Traders want to cut their hours

THEY pocket some of the biggest salaries in the country. But now the City's enormously well-heeled workers are also looking for quality of life.

Martin Ekers, head of equity dealing at CGNU's Morley Fund Management, wants the London Stock Exchange to reduce trading time by an hour a day and has written to all the leading broking and fund management companies seeking support for the change.

Privately, many City firms have backed the campaign, but they are facing fierce resistance from the retail stockbrokers who want to maximise trading time.

Angela Knight, chief executive of the Association of Private Client Investment Managers and Stockbrokers (Apcims), said: 'This seems to me to be about letting the fund managers stay in bed for an extra half-an-hour.'

Other sceptics say a cut in trading hours would open the City to accusations of laziness, particularly given the notoriously high salaries paid to top traders.

According to the Monks Partnership salary research group, a head of equity trading is typically paid £120,000 a year, but can easily expect bonuses to take that to at least £250,000. A spokesman for Monks said: 'Of course, these are only average figures. Some of the biggest firms pay £300,000 plus bonuses to trading bosses.'

At the moment, the LSE trades between 8am and 4.30pm, though most trading staff tend to be at their desks an hour before the market opens and so work a 10-hour day.

But Ekers wants the start of the trading day moved to 8.30am and the close switched to 4pm.

The LSE extended its working hours two years ago to open at 8am, bringing trading into line with the Deutsche Boerse, with which it was then planning to merge.

Ekers said the exchange could easily afford to cuts its hours and still be competitive with the US, where the market trades for just six-and-a-half hours a day.