fortune--2020-01-23--Blossom Capital founder Ophelia Brown is tired of answering questions about her gender

Sundance 2020 : Hunting for the next indie hit and what it may be worth

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Europe has been quietly killing it when it comes to venture capital. Limited partners continue to pour cash into funds, with first-time fund closes on pace to hit a record high in seven years, according to Pitchbook data. What’s more, funding rounds in Europe involving U.S. investors jumped to $16.6 billion last year, up from $10.9 billion in 2018, according to data from Dealroom.
Now, more and more European-based firms are wooing limited partners to pour large sums of capital into their VC funds. Just last week, London-based Felix Capital raised $300 million for its third venture fund.
Blossom Capital has raised $185 million for its second fund to invest in early-stage startups in Europe. The vehicle comes less than a year after its inaugural $85 million fund, which is ranked in the top 5% of those raised in the U.S. and Europe last year, according to data from Cambridge Associates and Preqin.
My colleague Jeremy Kahn interviewed Blossom founder Ophelia Brown, who previously worked at one of Europe’s most established VC firms Index Ventures. Jeremy asked her my least favorite question: What’s it like to be a woman and a founding partner of your own firm in the still male-dominated venture capital sector?
I get asked a variation of this question about working as a reporter covering a male-dominated industry. Brown answered it perfectly:
“It really annoys me because I don’t think this should be part of the discussion anymore,” she said. “People should be assessing us on our performance, the same way they do with any manager. The female part should be removed out of the equation.”
Brown added that diversity is an important factor in Blossom’s approach—but she doesn’t like to view diversity through the singular lens of gender. “It is important to have a diverse partnership, but diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, and upbringing,” she says. “They’re all important.”
Mic drop.
Read the full story here.
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Polina Marinova
Twitter: @polina_marinova
Email: polina.marinova@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Bounce, an India-based shared mobility company, raised $105 million in Series D funding. Accel and B Capital led the round, and were joined by investors including Accel Partners India, Chiratae Ventures, Falcon Edge, Maverick Ventures, Omidyar Network India, Qualcomm Ventures and Sequoia Capital India.
- Tink, a Sweden-based open banking platform, raised €90 million ($99.8 million) in funding. Dawn Capital, HMI Capital and Insight Partners co-led the round, and were joined by investors including Heartcore Capital, ABN AMRO Ventures and BNP Paribas’ venture arm, Opera Tech Ventures.
- Front, a San Francisco-based developer of a collaborative work email platform, raised $59 million in Series C funding. Atlassian co-CEO and co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes; Atlassian President Jay Simons; Okta COO and co-founder Frederic Kerrest; Qualtrics co-founders Ryan and Jared Smith; and Zoom CEO Eric Yuan co-led the round, and were joined by investors including Sequoia Capital, Initialized Capital, and Anthos Capital.
- Socotra, a San Francisco-based cloud-based platform for the insurance sector, raised $15.2 million in Series B funding. Brewer Lane Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Portag3 Ventures, 8VC, and MS&AD Ventures.
- Proxyclick, a Belgium-based provider of enterprise visitor management software, raised $15 million in Series B funding. Five Elms Capital led the round, and was joined by investors including JOIN Capital.
- Unito, a Canada-based integration solution for workflow automation, raised $10.5 million in Series A funding. Investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Mistral Venture Partners, Real Ventures, and Tom Williams.
- Promethium, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based augmented data management provider, raised $6 million in funding. .406 Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Zetta Venture Partners.
- Thundra, a Boston-based provider of application management, security, and compliance, raised $4 million in Series A funding. Battery Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including York IE and Berkay Mollamustafaoglu.
- TriggerMesh, a Cary, N.C.-based developer of a serverless management platform for managing functions and event triggers, raised $3 million in seed funding. Index Ventures and Crane Venture Partners co-led the round.
HEALTH & LIFE SCIENCES DEALS
- Immuneering Corporation, a Cambridge, Mass.-based provider of genetic, genomic, and proteomic data analysis services for pharmaceutical companies, raised $20 million in Series A funding. Boxcar PMJ led the round.
- Elypta, a Sweden-based molecular diagnostics firm, raised €6.1 million in seed funding. Industrifonden and Sciety led the round, and was joined by investors including Nina Capital and Chalmers Ventures.
