Virtu Financial is Looking at Remote Working Post-COVID-19
- The CEO of the market making firm said that having some of its staff work from home would be cost-effective.

With COVID-19 lockdown measures across the world forcing staff to work from home, many companies are now questioning the traditional working from an office business model. One of these companies is Virtu Financial, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the firm said today.
In New York, the CEO of Virtu Financial, a large trading and market making firm, Doug Cifu, said that the company is looking at alternatives to having all of its employees work from an office once lockdown measures ease, according to a report from Reuters.
Virtu CEO: working from home is cost-effective
As a result of the pandemic, out of Virtu’s one thousand employees, approximately 95 per cent were working from home when the company reported earnings in early May. Following on from this, the company is now rethinking its physical offices, Cifu said via webcast at an industry conference held by Piper Sandler.
In the webinar, Cifu said: “I think every firm is struggling with that. I mean, I know for sure that our costs for real estate are going to go down precipitously, because I’m not going to pay for 80,000 square feet in downtown Manhattan when I don’t have to.”
The CEO of Virtu is part of a larger trend, with many within the fintech space, as well as other industries, looking at making remote working a more permanent option for their staff, or at least, allow more flexibility than the standard working from an office.
The perception has changed
As Finance Magnates previously analysed, although studies had shown that employees are on average more productive when working from home, employers had largely been reluctant to make the change - motivated by fear of losing revenue.
Indeed, the “perception has changed,” David Mansell, co-founder and director of NEM Ventures, told Finance Magnates in a previous interview. “Individuals have realized that those at home are not idly watching Netflix–one friend outside of the Blockchain Blockchain Blockchain comprises a digital network of blocks with a comprehensive ledger of transactions made in a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or other altcoins.One of the signature features of blockchain is that it is maintained across more than one computer. The ledger can be public or private (permissioned.) In this sense, blockchain is immune to the manipulation of data making it not only open but verifiable. Because a blockchain is stored across a network of computers, it is very difficult to tamper with. The Evolution of BlockchainBlockchain was originally invented by an individual or group of people under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. The purpose of blockchain was originally to serve as the public transaction ledger of Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency.In particular, bundles of transaction data, called “blocks”, are added to the ledger in a chronological fashion, forming a “chain.” These blocks include things like date, time, dollar amount, and (in some cases) the public addresses of the sender and the receiver.The computers responsible for upholding a blockchain network are called “nodes.” These nodes carry out the duties necessary to confirm the transactions and add them to the ledger. In exchange for their work, the nodes receive rewards in the form of crypto tokens.By storing data via a peer-to-peer network (P2P), blockchain controls for a wide range of risks that are traditionally inherent with data being held centrally.Of note, P2P blockchain networks lack centralized points of vulnerability. Consequently, hackers cannot exploit these networks via normalized means nor does the network possess a central failure point.In order to hack or alter a blockchain’s ledger, more than half of the nodes must be compromised. Looking ahead, blockchain technology is an area of extensive research across multiple industries, including financial services and payments, among others. Blockchain comprises a digital network of blocks with a comprehensive ledger of transactions made in a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or other altcoins.One of the signature features of blockchain is that it is maintained across more than one computer. The ledger can be public or private (permissioned.) In this sense, blockchain is immune to the manipulation of data making it not only open but verifiable. Because a blockchain is stored across a network of computers, it is very difficult to tamper with. The Evolution of BlockchainBlockchain was originally invented by an individual or group of people under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. The purpose of blockchain was originally to serve as the public transaction ledger of Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency.In particular, bundles of transaction data, called “blocks”, are added to the ledger in a chronological fashion, forming a “chain.” These blocks include things like date, time, dollar amount, and (in some cases) the public addresses of the sender and the receiver.The computers responsible for upholding a blockchain network are called “nodes.” These nodes carry out the duties necessary to confirm the transactions and add them to the ledger. In exchange for their work, the nodes receive rewards in the form of crypto tokens.By storing data via a peer-to-peer network (P2P), blockchain controls for a wide range of risks that are traditionally inherent with data being held centrally.Of note, P2P blockchain networks lack centralized points of vulnerability. Consequently, hackers cannot exploit these networks via normalized means nor does the network possess a central failure point.In order to hack or alter a blockchain’s ledger, more than half of the nodes must be compromised. Looking ahead, blockchain technology is an area of extensive research across multiple industries, including financial services and payments, among others. Read this Term space has told me he has ‘never worked so hard in his life.'”
