Net assets at March 31 2020 are said to have stood at AUD$150.85 million (£75.4 million/$93.5 million/€86 million), down from AUD$$171.4 million (£85.7 million/$106.3 million/€97.7 million) just three months earlier.

The figures are interesting as they give a first indication of how much of the value financial investments held by sports bodies around the world might have lost as a consequence of the virus that has now killed more than 159,000 people.

Wealthy bodies such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the world football body FIFA are facing tough decisions about how to deploy this wealth to stave off the worst financial consequences of the coronavirus-inspired shutdown.

But at the same time, this wealth is extremely likely to be diminishing – as the AOF’s new figures demonstrate.

There is of course no guarantee that other sports bodies will have suffered a similar decrease to that announced by the AOF, or indeed any decrease at all.

But it does seem reasonable to assume that investment strategies implemented by similar bodies will follow similar guidelines.

The most recent asset figures for the IOC date from the end of 2018 and are reported here

At that time, total assets were reported to stand at $4.1 billion (£3.3 billion/€3.8 billion), with “cash and other financial assets” put at $3.7 billion (£3 billion/€3.4 billion).

The Australian media release, which is attributed to John Coates, who is both AOF chair and President of the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC), states that the AOC recorded a surplus of more than AUD$5.4 million (£2.7 million/$3.35 million/€3.1 million) in 2019.

This was settled on the AOF, leaving a nil balance.

AOF net assets at end-2019 were after distributing AUD$6.25 million (£3.1 million/$3.9 million/€3.6 million) in the year to the AOC.

The reduced net asset figure for end-March was, similarly, after distributing AUD$1.56 million (£780,000/$967,000/€889,000) to the AOC in the quarter.

As the release states, the AOF’s net asset figure is relevant to the AOC’s financial planning, as the quarterly distributions it receives from the Foundation are “calculated, under the terms of the Foundation Deed of Trust, at four per cent per annum of net assets at the commencement of each four year period”.

As is also explained, the next such calculation date is January 1 2021.

The AOF’s AUD$150.85 million (£75.4 million/$93.5 million/€86 million) in net assets at end-March 2020 is said to include AUD$11.9 million (£5.95 million/$7.38 million/€6.8 million) in cash, “sufficient to cover the remaining distributions in 2020 and those in 2021 without realising any investments in a depressed market”.

The release pointed out that the decrease in the Australian ASX200 accumulation index, the benchmark for Australian equity performance, in the first three months of this year was 23 per cent, implying that the AOF had done well not to suffer a bigger decline in the value of its assets over this period.