Does anyone else ever wonder if the bus factor of the economies of some countries equals the number of cobol programmers that keep the biggest banks and similar institutions running? Probably (hopefully) that's a bit of an exaggeration but still
Presumably if trillions were literally on the line, a bank could buy some extremely highly-paid consultants who have been training for exactly this situation precisely so that they can get massively well-paid in just this scenario. Probably some kind of special ops unit inside Capgemini.
Eh, that might mitigate some of the damage, but the older the system, the more quirks and workarounds there are that are not documented anywhere and for which the required knowledge only exist in the minds of the current programming team. I don't see how any team of consultants can protect against that in a case of emergencies.
Can confirm this is the case at the some very large American companies.