Light + Building postponed; Signify leads cancellations due to coronavirus

Mondays tend to bring the most news no matter the business sector of interest, but this Monday, Feb. 24, was still surprising given that Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) announced it would not attend the Light + Building (L+B) event, and a short time later L+B organizers announced a plan to postpone the trade fair until a still-to-be-specified date in September. The coronavirus is the culprit, and specifically the realization over the weekend that a cluster of cases had been documented in Northern Italy. The move to postpone L+B is both precautionary and the result of incredible logistics obstacles that the organizers would have faced to go forward with the event originally planned for Mar. 8–13 in Frankfurt, Germany, and easily the largest event globally for the LED and solid-state lighting (SSL) sectors.