PRIVATE EQUITY DEALS
- Gryphon Investors acquired Ncontracts, a Brentwood, Tenn.-based provider of integrated risk management software and services for the financial services industry. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
OTHER DEALS
- Fiduciary Trust Company International agreed to acquire The Pennsylvania Trust Company, a Radnor, Penn.-based wealth management firm. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Grain Management acquired a majority interest in Summit Vista, Inc (dba Summit Broadband), an Orlando, Fla.-based provider of a fiber-optics telecommunication services, from Cable Bahamas Ltd. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
EXITS
- Busuu acquired Verbling, a Palo Alto, Calof.-based live video tutoring company. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Verbling had raised approximately $1 million from investors including Bullpen Capital, FundersClub, and DFJ.
FIRMS + FUNDS
- Anzu Partners, a Billerica, Mass.-based venture capital and private equity firm, raised $190 million for its second fund, Anzu Industrial Capital Partners II L.P.
- Wynnchurch Capital, L.P, a private equity firm, raised $2.277 billion for its fifth private equity fund, Wynnchurch Capital Partners V, L.P.
PEOPLE
- Kunal Soni joined Morgan Stanley Investment Management as a managing director.
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fortune--2020-01-23--Trump’s impeachment trial deemed not ready for prime time by television executives

The first night of arguments in favor of President Donald Trump’s impeachment before the U.S. Senate was judged not ready for prime time by many of the nation’s television executives.
ABC, CBS and NBC all stuck with regularly scheduled programs like “Chicago Med,” “Criminal Minds” and “Modern Family” Wednesday evening instead of showing the House managers’ evening session at the impeachment trial. That lasted about two hours, 15 minutes.
CNN and MSNBC carried the trial in full. Fox News Channel, after showing Rep. Adam Schiff speak for about a half hour, interrupted for a story about a child support case involving former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, and never returned.
Even two PBS stations in the New York area showed science programming and “Antiques Roadshow” instead of the trial Wednesday evening. PBS said it gave its local stations the option to show the trial or not.
The calls Wednesday night are significant because if the top networks decided not to pre-empt programming on the first full night the case against Trump was laid out, chances are they won’t reverse course later unless the unexpected happens.
Daytime was an intriguing contrast, since the top three broadcasters and cable news outlets all carried Schiff’s initial stand at the podium, which lasted more than two hours.
It was rare for anyone in today’s media world to command full television attention to that extent. The Senate’s rules for the trial, which required using a single camera on the speaker and didn’t allow reaction shots of senators, only served to accentuate Schiff’s message.
Meanwhile, Trump was setting a record for sending out the most tweets in a single day since he’s been president.
For the television networks, however, prime time is a different animal altogether, with more viewers and advertising revenue available.
After pulling away from House managers Wednesday evening, Fox News personalities spent much of their time ridiculing the proceedings. Fox mostly kept a postage stamp-size picture of the speaker soundlessly mouthing words in a corner of the screen, with an invitation for viewers to go online if they wanted to hear the arguments.
Fox’s Tucker Carlson ran clips of TV commentators on other network personalities who praised Schiff’s afternoon speech, calling the comments “pornographic.” He said Trump wasn’t the only victim of the impeachment trial — suggesting viewers were, too. He brought on a former Republican congressman to talk about alleged crimes in the Obama administration and Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe to assess the trial.
“Today was really boring and the president’s defense team is very happy,” Ratcliffe said.
Carlson also interviewed Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, with the host saying Hawley had “stepped out of the trial” to talk on television and criticize House managers.
Similarly, Fox’s Sean Hannity labeled the impeachment trial the “Schumer Schiff Sham Show” and attacked Schiff for his afternoon speech.
“He is a lunatic,” Hannity said. “If you watched him talk he was totally unhinged. He looked like a lunatic who has lost his mind.”
Wrapping up his evening argument a half-hour later, Schiff also used the word “sham,” but in a much different context, as a description for Trump’s attempts to get the Ukraine to investigate the activities of Hunter Biden.
It wasn’t heard on Fox, however. At the time Hannity was interviewing lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a member of Trump’s impeachment defense team.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—The Chief Justice and impeachment: John Roberts’ role in the Trump trial
—How impeachment hearings in the Senate will work
—Understanding the 2020 election as brand marketing
—A Q&A with Sen. Kelly Loeffler on her unlikely path to Washington
—The World’s Most Admired Companies in 2020
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.


fortune--2020-01-23--A.I. is “the most important project humanity will ever work on”

This is the web version of Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Good morning, Data Sheet readers. Fortune writer Aric Jenkins here, subbing in for Adam, and I have a question for you:
What is the most important invention in the history of humanity?
