Trading desks at most foreign banks from Hong Kong to Singapore opened on Friday, June 24, 2016 nearly two hours before their normal start to take in early orders and address investor concerns, but the market meltdown and volatility ahead of the result pushed many traders to the sidelines.

Britain's bitterly contested referendum on whether to quit the EU began too close to call early on Friday, but the pound was hammered as the numbers slowly tipped in favour of a vote to leave.

"There will be a bloodbath on a lot of asset classes," said Andrew Ng, head of treasury and markets at Singapore's DBS Group Holdings Ltd.

The British pound fell about 10 percent to hit its lowest in three decades, shares in British bank HSBC plc tumbled 8 percent, while the FTSE index futures pointed to a 7.5 percent slump when the UK stock market opens.

"I am getting slightly seasick from the fluctuations between in and out," Michael Blythe, chief economist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, said while the votes were being counted. "I haven't heard this much noise from the dealing room in a very long time," he added.

Forex markets were much more volatile and in Singapore some traders came in as early as 5 a.m. local Singapore time or even earlier to oversee the markets. Stephen Innes, a senior trader for FX broker OANDA Asia Pacific in Singapore, said he came to work at 3:30 a.m, much earlier than usual.

"I needed to do some minor adjustment on both hedging and pricing algos. I also adjusted some circuit breakers, given our anticipated views on market volatility. It's worth doing so to avoid issues later," Innes said.

The Malaysian ringgit's open level was quoted more than an hour earlier than usual. Some global banks were also arranging calls with their analysts to discuss the implication of the vote.

REUTERS