Ola Källenius: Surviving coronavirus's economic shock
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 27 March 2020
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Every day, the havoc wrought by the coronavirus pandemic on public health and on the global economy worsens. Economic activity beyond the barest of essentials has been frozen in much of the world. What on Earth will the economic landscape look like when this is over? Stephen Sackur interviews Ola Källenius, the CEO of Daimler, one of Europe's biggest vehicle manufacturers. What will it take to survive the greatest economic shock in most of our lifetimes?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. The death toll from the global |
| 0:07.0 | spread of coronavirus continues to mount. Europe is currently being hit, hardest of all, |
| 0:14.0 | but the virus is no respecter of borders. It is a frightening reality in every corner of the world. And so too, the economic damage. |
| 0:24.8 | All but the most essential economic activity has been frozen in many of the world's richest nations. |
| 0:31.8 | There is no doubt a global recession is coming. The only questions are how long and how deep. Every business from the biggest |
| 0:41.1 | to the smallest is now in a fight for survival. My guest on the line from Stuttgart is Ulla |
| 0:48.5 | Chalenius, the CEO of the German vehicle manufacturing giant Daimler. What will it take to survive the greatest |
| 0:58.0 | economic shock in most of our lifetimes? Well, Ula Schellinius, welcome to hard talk. Let me begin |
| 1:06.8 | with a simple question. What impact is this terrible coronavirus crisis having on your business? |
| 1:15.3 | Stephen, thank you for inviting me to Hot Talk. This is a most unusual and very challenging |
| 1:22.4 | situation for our industry. We have at Daimler focused on two main priorities as we're tackling this challenge. |
| 1:30.6 | First and foremost is the health and safety of our employees around the world, taking measures |
| 1:36.5 | in accordance with the authorities, starting in China a couple of months ago, but now also in |
| 1:43.6 | Europe and in the United States, |
| 1:45.7 | taking measures to protect our staff and also help authorities and societies to flatten |
| 1:52.5 | this curve of this pandemic. And of course, second, it's the health of the company. So taking measures |
| 2:00.1 | to protect our cash, managing our cash throughout this most unusual of times. |
| 2:06.7 | Let's start with the human element. |
| 2:09.4 | I think I'm right in saying that you have roughly 200,000 workers across the world. |
| 2:17.2 | How many of those people are currently working? |
| 2:21.2 | Stephen, it's even more than that. We're actually 300,000. And it's different from country to country. |
| 2:27.9 | In February, we stopped our production operations in China for a couple or more weeks to then start gradually ramping up again. |
... |
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