Foreign Focus: Consultant finds more opportunities amid pandemic

Editor's Note: In the face of the unexpected challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government has adopted measures to minimize the outbreak's impact on various economic sectors. In this series, China Daily website interviewed senior executives of well-known multinational companies to gauge their perceptions on China's remarkable resilience and their optimism about the post-epidemic recovery, as well as long-term business prospects in China as the country remains an attractive market for investment.

1. How has the novel coronavirus affected your business in China?

A&M is a leading global business value creation and turnaround consulting firm. While coronavirus has brought fresh challenges to many businesses in China, it has opened up more opportunities for us. Known in the market for our hands-on DNA, more private equity and corporate clients are seeking help in interim or active roles to drive transformation for their portfolios to realize a tangible bottom line impact. In Q1, we helped companies focus on immediate acceleration of recovery by managing supply-side constraints in the form of labor, material and logistics. At the same time we were helping them drive strategic cash flow management, staying proactive against the impact of shrinking demand resulting from the global lockdown. Moving into Q2, we are helping our clients look beyond recovery into new growth opportunities and business transformation capturing values in the new normal.

2. What are your views on the Chinese government's measures to curb and prevent COVID-19?

The Chinese government has been immensely effective in educating and in aligning its citizens together to fight COVID-19.

3. What expectations do you have for your company's business in the future?

We expect to help more companies pivot their businesses through a bottom line result-driven approach, faster and better positioned moving into the post-COVID-19 norm. We see in the mid-term there will be an increase in activities, a healthy indicator of economic recovery in the capital market as businesses will seek additional funding for their post-COVID-19 initiatives and we will be helping investors in their M&A activities.

4. What kind of policy support to help your business would you like to see from China?

Continuous focus from the government to help industries recover and spur healthy consumer spending will help accelerate China and global economic recovery. China is a very attractive market for investment, and the government is actively deploying policies while balancing inflation factors.