With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1273655
JULY/AUGUST 2020 BCBUSINESS 55 ISTOCK H ow healthy was the B.C. econ- omy, and how long could growth continue? Those questions were firmly answered in the opening months of 2020, as a new coronavirus spread from Wuhan, China, to infect the world. COVID-19, declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, shuttered economies around the globe and sent gross domestic product into a nosedive in the lat- ter half of the month. With B.C. limiting large gatherings through the end of May, the grim outlook prompted many events to be post- poned or cancelled outright. Businesses of all stripes were sent scrambling. But the biggest companies in the prov- ince seemed set to weather the challenges, ending last year with total revenue of $195.6 billion, up marginally from 2018 to set a new For B.C.'s big retailers and manufacturers, 2019 brought more prosperity as players in the resources sec- tors struggled. Now it remains to be seen how long the COVID- 19 pandemic will sap consumer confidence continued on page 61 The Last Good Year b y P E T E R M I T H A M RECOVERY MODE There are many familiar companies on our 2019 Top 100 list. Will that be the case next year? benchmark for the Top 100 list. Growth was slower, reflecting the maturity of the eco- nomic cycle but underpinned by the essen- tial nature of the business being done. The top five companies in the province for 2019, unchanged from the previous ranking, include Telus Corp., Jim Pattison Group and BC Hydro and Power Authority. Anyone with a phone, a charger and an appetite probably gave business to all three of them last year. (Pattison Group's diversified holdings include far more than consumer goods, making it a provincial icon.) Looking beyond the top five, home- grown retailers and manufacturers prevail. Besides key public sector players Insurance Corp. of British Columbia and WorksafeBC,