Coronvirus Led to Cancellation of Telecoms Meeting, but Insurance Cover Is Excluded

February 13, 2020

Companies that have spent money on a major telecoms conference in Barcelona that has been canceled after mass withdrawals due to the coronavirus outbreak cannot expect compensation under the organizers’ standard insurance, they said on Thursday.

The GSMA telecoms body canceled the Feb. 24-27 event on Wednesday despite assurances from local and national health officials that it would have been safe to hold it.

[Editor’s note: MWC Barcelona – formerly known as the Mobile World Congress – is an annual telecoms industry meeting that attracts more than 100,000 attendees, according to its Wikipedia entry. It is organized by the GSMA].

The GSMA takes out standard insurance cover on behalf of exhibitors. This does not cover the spread of communicable diseases unless health authorities issue travel restrictions, according to the event’s website.

“This is a force majeure situation,” GSMA Director General Mats Granryd told a news conference in the Spanish city, whose economy usually enjoys a $500 million boost from the event.

“We don’t comment on insurance policies but clearly there is no way you can insure yourself out of a force majeure situation,” he added.

Companies invoke force majeure when they cannot meet contractual expectations because of circumstances beyond their control.

Anchor European members of the GSMA, including Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, BT and Nokia all pulled out of the event in recent days, forcing the GSMA’s hand to cancel it.

The GSMA is a non-profit organization.

(Reporting by Jordi Rubio and May Ponzo in Barcelona and Jose Elias Rodriguez in Madrid; writing by Isla Binnie; editing by Mark Potter)

Photograph: A worker wearing a protective face mask walks past the entrance to the venue for the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Feb. 12. Photographer: Angel Garcia/Bloomberg.

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