Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I have no personal experience of international business travel. However, I know plenty of people who fly round the place doing things which don't need to be done face to face. Do merchant banks not have phones of other communication systems ?
In the IT industry I've noted that we have moved from "you need to be on site all the time" to "we don't want you on site other than for initial meetings". Companies are realising the costs and environmental issues of having people on site, and software is increasingly "cloud based" so can be configured and supported from any location, while collaboration tools like Teams and Slack are making remote working ever easier - and people by and large like it[1].
That is just IT, but other "brain based" industries often follow where we lead - we are natural early adopters of these concepts.
[1] Getting up at 8:55 for a 9am start and working the first hour in your dressing gown can be good if you're not a morning person (nobody ever uses videoconf so forget wearing a suit). Or if you're an active type, that means that you only have to get up at a very reasonable 7am for time for an hour's morning run, a shower and breakfast rather than 4 or 5am if you're London commuting.