Good morning from the Newsroom of the Financial Times.

Today is Friday, February 28th, and this is your FT news briefing.

The coronavirus has killed thousands and is rapidly spreading to other parts of the globe.

The outbreak has closed down businesses, forced cities into lockdown,

and incited fears of a slowdown in global growth.

I'm Mark Filipino, and we're doing something a little different in today's episode.

We'll be looking at the financial fallout of the outbreak, starting with a sell-off that put US stocks

in correction territory yesterday.

The S&P 500 suffered its worst day since August 2011 on Thursday,

closing more than 4% lower. The drop took declines from a peak last week to more than the 10% which traders define as a correction.

And it came as governments took some of their most aggressive steps yet to contain the outbreak.

Japan announced that starting Monday, it would shut schools for more than a month.

And Saudi Arabia halted the entry of Muslim pilgrims intending to visit the holy cities of Mecca

and Medina.

Meanwhile, crippling demand for oil sent the price of Brent Crude even lower in Thursday

trading, the benchmark dropped to less than $52 a barrel. Prices had been trading as high

as $70 a barrel as recently as early January.

And with crude prices falling,

Saudi Arabia is pushing for a substantial cut in oil production when it meets

with OPEC and its allies next week.

The F.T. has exclusively reported that the kingdom is asking producers, including Russia,

to sign up to a collective production cut of an additional 1 million

...