The future of business practice after Covid-19
I wrote last week suggesting that universal business practice and operations might change once the Covid-19 threat is over. I had in mind when I wrote the piece whether working from home, aided with new technology, would catch on and become the norm allowing companies and businesses to cut down on their overheads and improve profits.
Reading a piece by Chad Bray in the South China Morning Post today I see Mr. Bray is thinking much on the same lines although he has taken my thinking much further by mentioning business investment in more expansive terms.
His article which carried the heading, ‘Will business investing ever return to normal after the coronavius pandemic changed everything?”
Here are just a few extracts of what Mr.; Bray had to say, quote:
“The global economy is teetering on the brink of a historically deep recession as tens of millions of people find themselves out of work and hundreds of millions more are trapped at home as major cities from New York to Singapore implement strict measures to try to control the coronavirus pandemic.
“The resulting strain on businesses spawned wild gesticulations in financial markets " the S&P 500 plummeted as much as 34 per cent from its all-time high set nearly two months ago " and left many investors unsure where to put their money.
“Even if markets rally sharply when containment measures are lifted, the world may never be the same, requiring investors to rethink their bets on the future and companies to reconsider their business models, analysts and investment strategists said.
"What we are doing is subjecting a major part of the global population to a completely different lifestyle. If we do this for a few months, folks are going to get used to it," Lee said. "Depending on how long these containment measures are in place, is it long enough that economic prospects for some companies that are at risk today may continue to be irreversibly changed over the longer term."
“The coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, has infected more than 1.8 million people around the globe since the first cases emerged in November. It has severely disrupted industries from airlines to car makers as fewer people are travelling and factories are closed during the health crisis.
The International Monetary Fund, which is expected to unveil its latest world economic outlook on Tuesday, said last week that it forecasts a global recession as bad or worse than the global financial crisis in 2008.
Source: South China Morning Post.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
