Welcome to In Conversation, the regular podcast of InCompass. Go to InCompass-Hyth Europe.com for free access to all our

podcast to date. This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Mujtabar Rahman.

Mastabharaman is the managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group.

We're going to talk about coronavirus, Mitch, because that's what everybody else is talking about.

Your day job is, your evening job and your night job is analyzing political risk, and now you've got your work cut out for you.

So as we stand, this has been recorded on the 9th of March,

to be very precise since things are moving so quickly. What is your current analysis of where

we stand both in terms of the politics and also the European economy? Thanks so much, Paul. Great

to be with you again. This is the dominant theme. It is driving risk across all asset classes and all of our clients are squarely and solely

focused on this one question.

And I think there is a material impact on the political debate, both at the national level

across member states, in Italy and in Germany, certainly in France, even here indeed in the UK,

and also at the EU level, where there's a real challenge now

around whether member states can coordinate on an effective response,

both to contain the virus but also to deal with the economic fallout.

And I think there's probably three countries that are a key focus for us.

One, of course, is Italy.

Right.

The second is Germany.

And the third is the UK.

Italy, because it's been affected, the most severely,

of all the countries in Europe.

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