It’s a broad, no-right-or-wrong-answers question you may have pondered late at night with friends at some point. I certainly have. Our discussion ranged from the medium of writing to the printing press, from the steam engine to electricity, and even fairly recent developments (hello again, people, I’m talking to you through the Internet).
One answer I always found particularly fascinating is the control of fire. This simple innovation completely reshaped the early human experience. Hundreds of thousands of years after the invention of controlled fire, some would argue it’s still the most impactful technology of all time.
But that soon might change, according to some evangelists—very smart and successful evangelists, I might add. Here’s a choice passage from Fortune‘s latest cover story, by my colleague Jeremy Kahn, on artificial intelligence:
“This is about capturing the next great pool of wealth in technology,” says Craig Le Clair, an analyst at Forrester Research, the tech analytics firm. He compares A.I. to electricity in its potential impact. Sundar Pichai, [Microsoft CEO Satya] Nadella’s rival CEO at Alphabet, has gone further, calling A.I. the most important project humanity would ever work on, “more profound than fire.”
Imagine being able to monetize the invention of fire. Now imagine missing out on the chance to monetize fire.
So, yes, the A.I. hype is real. So much so that Fortune decided to devote an expansive special report on it in our brand-new, beautifully redesigned print magazine that hit newsstands earlier this week. Inside the pages are six deep dives that cover various facets of the technology from natural-language processing to TikTok in China to human resource departments’ utilization of A.I.—for better or worse.
I’ll leave you with one last note on the theme of “most important technologies”: Artificial intelligence is well on its way in the form of “narrow A.I,” the limited but skillful tech that makes tools like Alexa or the iPhone’s facial recognition possible.
As Jeremy notes in his story, “the application of narrow A.I. will add some $13 trillion to the global economy by 2030, an amount that (the McKinsey Global Institute) says would make the technology more impactful than the steam engine was in the 1800s.”
Aric Jenkins
Twitter: @aricwithan_a
Email: aric.jenkins@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
A handful. People who prefer the older style of iPhone will get a refreshed model likely in March, Bloomberg reports. Apple is working on a sequel to the iPhone SE that will resemble the iPhone 8 with a 4.7-inch screen. Coming a little sooner, Lenovo's Motorola unit said it would start taking preorders for its foldable Razr phone beginning on Jan. 26, with shipments for the $1,500 device starting on Feb. 6.
Getting icy down in hell. Amazon released a real, comparable number for one of its units. The e-commerce giant on Wednesday disclosed that Amazon Music has more than 55 million subscribers, just behind Apple Music's 60 million but still less than half Spotify's total.
Press 1 for more options. The county that includes Seattle will hold a municipal election starting on Wednesday that allows voting online or via smartphone. Voters in the King County Conservation District Board of Supervisors election previously had to go online to request that they be mailed a paper ballot, which they then had to fill out and mail back. Only 3,500 people, less than 1% of eligible voters, participated in that system last year.
Zoom a zoom. On Wall Street, IBM reported fourth quarter results better than analysts expected. Revenue of $21.8 billion increased 0.1% (pay attention to the decimal place on that one), the first sales growth in more than a year. Shares of IBM, up 16% over the past year, gained 3% on Wednesday.
Vibe check. Some job cuts in tech world to report. TripAdvisor, based in my own hometown of Needham, Mass., is cutting about 200 jobs, or 5% of its workforce, as it seeks to improve profitability. And Playful Studios in McKinney, Texas, is making "significant layoffs" as it deals with slow business. Co-founder Paul Bettner is best known for the game Words With Friends produced by an earlier company he started and sold to Zynga.
A little Q&A. While we've filled in for Adam lately at the top of the newsletter, Fortune's executive editor has been busy working on some deeper stories. In his lengthy conversation with Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, it sounds like Pichai is quite satisfied with the current corporate structure that has Google as one of multiple units under the Alphabet umbrella.
"It has allowed us to not have a single management team try to scale and deal with many different separate areas," he told Adam. "And how we need to approach each of these areas sometimes can be very, very different. They are different businesses with different time horizons. Alphabet allows us to pursue some of the other areas with maybe different structures we need."
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
As we mentioned in this space back in November, some strange and unsettling problems are cropping up with the Global Positioning Satellite system. Fortune's Katherine Dunn took a deep dive into some of the incidents and found worrisome signs that things may get even worse for the shippers who depend on GPS.
