The second systemic economic shock within little more than a decade – COVID-19 – has triggered what may ultimately be the largest governmental bailout of modern times. The rise of risks unlikely to happen at any given point, but highly likely to happen at some point, has also amplified the role of bailouts in the standard policy toolbox during crises. Additionally, due to the looming threat of climate change, there is reason to believe that these risks are set to increase in frequency and intensity in the future.
This paper answers the question of how companies can prepare for these kinds of events and strengthen their financial resilience by examining four mechanisms: cash, finance, insurance, and contracts. Following the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, financial supervisors and policymakers introduced new measures to strengthen the resilience of financial institutions. At the same time, limited to no new measures were implemented to ensure non-financial corporates’ resilience. As a result, weak corporate financial resilience in the current COVID-19 crisis once again required significant governmental bailouts –meaning that bailouts have de facto become the “policy of first resort” rather than last resort.
This report suggests two mechanisms to strengthen corporate financial resilience. It calls for financial supervisors and policymakers to follow the same path they did in 2009, except this time concentrating on non-financial corporate resilience and bailouts. To ensure that in the future, financial and economic policymakers use bailouts only when other options have failed, this paper recommends two specific reforms:
1. Change the rules related to shareholder buybacks and dividends to strengthen corporates’ cash reserves and balance sheets, and;
2. Implement mandatory business interruption insurance. These recommendations are intended to reduce the need and scale for bailouts, not to eliminate them entirely. This will ensure that when bailouts are used, they are consistent with wider policy goals and limit future moral hazard to the greatest extent possible.