... said Steve Rowe, CEO of Marks & Spencer, recently. He may of course be thinking more about the retail sector. As a Morgan Stanley analyst recently remarked, the effect of Covid-19 on the industry "is set to be so profound that it will render irrelevant most of the research we have ever written".
But all this goes wider than retail. The FT says:
It is difficult to find any avenue of life that has not been identified as going through some profound structural change.
The ramifications on businesses will be huge:
"This depression is likely to be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s."— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) May 18, 2020
Former chief economist of the World Bank and Nobel laureate, Paul Romer, says the coronavirus crisis could "exacerbate tensions around the world". pic.twitter.com/6rVMdx1Yd9
According to an economist at the Harvard Kennedy School, the financial crisis is likely to last until the health crisis is solved:
I don’t think it’s over. And if it’s not over on the disease, it’s not over on the social distancing and the business closures, and therefore it’s not over on the balance sheet effects. That makes it a financial crisis until the core health problem gets resolved.
In the UK, Government borrowing hit £62bn in April. The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has warned that Britain is facing a "severe recession, the likes of which we haven’t seen". PMI surveys have crushed hopes of a V-shaped recovery. As one economist predicts:
... the likelihood is it won’t even be a V, I don’t even think its going to be a U, it will probably be a L ... straight down and very slowly out...
According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research:
British households probably won’t return to their old spending patterns until the middle of this decade.
This made me laugh! @BertColijn— Anaam Raza (@anaamraza) May 21, 2020
Despite the improvement in Eurozone PMI, anybody hoping for a v-shaped recovery should go back and pick another alphabet!https://t.co/rGi0tp1d8L
Many companies will now be assessing the ramifications of coronavirus. LafargeHolcim – the parent company of Aggregate Industries – claims it wants to build a healthier world:
More than ever, we want to demonstrate leadership by connecting the dots between this unprecedented health crisis and the need for a sustainable recovery.
🖋️ Perspectives from our CEO, Jan Jenisch: "COVID-19 is changing how we live and how we work in many ways. As markets are gradually reopening around the world, we are ramping up our production to best support our customers..."— LafargeHolcim (@LafargeHolcim) May 19, 2020
👉 https://t.co/o2mABfOZNw pic.twitter.com/b8tTwhPx0U
A healthier world is indeed what we all need, but – given that concrete is the most destructive material on Earth – LafargeHolcim is not the company to provide it.
Because LafargeHolcim, who will now more than ever be looking to sell as much cement and concrete as possible, has no doubt connected the dots and realised its markets could suffer structural changes too.
“This crisis made offices redundant almost overnight,” says Stuart Smith, Director at Arup Germany/UK. So how does he suggest we think about building in the future?— LafargeHolcim (@LafargeHolcim) May 20, 2020
Subscribe to Material Talks newsletter to find out:https://t.co/slZuaK4fbw pic.twitter.com/J5YbLZTmy2