In recent years, GPS has become so reliable and so ubiquitous that you can forget it’s even there—much less that it can fail. But it’s surprisingly easy, it turns out, to knock the system into disarray. The shipping industry, meanwhile, appears underprepared to cope with breakdowns and unwilling to invest in self-defense in the absence of the kind of Exxon Valdez–like disaster it has so far been fortunate to avoid. Rick Hamilton, GPS information analysis team lead at the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center, says shippers and governments alike face an existential question: “How much risk are you willing to take to avoid spending a whole lot of money?”
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Jeff Bezos phone hack highlights how hackers can use WhatsApp to spy By Alyssa Newcomb
5G hits the mainstream in 2020—will it live up to the hype? By Aaron Pressman and Nicolas Rapp
The fall of WeWork was a jolt to venture capital—how that could change VC investing By Anne Sraders
As Tesla’s market cap hits $100 billion, Elon Musk could be headed for a big pay day By Chris Morris
WeWork’s other cofounder has a plan to save the company. It’s the opposite of what Adam Neumann envisioned. By Polina Marinova
SAP Co-CEO Jennifer Morgan on why we need to redefine what ‘ready’ means By Claire Zillman and Emma Hinchliffe
THE FUTURE OF FORTUNE IS HERE
In 1930, Fortune published its first-ever issue, featuring the goddess Fortuna and her wheel on the cover. This year, on our 90th anniversary, we’re celebrating with a new Fortune. Here’s what’s in store for you:
FORTUNE BRAINSTORM A.I.
If you’re interested to learn how some of the biggest, most influential companies are strategizing about artificial intelligence, come to Fortune’s Brainstorm A.I. conference in Boston on April 27-28, 2020. A.I. is a game-changing technology that promises to revolutionize business, but it can be confusing and mysterious to executives. The savviest leaders know how to cut through the deluge of A.I. buzzwords and reap the technology’s benefits.
Attendees of this invite-only conference can take part in cutting-edge conversations with top corporate execs, leading A.I. thinkers, and power players. Among them: U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios; Accenture CEO Julie Sweet; Land O’Lakes CEO Beth Ford; Siemens U.S. CEO Barbara Humpton; Royal Philips NV CEO Frans van Houten; Landing AI founder and CEO Andrew Ng; Robust.AI founder and CEO Gary Marcus; and top machine learning experts from Bank of America, Dow, Verizon, Slack, Zoom, Pinterest, Lyft, and MIT. You can request an invitation.
BEFORE YOU GO
You probably don't remember the old Saturday Night Live routine about the land shark. It was a hoot. Now it's no joke, as scientists in Australia say they have discovered several new species of the ocean predator that have grown stubby legs to walk on land, if only briefly.
Aaron Pressman
On Twitter: @ampressman
Email: aaron.pressman@fortune.com


fortune--2020-01-23--Will retiring baby boomers crash the stock market?

There are 73 million baby boomers in the United States. By 2030, this entire generation will be age 65 or older as roughly 10,000 boomers are reaching this standard retirement age on a daily basis. In the year 2000, just 12% of the U.S. population was over the age of 65. By 2030, that number will nearly double to more than 20%.
This wave of retirees offers both challenges and opportunities for the financial services industry. Many of these retirees will require advice when it comes to spending down their portfolios; deciding when to take social security; dealing with estate planning, healthcare needs, and tax strategies; and designing a fulfilling post-work life.
The surge of baby boomer retirees will also present challenges for the financial markets. The baby boomers own the bulk of stocks in this country, which makes sense since they have had longer to accumulate financial assets than younger generations. But this fact troubles many people, who worry that once baby boomers go to sell their stocks en masse, the market will crash.
Here are some reasons these fears are overblown.
Many boomers are unprepared for retirement
According to a report from the Stanford Center on Longevity, one-third of baby boomers have no money saved in retirement plans. And for those who do hold a positive retirement balance, the median account value is just $200,000.
When combined with social security and potentially some pension income, many retirees will be able to make things work in terms of keeping up their lifestyle. But many are woefully prepared financially for a retirement that could last two, three or four decades in some cases.
Therefore, many boomers will be forced to work longer. The fact that people are living longer means this shouldn’t come as a surprise, and this fact will likely push back stock selling for a large percentage of boomers.