With COVID-19 lockdown measures across the world forcing staff to work from home, many companies are now questioning the traditional working from an office business model. One of these companies is Virtu Financial, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the firm said today.
In New York, the CEO of Virtu Financial, a large trading and market making firm, Doug Cifu, said that the company is looking at alternatives to having all of its employees work from an office once lockdown measures ease, according to a report from Reuters.
Virtu CEO: working from home is cost-effective
As a result of the pandemic, out of Virtu’s one thousand employees, approximately 95 per cent were working from home when the company reported earnings in early May. Following on from this, the company is now rethinking its physical offices, Cifu said via webcast at an industry conference held by Piper Sandler.
In the webinar, Cifu said: “I think every firm is struggling with that. I mean, I know for sure that our costs for real estate are going to go down precipitously, because I’m not going to pay for 80,000 square feet in downtown Manhattan when I don’t have to.”
The CEO of Virtu is part of a larger trend, with many within the fintech space, as well as other industries, looking at making remote working a more permanent option for their staff, or at least, allow more flexibility than the standard working from an office.
The perception has changed
As Finance Magnates previously analysed, although studies had shown that employees are on average more productive when working from home, employers had largely been reluctant to make the change - motivated by fear of losing revenue.
Indeed, the “perception has changed,” David Mansell, co-founder and director of NEM Ventures, told Finance Magnates in a previous interview. “Individuals have realized that those at home are not idly watching Netflix–one friend outside of the Blockchain Blockchain Blockchain comprises a digital network of blocks with a comprehensive ledger of transactions made in a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or other altcoins.One of the signature features of blockchain is that it is maintained across more than one computer. The ledger can be public or private (permissioned.) In this sense, blockchain is immune to the manipulation of data making it not only open but verifiable. Because a blockchain is stored across a network of computers, it is very difficult to tamper with. The Evolution of BlockchainBlockchain was originally invented by an individual or group of people under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. The purpose of blockchain was originally to serve as the public transaction ledger of Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency.In particular, bundles of transaction data, called “blocks”, are added to the ledger in a chronological fashion, forming a “chain.” These blocks include things like date, time, dollar amount, and (in some cases) the public addresses of the sender and the receiver.The computers responsible for upholding a blockchain network are called “nodes.” These nodes carry out the duties necessary to confirm the transactions and add them to the ledger. In exchange for their work, the nodes receive rewards in the form of crypto tokens.By storing data via a peer-to-peer network (P2P), blockchain controls for a wide range of risks that are traditionally inherent with data being held centrally.Of note, P2P blockchain networks lack centralized points of vulnerability. Consequently, hackers cannot exploit these networks via normalized means nor does the network possess a central failure point.In order to hack or alter a blockchain’s ledger, more than half of the nodes must be compromised. Looking ahead, blockchain technology is an area of extensive research across multiple industries, including financial services and payments, among others. Blockchain comprises a digital network of blocks with a comprehensive ledger of transactions made in a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or other altcoins.One of the signature features of blockchain is that it is maintained across more than one computer. The ledger can be public or private (permissioned.) In this sense, blockchain is immune to the manipulation of data making it not only open but verifiable. Because a blockchain is stored across a network of computers, it is very difficult to tamper with. The Evolution of BlockchainBlockchain was originally invented by an individual or group of people under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. The purpose of blockchain was originally to serve as the public transaction ledger of Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency.In particular, bundles of transaction data, called “blocks”, are added to the ledger in a chronological fashion, forming a “chain.” These blocks include things like date, time, dollar amount, and (in some cases) the public addresses of the sender and the receiver.The computers responsible for upholding a blockchain network are called “nodes.” These nodes carry out the duties necessary to confirm the transactions and add them to the ledger. In exchange for their work, the nodes receive rewards in the form of crypto tokens.By storing data via a peer-to-peer network (P2P), blockchain controls for a wide range of risks that are traditionally inherent with data being held centrally.Of note, P2P blockchain networks lack centralized points of vulnerability. Consequently, hackers cannot exploit these networks via normalized means nor does the network possess a central failure point.In order to hack or alter a blockchain’s ledger, more than half of the nodes must be compromised. Looking ahead, blockchain technology is an area of extensive research across multiple industries, including financial services and payments, among others. Read this Term space has told me he has ‘never worked so hard in his life.'”