyo to relocate out of Japan, a person with knowledge of the matter said. ICAP, the world’s largest broker of transactions between banks, is allowing expatriates in Tokyo with families to relocate on a temporary basis to Hong Kong and Singapore. New York-based Citigroup isn’t planning to move staff out of the country, spokeswoman Naomi Watanabe said.
