What it's like to chair a stock exchange in a pandemic

May 8, 2020

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! A new coalition asks for a childcare stimulus, Melania Trump celebrates two years of Be Best, and we get crisis leadership insight from the first woman to chair the Hong Kong stock exchange. Have a relaxing weekend and, for those of you celebrating, a wonderful Mother’s Day.

– Taking stock . Last week, Emma provided perspective on coronavirus crisis management from Enterprise CEO Chrissy Taylor , who’s based in St. Louis, Mo. For the latest installment in the series that asks female business leaders to talk about leading through the public health and economic crisis, we get perspective from Hong Kong, which has emerged as a standout in its response to the outbreak.

Hong Kong Stock Exchange Chair Laura Cha, who also sits on the boards of HSBC Holdings and Unilever, shared her insights on leading through this moment.

Cha, the first woman to chair the bourse , says HKEX is “carefully executing our staged return to the office,” as the city itself eases social distancing restrictions. The exchange’s new workplace strategy will feature “split-team arrangements” and will continue to encourage “digital communications and meetings where possible to minimize personal contact at this still-critical time,” Cha says.

Beyond the return-to-the-office strategy, I was especially interested in what Cha sees as long-term—even beneficial—effects of the pandemic. By cutting off nearly all air travel, the crisis has forced Cha to reconsider how often she gets on a plane. Rather than fly to London and Rotterdam for board meetings, she’s participated remotely. Directors’ camera shyness notwithstanding, she says virtual board meetings are becoming the new norm. The change has been so sudden, so dramatic that she thinks it will prompt her industry to operate differently from now on.

“This crisis shows that the travel we did as an industry in financial services was huge, and now we are able to do that with a lot less,” she says. A narrower definition of essential business travel could help reduce carbon footprints.

The crisis has—of course—affected Cha’s personal life too, prompting what she calls “forced downtime.”

“I got to clean up a lot of things in my study,” she says, “all the emails and reading, and I’ve never watched so much Netflix.”

You can read the entire Q&A here.

Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman

Today’s Broadsheet was produced by Emma Hinchliffe.

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- Still being best. It's been two years since First Lady Melania Trump launched Be Best; she celebrated the program's anniversary with a Zoom call with a class of first-graders. Plus, some bonus Mother's Day reading: how was President Trump influenced by his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod?

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