The chairman of KPMG has warned that the UK economy will not survive many more months of a lockdown, in his first message to the accounting firm’s 16,000 staff since he was diagnosed with coronavirus.
Bill Michael said in an email: “At some point, we run the risk that the economic disaster will transcend the human one.” He said KPMG was “well-placed” to advise the government on the “difficult judgment . . . to strike a balance between the health of our people and our economy”.
“The fact is that a vaccine is the only known ‘exit strategy’,” he added. “It appears a vaccine is many months away — too long for an economy to survive a lockdown.”