Stock ownership is concentrated
One of the reasons inequality has continued to worsen in this country is because not enough people hold financial assets. The stock market has been a wonderful money-making machine over the past 10 years but that doesn’t help if you don’t participate.
It’s estimated that the top 10% of households by wealth hold close to 85% of the stocks in the U.S. (which is up from 77% in 2001). This concentration of wealth means most of the stocks retirees hold won’t need to be sold. They are more likely to be passed on to the next generation.
Read: All of your questions on filing taxes in 2020, answered
Investors have other assets
Considering the low levels of interest rates and high recent returns in the stock market, you would expect the bulk of money in investor portfolios would be allocated to equities. But that’s not the case.
While the level has been steadily rising since 2009, the average household allocation to stocks is still only 44%. Investors also hold cash, bonds, real estate, commodities, their own businesses, and other assets.
So retirees won’t be relying exclusively on the stock market to fund their retirement. And the idea that retirees will immediately shift the majority of their stock holdings into bonds for their relative lack of volatility doesn’t hold water for the simple fact that interest rates are so low and people will have many years ahead of them to continue to grow their capital. If anything, you could make the argument that a lack of retirement savings and a longer lifespan will force people approaching retirement age to invest more in equities, not less.
Someone has to buy those assets
While those 70+ million baby boomers will all be age 65 or older by 2030, they won’t be the largest age group at that point. In fact, they aren’t the largest age group right now. That distinction belongs to the millennials, who number around 87 million. There are also more than 70 million people in Gen Z.
Although young people are financially behind where their parents were at the same age, due to a combination of the timing of the financial crisis and slower wage gains in recent decades, millennials are prime candidates to step up to the plate to buy any assets boomers are willing to part ways with.
Another reason millennials are behind where their parents were at the same age, when it comes to finances, is that they are by far the most educated generation in history. This means this group has put off some of their earning years upfront to hopefully earn more down the line.
Eventually, younger generations are going to play catch-up when it comes to their financial situations. The oldest millennials will be 39 this year, so a big part of this group is now well into their 30s—a prime age for household formation and moving up the career ladder. This progression is happening later in life for millennials but that means they will be buyers of financial assets for decades to come.
The stock market can and will crash in the years ahead. That’s simply part of the deal one accepts when investing in risk assets. But there are plenty of reasons to believe retiring baby boomers won’t destroy the financial system just because some of them will be net sellers in the years ahead.
Ben Carlson, CFA is the Director of Institutional Asset Management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. He may own securities or assets discussed in this piece.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Why investors should pick the underdogs in sports gambling
—In the optimism divide between CEOs and investors, somebody’s wrong
—6 experts on what the U.S. won (and lost) in the China trade agreement
—Fertility Inc.: Inside the big business of babymaking
—The World’s Most Admired Companies in 2020
Subscribe to Fortune’s Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


fortune--2020-01-23--Suit up! Exploring women’s custom tailoring

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Greece chooses its first female head of state, Tulsi Gabbard sues Hillary Clinton, and we dig into the world of women’s custom suits. Have a terrific Thursday.
– Suit up! A couple months back, I was rifling through my bedroom closet when I was struck by a realization: While my husband’s side includes a tidy collection of custom-made suits and shirts, every single blazer or button-down on my section of the central rack had been bought, well, off the rack.
As it turns out, that’s pretty standard. There are dozens of companies (and countless individual tailors) that make custom suiting for men, but the market for women, though growing, remains relatively small. So, what compelled the custom industry to spend so many decades giving women the cold—if impeccably tailored—shoulder? And why is that state of affairs finally beginning to shift?
In this story, new on Fortune.com this morning, I attempt to get to the bottom of those questions, spending time with some of the enterprising tailors and designers who specialize in women’s suiting—and even getting my own suit made along the way. My sources shed light on the forces that have held women’s custom back (the Fashion Industrial Complex, tailoring’s fuddy duddy roots, the near infinite variety of women’s physiques) and the women who have the most to gain from having clothing created just for them—including those in the LGBTQ+ community.
Perhaps the most fascinating part of reporting this piece was talking to women about what they believe their suits say to the wider world. For instance, NYC-based women’s bespoke tailor Dara Lamb told me that some of her clients consider how wearing certain high-quality menswear fabrics might help them communicate with the men in their professional orbits. “Most of [those men] have gotten their suits custom made, most of them have seen fabrics like that.” Lamb believes this kind of visual familiarity can “take the walls down—it really does allow you a greater level of influence.”
