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Global rules on foreign direct investment (FDI)
Cross-border acquisitions and investments increasingly trigger foreign direct investment (FDI) screening requirements.
Australia | Update | marzo 2020
The COVID-19 outbreak has been declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization, and is having a major impact on people’s lives, businesses and the wider economy.
While a significant effort is being made globally to contain the virus, crises such as these can unfold unpredictably. As the situation develops, businesses across all sectors are having to work rapidly to ensure that their services can continue to operate, their staff (and places of work) remain safe and their customers remain properly and appropriately served.
The effective and successful management of such crises is directly related to how well-prepared organisations are to respond. Of critical importance are the key operational resilience considerations that firms need to be across.
Good organisational responses to this crisis should also lead to improvements in your overall risk management and controls framework and greater resilience, versatility and mobility within your business and workforce. Tapping the learnings from your response to COVID-19 will be crucial for your future fitness-for-operation.
The COVID-19 outbreak has brought operational resilience into sharp focus.
The outbreak needs Australian firms to adapt their mind-set from prioritising their own commercial interests to also considering the vulnerabilities of consumers and the market system (in which they operate) as a whole when making decisions.
The ongoing uncertainty and crisis mentality is also highlighting the need for a culture where firms are forward-looking, and making decisions today that help prevent operational incidents tomorrow, that impact consumers, markets and the broader Australian market system.
This changed mind-set means that:
Whilst avoiding disruption to particular systems is a contributing factor to operational resilience, it is ultimately the business service of a firm that needs to be resilient. Firms therefore need to:
So, when concentrating on their operational resilience, boards and senior management have to consider the following:
A robust crisis response plan and capability is key to minimising the impact the crisis has on a business, its staff and its customers.
Firms should have in place crisis management and business continuity plans as part of their operational resilience frameworks that consider a range of scenarios, including a health pandemic, which should help them respond.
Given the various unknowns at this early stage in respect of COVID-19 and how it may impact nationally and internationally, it’s important that firms, if they haven’t done so already:
ACTION POINT 1: Assemble a proportionate but robust cross-functional response team to review their plans in detail:
It is possible that an outbreak such as this could touch on all parts of an organisation, therefore it is important to include relevant stakeholders from across the business – HR, communications, customer services, legal, compliance etc. – headed by an appropriately senior individual to ensure it gets the profile it requires.
ACTION POINT 2: Scenario plan and consider the impacts on the crisis response plan:
Consider the range of scenarios that could occur as a result of the crisis in the short, medium and longer term. These should be plausible, but severe in nature, so as to prepare the organisation for what could be a prolonged period of high-stress. Various broad factors can influence this.
Take for example, as we have seen in a number of Australian states already, the impact of school closures, which may seem like a small and trivial matter, at first glance. Some things to think about in respect of this example may include:
As part of scenario planning, it’s important to establish accurate factual information from credible sources. In situations such as these social media in particular can be awash with inaccurate information or speculation, which may be unhelpful and impair decision-making.
ACTION POINT 3: Test the plan and its key components:
Undertake testing of your crisis response plan using the plausible, but severe, scenarios that you have considered. Some of the key components of the response plan include the communication media that you intend to use to keep staff and other stakeholders up to date on your response to the crisis, systems stress testing and effective/safe management of sites from which you operate, be they head offices, operations hubs or branches.
As you conduct the testing, you should ask:
All of these factors will serve to enhance your crisis response plan and overall preparedness.
ACTION POINT 4: Communicate to stakeholders:
In fast moving and unpredictable circumstances such as these, clear and timely communication to stakeholders is key.
Staff, customers and regulators are all important stakeholders to keep updated in respect of an organisation’s planned response in the run up to and throughout the period of crisis response:
We are able to help businesses on their operational resilience and can provide support in the following areas:
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