Blog – April 2020

Pulling Together

As we all now work from home (and given my whole family is now back, I use “all” in the widest sense) we can at least thank the availability of cloud services to allow almost seamless continuity. However, what is possible for a service business is not so easy for a manufacturing operation – and ultimately many service businesses rely on other sectors for their work (both up and down the supply chain).

I read an interesting article by Goldman Sachs, courtesy of former Cranfield guru Colin Barrow, indicating that event driven recessions are less deep and shorter than structural or cyclical ones. Let’s hope that is the case.

Good to hear also that F1 engineering teams have helped to get a new continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device through approval. Now is definitely the time to come together, rather than criticise.

It may seem a bit premature to start considering how COVID-19 will affect M&A, given this activity hardly seems essential. Nonetheless we each have a responsibility to try to keep the commerce wheels turning and over the next few weeks we will be running a series of webinars to help assess the impact of the pandemic on M&A and how we can build stronger, more saleable businesses.

Keep safe.