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Coronavirus recommendations

Delivered February 20, 2020. Contributor: Methody G.

Goals

To determine how Fortune 500 companies have responded to the coronavirus epidemic and determine if they have issued any specific recommendations about the virus.

Early Findings

  • The corona virus epidemic has put a big strain on the global economy, with the Asian and the European markets being affected the most.
  • On January 27, the Dow and S&P 500 recorded a 1.6% drop, the NASDAQ shed 1.9% while Europe’s Stoxx 600 dropped by 2%.
  •  Airlines companies, due to their big exposure have been the ones to take the biggest hit in terms of stock price.
  • Because of that, many Fortune 500 companies such as Apple and Starbucks have shutdown their operations in China.
  • Google has taken it a step forward and shut down their operations in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The company has advised all of their employees "flying back to the U.S. from China to work from home for 14 days before returning to the office."
  • Other Fortune 500 companies, such as JP Morgan Chase, Kraft, and Ford, have completely banned travel to China.
  • Apple and Facebook have still not completely banned travel, however, allowing for essential personnel to travel back and forth between the US and China.
  • The Hong-Kong branch of Ernst & Young has asked employees to work from home until the first week of February. It has also implemented specific "self-quarantine and health monitoring measures for employees who recently traveled to Hubei province." In their mainland China offices, the company extended the Chinese New Year holiday until further notice.
  • As Wuhan is a big automotive hub, many of the biggest automakers have pulled their employees from the province and have completely shut down their operations there. Most of them have also banned travel to Wuhan and mainland China.
  • One of the few companies that has not completely or partially restricted travel to Wuhan is Siemens but they still caution employees to "travel to China only if the trip is business-necessary or to postpone the trips or switch them to virtual meetings, phone conferences and so on."
  • Many of the Fortune 500 tech companies have also started pulling out from conferences in China and Europe, with LG, Sony, and Amazon having already pulled from the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona.

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