Coronavirus disruption will take some time to play out

There are already plenty of obvious casualties of the nasty combination of coronavirus-driven supply and demand shocks. But second-round casualties are beginning to appear too.

Mulan: probably not worth risking coronavirus for © Disney
(Image credit: © 2020 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Earlier this week we told you not to automatically buy on the dip. We’d hang on to some of that sense of caution. We don’t yet know how serious Covid-19 will turn out to be. But we do know that the disruption it has already caused is going to take some time to play out. The obvious casualties of the nasty combination of supply and demand shocks are all around us – anything to do with travel or anyone working with a complicated supply chain, for example. Who wants to go on a cruise, take a tour of Italy or fly to France for a three-day property investment conference right now?

But second-round casualties are beginning to appear too. The Hollywood Reporter points out that the global film industry is, for example, facing a possible $5bn loss as film release dates are pushed back and venues shut. Cinemas have been closed in China for months, but the virus is now “heavily impacting” movie-going in Japan (the world’s third-largest film market), South Korea and Italy. Ticket sales in China over the New Year period came in at $4.2m. Last year they were $1.76bn. In South Korea, box office takings were down 80% year-on-year last weekend. In Italy, that number is 76%.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.