Business and Markets: The Coronavirus Ticker

Abstract

In early June 2020, several months into the COVID-19 pandemic, a business analyst was evaluating how COVID-19 had changed business and markets and whether these changes would be permanent. Already, a part of the business world had shifted to a working-from-home mode, while executives were evaluating financial strategies to help cope with the changes caused by the pandemic and assessing supply chains that had been disrupted. This case provides an opportunity to discuss key themes such as risk management, globalization, lessons from previous crises such as the global financial crisis (GFC), and the role of banks during the pandemic, as well as the role of the Federal Reserve in mitigating the economic destruction that COVID-19 had inflicted.

Excerpt

UVA-F-1972

Dec. 18, 2020

Business and Markets: The Coronavirus Ticker

No two crises were alike, but there was something to the idea that people and businesses adapted and came back to something like a new normal. It was June 8, 2020, and New York City was beginning Phase 1 of the state's four-phase plan to reopen after 78 days of stay-at-home orders (the longest shutdown in the United States) because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, known as COVID-19. The city was reopening because the number of confirmed cases and deaths had flattened after many weeks of increases (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. New York City COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths

(February 29, 2020June 8, 2020).

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Keywords: financial institutions, globalization, unemployment, debt issuance, bankruptcies, interest rates, leadership, COVID-19, coronavirus, pandemic, supply chains