Apple Company Risk Management Strategies Group Project Assignment Group Project: Risk Management How to reduce risk in a companys worldwide physical foot
Apple Company Risk Management Strategies Group Project Assignment Group Project: Risk Management
How to reduce risk in a companys worldwide physical footprint (i.e. real estate portfolio) and
thereby reduce overall risk exposure to the corporation
The challenge:
Your consulting team has been retained by a large, multinational corporation in the financial
services, high-tech, or manufacturing sector seeking to answer the CEOs charge to review their
worldwide real estate portfolio in terms of risk (economic, supply chain, geopolitical, physical,
reputational, etc.).
APPLE INC. IS THE COMPANY
Specifically, your team is charged with determining a strategy for the CEO that articulates how
to reduce risk in the companys worldwide physical footprint (i.e., real estate portfolio) and
thereby reduce overall risk exposure to the corporation. Key questions include:
What is our current level of risk exposure?
What can we do to reduce those risks in the short term (within 24 months)?
What can we do to reduce those risks in the long term (beyond 24 months)?
What new systems or processes do we need to better manage risk?
The range of risks to consider in evaluating real estate portfolio risks include, but are not
limited to, the following:
Business risk
Real estate market risk
Financial risk
Supply chain risk
Economic risk
Reputational risk
Geo-political risk (e.g., potentially unstable or weakened governments, potential seizure
or nationalization of corporate assets, etc.)
Physical risk (e.g., natural disasters, terrorist attacks, etc.)
Your client seeks to develop a strong capability in risk management across the corporation,
both in terms of individual functional areas and in the numerous potential synergies that exist
for sharing data, insight, plans, and strategies among these functions. To that end, a new Risk
Management Committee, comprising Real Estate and five other functions, will be established.
As a leading organization with operations in all global regions, your client is exposed to a wide
range of risks. They want to achieve greater business flexibility and enhanced business
continuity, and to not only manage uncertainty, but also potentially exploit it for business
advantage.
In the past, risk management has been formally or officially the domain of a single function
(Risk management). Now six corporate functions (Finance, HR, IT, Legal, Procurement, and
Corporate Real Estate), are being asked to up their game and contribute more, and at the
enterprise level.
Real estate is being asked to detail how it will respond to manage and mitigate risk in the real
estate portfolio and in business operations overall against the backdrop of growing
protectionism and nationalism, talk of building a wall between the US and Mexico, Brexit,
saber-rattling by rogue nations, disruptive technologies, powerful new competitors, and more.