Then there’s Dr. Susan Nicholson, VP of Women’s Health at Johnson & Johnson, who purchased her first suit from London-based bespoke tailor Kathryn Sargent last year. Her reason for suiting up is hard to argue with: “For me, co-opting that male symbol of power and influence says, ‘Hey, I’m influential too.’ ”
You can read the full story here.
Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee
Today’s Broadsheet was produced by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Greece lightning. Greek lawmakers elected Aikaterini Sakellaropoulou president on Wednesday, making her the country's first female head of state. The role is largely ceremonial and "honors both justice and the modern Greek woman," Sakellaropoulu said. Bloomberg
- Candidate vs. former candidate. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a candidate for president, filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit against Hillary Clinton alleging that Clinton said Gabbard was a "favorite of the Russians." Clinton made the comments in question during a podcast interview without mentioning Gabbard by name. Gabbard's lawyer writes that the former secretary of state's "personal hostility toward Rep. Gabbard apparently clouded [her] reason." A Clinton spokesman called the lawsuit "ridiculous." ABC News
- On trial. The prosecution and defense read their opening statements in Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault and rape trial yesterday. The prosecution argued that Weinstein is "not a harmless old man" and is a serial sexual abuser; it also revealed new witnesses who will testify to Weinstein's history of alleged sexual predation. The defense denies that Weinstein engaged in any "nonconsensual sexual activity" and cited "friendly" text messages between Weinstein and one of the women whose allegations are part of the trial. Fortune
- Focus on the fund. Fortune's Jeremy Kahn interviews Ophelia Brown, the 33-year founder of London-based Blossom Capital. Brown is sick of talking about being a woman in the field. "It really annoys me because I don't think this should be part of the discussion anymore. People should be assessing us on our performance, the same way they do with any manager," she says. Her firm raised a $185 million fund to back European early-stage startups. Fortune
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Gap CMO Alegra O’Hare left after 11 months in the position amid news that Gap Inc. will abandon a planned spinoff of Old Navy and a redefinition of her role. The Paris Review named novelist Mona Simpson publisher. FIG promoted Jill Landaker to head of production. Manju Agarwal, a longtime banking executive in India, joins the board of StorCentric as an advisor.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Anniversary report. Yesterday was the 47th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. To mark the occasion, read this Guardian interview with Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson, who says she feels "good about going into this year" despite states' efforts to restrict abortion in 2019. For another perspective, this Vox explainer breaks down June Medical Services v. Gee, the upcoming Supreme Court case that could gut abortion rights.
- Directing progress. Fifty members of the Directors' Guild of America signed a letter urging the guild to change a minimum earnings policy to allow directors more time off after becoming parents—not quite paid leave, but an effort to at least allow new parents to keep their DGA healthcare. Documentary filmmaker Jessica Dimmock wrote the letter, signed by directors including Greta Gerwig and Ava DuVernay, ahead of the DGA Awards on Sunday. LA Times
- Election results. With 2020 primaries less than two weeks away and the general election fast approaching, Shelby Pierson is tasked with keeping elections secure. She says in this interview that other nations could attempt more types of interference this year after learning from Russia's efforts in 2016. NPR
ON MY RADAR
Meet the woman building the ‘backbone’ of the cannabis industry Fortune
Anne Brontë is the least famous Brontë sister. But she might have been the most radical Vox
Why restaurants still can't shake their sexist service etiquette MEL Magazine
Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens team: Asian-American representation is not a ‘fad’ Fortune
PARTING WORDS
"When you’re a young woman in government—or in general, in life—and you decide to tackle a topic like fashion, everybody goes after you. ... If I were really a politician, I would have taken nuclear energy or something."
-Brune Poirson, a secretary of state to France's minister for the ecological and inclusive transition. Unofficially, she's France's minister for fashion, working on issues ranging from tariffs to sustainability.


fortune--2020-01-23--Migrant parents separated from kids since 2018 return to U.S.

Nine parents who were deported as the Trump administration separated thousands of migrant families landed back into the U.S. late Wednesday to reunite with children they had not seen in a year and a half.
The group arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from Guatemala City in a trip arranged under the order of a federal judge who found the U.S. government had unlawfully prevented them from seeking asylum. An asylum advocate confirmed the nine parents were all aboard the flight.
Some of the children were at the airport to greet them, including David Xol’s 9-year-old son Byron.
David fell to one knee and tearfully embraced Byron for about three minutes, patting the back of his son’s head.
