IMAGINE arriving at work one day to find that your office building has been devastated by an explosion and your whole business operation has been rendered useless.
It might sound like something more likely to happen in London than here in Hongkong, but terrorist bombs are not the only things that can cause havoc to a business. Floods, fires, gas leaks - the insurance might take care of the losses, but what about getting back to work? Computer systems must be salvaged, and communications re-established - and time is money.
Heavier reliance on high technology might mean your business is more efficient, but it might also mean it is more vulnerable.
Companies do not only have to guard against the dangers of power failures and computer viruses in the 1990s. Hackers, computer blackmailers and electronic saboteurs are all coming our way.
Add to these potential dangers the more common threats of kidnapping, covert surveillance, and many more, and you have a enough problems to make any executive paranoid.
In Hongkong the threat of encountering a downed computer system is certainly more real than finding out that the company's CEO has been kidnapped. But in other parts of Asia, in emerging and sometimes unstable markets, physical risk to executives is veryreal. Take the spate of kidnappings in Manila during the past year, for example.