The Leader - March/April 2009 - (Page 37) global markets. On the flip side, do we understand or grasp the speed at which we could come out of this? We’re measuring it against past norms, and it is completely different. Noha: Because we’re so interconnected, as Mark says, there is potential for some big shocks to the system that may have long-lasting or permanent impact. Gorman: Look at all of our markets, all of our businesses. They are so interconnected now. We haven’t seen the rest of it. LEADER/CPN: Real estate tends to be a lagging indicator. Have you seen this downturn impacting your portfolios? Last year we talked about alternative workplace; it was the right thing to do for the war for talent. Now, of course, we say that it is far more efficient. If you end up with empty buildings and needing to dispose of them in a dead market, well obviously that’s difficult, so that bit of it will be lagging. But turning off construction, new projects and that sort of stuff, we did that a while ago. Ficke: The myth of the decoupled Asian economy has been debunked and we now feel this is a global situation that we are dealing with. Varcoe: A lot of the strategies for growth don’t take that much adjustment to be doing the same things in terms of the strategies for recession. 2 0 0 9 TH E LE ADE R Gorman: A number of years ago we changed from the real estate perspective how we operated for the company – moving out of the realm of 37 MARCH / APRIL Pr en ti ce Kn ig ht , II I
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