“He was small,” David said after rising to his feet. He looked at his attorney — who accompanied him on the flight — raised his hand about chest-high and said, “He grew a lot.”
David, Byron and his attorney, Ricardo de Anda, then embraced in a three-way hug and exchanged words in their huddle. Byron was all smiles. Father, son, attorney and family sponsor eagerly left the airport for their hotel.
The reunion was a powerful reminder of the lasting effects of Trump’s separation policy, even as attention and outrage has faded amid impeachment proceedings and tensions with Iran. But it also underscored that hundreds, potentially thousands, of other parents and children are still apart nearly two years after the zero-tolerance policy on unauthorized border crossings took effect.
“They all kind of hit the lottery,” said Linda Grimm, an attorney who represents one of the parents returning to the U.S. “There are so many people out there who have been traumatized by the family separation policy whose pain is not going to be redressed.”
More than 4,000 children are known to have been separated from their parents before and during the official start of zero tolerance in spring 2018. Under the policy, border agents charged parents en masse with illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, then placed their children in government facilities, including some “tender-age shelters” set up for infants.
The U.S. has acknowledged that agents separated families long before they enforced zero tolerance across the entire southern border, its agencies did not properly record separations, and some detention centers were overcrowded and undersupplied, with families denied food, water or medical care.
In June 2018, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the government to stop separating families and reunite parents and children.
At least 470 parents were deported without their children. Some of the kids were held in U.S. government facilities and ultimately placed with sponsors. Others were deported to their home countries.
Accounts emerged of many parents being told to sign paperwork they couldn’t read or understand or being denied a chance to request asylum in ways that violated federal law.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security referred a request for comment to the Justice Department, which did not respond.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the original family separation lawsuit before Sabraw, asked the judge to order the return of a small group of parents whose children remained in the U.S. In September, Sabraw required the U.S. to allow 11 parents to come back and denied relief to seven others.
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said Sabraw made clear he would only order the return of people “who were misled or coerced into giving up their asylum rights.” That will leave other parents who fled violence, poverty and persecution to decide whether to have their children return to their home countries or remain in the U.S. without them.
“Many are going to make the decision that generations of immigrant parents have made — to leave their child in the U.S. and endure the hardship of separation, but to do it for their child’s own safety,” Gelernt said.
Xol said that after he and his then-7-year-old son, Byron, crossed the border, they were taken to a U.S. Border Patrol processing center in South Texas. Xol was charged with illegal entry on May 19, 2018.
Two days later, Xol said an officer told him to sign a document that would allow him and Byron to be deported together. If he didn’t sign, Byron would be given up for adoption and Xol would be detained for at least two years.
Xol signed the document, only to have Byron taken away and then get deported to Guatemala. Byron was placed in government facilities for 11 months.
The family’s attorney, Ricardo de Anda, persuaded a federal court to force the U.S. to let a Texas family take in Byron. Since May 2019, Byron has lived with Holly and Matthew Sewell and their two children, with regular video calls to his family.
Holly Sewell brought Byron, now 9, to meet his father at the airport. They planned to go back to Texas to pack and prepare for Byron to move in with his father once Xol is settled in California. Before the reunion, Byron kept asking Sewell, his caretaker, when his father would clear immigration authorities.
“They’re almost here, you’re doing great,” she said. “Count to 1,000.”
“999,” Byron responded.
She said she was thrilled Byron could see his dad again but sharply criticized the U.S. government’s treatment of asylum-seekers.
Esvin Fernando Arredondo was expected to be on the plane. The father from Guatemala was separated from one of his daughters, Andrea Arredondo — then 12 years old and now 13, after they turned themselves in on May 16, 2018, at a Texas crossing and sought asylum legally, according to Grimm, his lawyer. He failed an initial screening and agreed to go back to Guatemala.
According to Sabraw’s ruling, the government deported Arredondo even after the judge had ordered families reunited and subsequently prohibited U.S. officials from removing any parent separated from their child. He’s now being given a second chance at asylum under the court order.
Andrea was separated from all family for about a month, living in a shelter as the government struggled to connect children with their parents because they lacked adequate tracking systems. She was finally reunited with her mother, who had turned herself in at the Texas crossing with the other two daughters four days earlier than her husband, on May 12, 2018.
She and her two daughters passed the initial screening interview for asylum, unlike her husband, even though they were fleeing for the same reason. Their son Marco, 17, was shot and killed by suspected gang members in Guatemala City.
