Businesses must be bold if they want to survive

It’s a difficult time for companies, but battening down the hatches is the wrong approach, says Matthew Lynn.

Carluccio's restaurant © Alex Segre / Alamy Stock Photo
Carluccio’s will surely see better days
(Image credit: © Alamy)

With the economy in its deepest recession in a century, and with a second wave of Covid-19 still a real possibility, it is understandable that many companies are simply battening down the hatches and hoping to get through the crisis intact. Sometimes survival is the best you can hope for. Yet a moment of crisis can also be one of opportunity. Markets have suddenly been thrown wide open for the first time in a decade or more, with the epidemic changing the way everyone works and buys things. Many assets are available at fire-sale prices. And lots of struggling sectors need to be rescued. An astute tycoon, or an ambitious company, can strike deals that would have been impossible six months ago.

A few have started to make their move. Restaurant entrepreneur Hugh Osmond, one of the creators of Pizza Express, is reported to be raising cash for a shell company that will buy up assets in the UK. Next is in the final stages of taking over the lingerie chain Victoria’s Secret after it went into administration. The online fashion retailer Boohoo has snapped up brands such as Oasis. And the restaurant chain Carluccio’s has been bought out by Boparan, one of the UK’s largest private companies, which already owns both Giraffe and Ed’s Easy Diner. Those few examples aside, very few companies have started buying up their rivals or launching themselves into new markets.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.