How we are looking after our people and our communities
This is an update for all our stakeholders on our current state of operations in response to the unfolding COVID-19 situation.
IFM Investors’ response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic prioritises the safety and wellbeing of the public and our people, and detailed plans to protect our investments and millions of members’ retirement savings.
Our Business Continuity Plan includes plans for a global pandemic and its impacts on IFM Investors’ people, our business operations and our investments.
We have placed a blanket restriction on all business-related international travel. IFM Investors people who were travelling outside of their home country as at 12 March 2020 were instructed to immediately return to their home city.
We have also restricted business-related domestic travel and it will only be permitted where it is deemed to be critical and explicitly approved by a member of IFM Investors’ senior leadership team.
Of course this means most of our meetings are now being conducted via phone and internet. We have increased our internet carrying capacity to cater for this. Thank you for supporting this new approach in our everyday interactions with you.
We have fully enabled all IFM Investors people to work from home for an extended period, as required. This has been in place for our Tokyo and Seoul offices for more than a month now.
We trialled working from home for our entire Sydney and Melbourne offices on Tuesday this week and our systems performed well. Our teams will continue to work from home until we review our policy on 27 March 2020. All our operations are continuing as normal, albeit from more widely dispersed locations. Our robust IT capabilities are serving us well.
IFM Investors is not alone in facing these challenges and we recognise and are grateful for the support and cooperation of our employees and representatives, shareholders, investors and other partners in enabling our response to this situation. Please continue to keep us updated on your own responses and on the welfare of your people.
Our investment management response to the situation is detailed briefly below. We will of course be in touch with many of you with more detailed updates as required.
Infrastructure
We are focused on plans with our portfolio companies that prioritise the safety of all people while working with government authorities and agencies, and ensuring business continuity of the critical services to the communities we serve.
Incident response plans are in place for all our infrastructure assets globally.
Listed equities
We are actively monitoring Global and Australian markets and communicating important information to investors as it comes to hand.
Investment markets are obviously extremely volatile, however our operations are continuing as normal.
Both our Active and Index teams continue to invest in line with existing mandates and fund objectives.
Debt Investments
Our Debt Investment teams, encompassing Treasury Services, Diversified Credit and Infrastructure Debt, have all tested business continuity plans and are now executing normal operations remotely. Our normal control functions are unaffected.
Our Treasury Services team is focused on the liquidity of portfolios to meet cash flow requirements. Our Diversified Credit and Infrastructure Debt teams are also focused on liquidity of portfolios to meet cash flow requirements for committed investments. They will be taking a conservative approach with regard to the existing pipeline opportunities.
Private Equity
IFM Investors’ active directly held companies all have business continuity plans in place including specific COVID-19 strategies and we are closely monitoring these on a regular basis.
Please contact us should you require any more information. |
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