In our previous edition, Rob Naber informed you that two new ‘Young Ones’ joined the partnership of Zanders. And here I am, proud to be one of them and providing you with my first foreword as a partner of this great company!

The situation in the world has changed so drastically since the start of the year when Rob mentioned that 2020 would be a special year. Well, a special year it will be, definitely – I can already say that. However, not in the way we had foreseen in January… Next to all the exciting projects that we are currently involved in all over the globe, we also need to focus on the financial turmoil following the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact on our clients. To help our clients to minimize the effects, we have provided an overview of the development of the key financial indicators and a simple checklist that focuses on practical ways to deal with upcoming financing events, ratings, covenants and liquidity. I’m really proud to see that our consultants have quickly adapted to the changed situation and focus on supporting our clients to help them with their important activities nowadays.

Adapting to the situation in the world and the impact for our clients is one thing. Adapting to support our clients from our home offices is another. The past few weeks were dedicated to making sure we could continue to support our client projects by means of virtual workplaces and setting up virtual meetings. This has seen us making use of tools such as Teams, Skype for Business and Zoom!

I must say, we’ve managed this transition quite quickly and smoothly. Being a global company has definitely supported the adoption of virtual working. Next to the virtual interaction with our clients, we of course also need to make sure that the social interaction with our colleagues remains as strong as it was. So, also within Zanders we had our virtual coffee chats, virtual drinks and vitality videos. Again, it’s really good to see the flexibility of our consultants and, more generally, the taking-care-of-each-other attitude.

Now that we have to take each other into account more than usual, several companies, scientists and governments are developing apps that enable people to quickly inform each other of a possible contamination. The purpose of this is of course to make it easier to return to our ‘normal existence’. At the same time, it’s fascinating to see how a technological application can conflict with our privacy. As with all technological applications, we must ask ourselves whether privacy can be properly safeguarded and the possible consequences properly identified.

I hope that everybody stays healthy and that in three months’ time the world situation has become a little bit better! We'll be here for you every step of the way.

Laura Koekkoek