Big banks see more than half of staff in office in Q3
Global financial institutions plan to have more than half of staff back in offices during the third quarter, up from 10 percent-15 percent now, but none are envisaging a full return anytime soon, the head of Danish services group ISS said on Thursday.
ISS provides services ranging from call centers to office cleaning, catering and security to more than 200,000 companies in 60 countries, including UBS and Deutsche Telekom.
“Many of our customers in banking, consulting and service industries are now very eager to get employees back to the office,” Chief Executive Jacob Aarup-Andersen said in an interview.
“They tell us about lack of innovation, less engagement among employees working from
home and the corporate culture suffering,” he said.
But while global banking customers in general expect to have more than 50 percent of employees back on site during the third quarter, none of ISS’
customers are yet speaking about returning 100 percent of the workforce to offices, AarupAndersen said.
HSBC said this week it planned to nearly halve its office space globally in a sign the pandemic
could mean permanent changes to working patterns, as companies prepare to reduce office space and allow employees more flexibility in working from home. Aarup-Andersen said earlier he expected office space globally to shrink by 10 percent-15 percent over the next three years.
ISS on Thursday said sales fell 10 percent last year to 69.8 billion Danish crowns ($11.5 billion), hit by weakness in catering, retail and hotel services.
It is exactly a year since WWE Super ShowDown drew thousands of Saudi wrestling fans to Mohammed Abdu Arena on Riyadh Boulevard, and many more on pay-per-view television across the world.
Delighting the crowd was local favorite Mansoor, who defeated American grappler Dolph Ziggler, and WWE legend The Undertaker won the five-man Tuwaiq Trophy Gauntlet match.
Within days, however, the COVID-19 pandemic would bring almost all global sporting activities to a grinding halt.
And yet Wrestlemania 36 would somehow go ahead, filmed on March 25-26, 2020 and then broadcast on pay-per-view on April 4-5. Now WrestleMania 37 is set to return on April 10-11, 2021 with a limited live audience.
This year’s event will take place at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium, which recently hosted Super Bowl LV, where hometown team Tampa Bay Buccaneers, inspired by Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski — who hosted last year’s WrestleMania — overcame the challenge of Kansas City Chiefs to be crowned champions.
The connection between WWE and American football goes further than that however, with many of the current wrestling superstars having swapped the field for the ring early on in their careers. As the countdown to WrestleMania 37 begins, we take a look at some of those WWE superstars whose journey to the wrestling ring began on the American football field.
Roman Reigns
Current WWE Universal Champion, and one of the brand’s biggest names, Roman Reigns (real name, Leati Joseph “Joe” Anoa’i), initially set out to reach the NFL, and his performances in college football, for Georgia Institute of
Technology’s Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets team, provided him with a fantastic opportunity.
Anoa’i was signed, and subsequently released, by both the Minnesota Vikings and Jacksonville Jaguars in 2007, although he was hampered by a serious illness. He then made the switch to the Canadian Football League in 2008, going on to spend a full season with Edmonton Eskimos, before being let go — and subsequently retiring — in 2009.
Reigns has
enjoyed
a
monumental WWE career since signing a contract in 2010, battling it out with many of the brand’s biggest superstars, including the likes of Brock Lesnar, John Cena and The Undertaker, who he inflicted a shock defeat on at WrestleMania 33.
Big E
Big E (real name, Ettore Ewen) boasted a rich sporting pedigree in not only one, but two, fields prior to joining WWE.
Having enjoyed an impressive college football career, in which he played for the University of Iowa, Ewen’s dreams of becoming professional were cut short due to injury. He then turned his attention to powerlifting, showing such prowess that he went on to become a national champion, breaking a number of records along the way. He joined WWE after being introduced to commentator Jim Ross, and subsequently given a trial, in 2009. After making his name as part of three-man tag team, The New Day, Big E recently embarked on a solo career in which he has enjoyed huge success, defeating Sami Zayn in December to secure the Intercontinental Championship.
The USOS
There is no getting away from the fact that twin brothers Jimmy and Jey Uso have a strong WWE family legacy, with their father Rikishi inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2012, while some of the brand’s biggest names — Roman Reigns, The Rock and Yokazuna — are cousins of the duo.
Their initial plan, however, was to forge a career in American football, and for a while it seemed a possibility. The pair earned partial scholarships to the University of West Alabama in 2003, where they played together at linebacker, but when their progression stalled, they called time on the sport.
They made their WWE main roster debut on RAW in 2010 and have since gone on to become WWE Tag Team Champions, as well as SmackDown Tag Team Champions on multiple occasions.
Bray Wyatt
As a defensive tackle and guard, Bray Wyatt (real name, Windham Lawrence Rotunda) showed great promise during two seasons playing for the College of the Sequoias, impressing to such an extent he earned a football scholarship to Troy University, where he spent two years.
However, harboring dreams of becoming a professional wrestler, Rotunda turned his back on football to focus on achieving his goals in the ring, the pinnacle of his career so far coming in 2017 when he won the WWE Championship at Elimination Chamber. In more recent times, Wyatt has been best known for the work of his alter ego, “The Fiend,” who captured the Universal Championship on two separate occasions, overcoming formidable opponents such as Seth Rollins and Braun Strowman along the way.
Tom Hanks as an ageing cowboy searching for his place in a world that is changing too rapidly for him? No, this isn’t “Toy Story 4.” Sadly. “News of the World” reunites Hanks with director Paul Greengrass (who helmed 2013’s “Captain Phillips”). Here, Hanks plays another captain, Jefferson Kyle Kidd — a veteran of the Confederate army in the US Civil War who now makes a living traveling from town to town reading newspapers to crowds of people who pay 10 cents apiece. While on the road, he encounters a young German girl by an overturned wagon. She had been kidnapped by Native Americans as an infant and raised as one of their own, but is now being returned to her only surviving relatives by a soldier who has died in their wagon crash.
Kidd ends up, somewhat convolutedly (but essentially because he’s such a good guy), having to transport the girl,
Johanna — who barely speaks German or English — himself; a long, dangerous journey made even more dangerous by predators, both human and animal. On it, Kidd tries to connect with Johanna, who clearly identifies as Native American and has no desire for a ‘Western’ life. Johanna’s actual relatives, it turns out, are far less invested in her welfare than Kidd (they’ve never met before and she is borderlineferal, after all).
It’s hard to imagine anyone but Hanks in this role, his name is now pop-culture shorthand for these world-weary, kind, level-headed characters. Kidd is all of those things. Hanks plays him perfectly. Though billed as a Western, this is no action movie. Instead, it’s a contemplation of a divided nation attempting to pull itself together, and of love and responsibility.
The success of the film rides on the chemistry between Helena Zengel as Johanna and Hanks as her guardian. I wasn’t entirely convinced — in comparison, to say, the similar couple in the Coen brothers’ 2010 take on “True Grit.” “News of the World” is a sweet, downbeat-but-optimistic movie, and certainly not bad. But it is more notable, ultimately, for the films that it isn’t, rather than the film it is.