IT'S EVENING when you realise you need legal papers drawn up to pull off a major business deal in the morning. But your office has wound up for the day. No matter. Fax the information to your New York affiliate, where the working day is about to begin, and ask them to ready the papers and fax them back by the end of their day. The papers will be with you in time to clinch the deal the next morning.

Global offices will soon be a reality and transnational watchers say that such functions as R&D, cash flow management and data processing will soon be performed continuously by corporations and their affiliates in different time zones. This would be the equivalent of a 24-hour shift, but instead of bringing in new shifts of employees to the office, work is dispatched via computer communication networks to another set of employees in another time zone.

Already, financial markets are operating on the basis of a 24-hour trading day, moving from east to west. And, countries like Singapore, whose time zones overlap major financial markets, are rushing in to capitalise on this by selling themselves as ideal financial centres.