Arredondo’s wife, Cleivi Jerez, 41, arrived at LAX less than an hour before the flight landed with their three daughters in tow, ages 17, 13 and 7.
“Lots of nerves, last night I couldn’t sleep,” she said in Spanish in an interview after the flight landed.
Jerez said she planned to stay up late catching up with her husband. She planned to rest at their Los Angeles home tomorrow as well, catching up on their 17 months apart before he has to report to an ICE office Friday in San Diego. Alison Arredondo, 7, said she missed going to the park with her father and she wanted to go to one with him in LA.
While the U.S. has stopped the large-scale separations, it has implemented policies to prevent many asylum-seekers from entering the country. Under its “Remain in Mexico” policy, more than 50,000 people have been told to wait there for weeks or months for U.S. court dates. The Trump administration also is ramping up deportations of Central Americans to other countries in the region to seek asylum there.
“People want to make this a heartwarming story, but it’s not. It’s devastating,” Sewell said. “There is just no good reason why we had to do this to this child and this family. And he symbolizes thousands of others who have been put in this exact same position.”
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fortune--2020-01-23--Harvey Weinstein set to face his accusers for the first time

Actress Annabella Sciorra confronted Harvey Weinstein in court Thursday after keeping her rape accusation against the former Hollywood honcho largely hidden for decades.
For more than a quarter-century, she told only few friends that the once-revered producer had pinned her to a bed and violated her, until she came forward publicly in 2017.
Now, Sciorra has become the first of Weinstein’s accusers to testify at his New York City rape trial.
Sciorra, best known for her work in “The Sopranos,” stands to be a key witness in a watershed trial for the #MeToo movement.
Sciorra, 59, started acting in the late 1980s and soon drew acclaim for her leading part in Spike Lee’s 1991 film “Jungle Fever” and her role as a pregnant woman molested by her doctor in 1992’s “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle” the next year.
The New York trial involves just a pair of the dozens of allegations that surfaced against Weinstein in recent years. He is charged with forcibly performing oral sex on former “Project Runway” production assistant Mimi Haleyi in his apartment in 2006 and raping an aspiring actress in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013.
Weinstein has insisted any sexual encounters were consensual. As he left court on Wednesday, he told reporters he felt “very confident” about the case.
A guilty verdict could put the 67-year-old disgraced movie mogul in prison for the rest of his life.
Sciorra’s allegations date back too long to be prosecuted on their own, but her testimony could be a factor as prosecutors look to show that Weinstein has engaged in a pattern of predatory behavior.
Her testimony about events in the mid-to-late 1990s could give the jury of seven men and five women a sense of the breadth of Weinstein’s alleged wrongdoing and insight into the power dynamics at play in his interactions with young actresses.
Prosecutors previewed Sciorra’s testimony in a lengthy, at-times graphic opening statement Wednesday that painted Weinstein as a sexual predator who used his film industry clout to abuse women for decades.
She’s one of four other accusers that prosecutors plan to call as witnesses during the monthlong trial.
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have been victims of sexual assault, unless they come forward publicly.
Sciorra alleges Weinstein showed up at her Manhattan apartment after dropping her off from a dinner, forced himself inside and raped her sometime in late 1993 or early 1994.
“The evidence will show that despite her protests, despite her fight, despite her body revolting, Harvey Weinstein felt he was entitled to take what he wanted from Annabella , forcing her to live in terror of him for decades,” prosecutor Meghan Hast told jurors in her opening statement.
That touched off several years of Weinstein tormenting Sciorra, Hast said, culminating in an incident at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 in which he arrived at her hotel door in his underwear, with a bottle of baby oil in hand.
A petrified Sciorra ran to the back of the room and started hitting call buttons, at which point Weinstein left, Hast said.
Sciorra did not go to authorities because she feared reprisal from Weinstein, prosecutors said. She went public in The New Yorker in October 2017, telling the magazine that for years she had been “so ashamed of what happened.”
“I fought. I fought. But still I was like, ‘Why did I open that door? Who opens the door at that time of night?’” Sciorra said. “I was definitely embarrassed by it. I felt disgusting.”
Weinstein lawyer Damon Cheronis, in his opening statement, made clear the defense intends to go on the offensive.
He questioned the validity of Sciorra’s account, saying she once told a friend that she “did a crazy thing and had sex with Harvey Weinstein” and that she had a consensual encounter with him.
“She didn’t describe it as rape because it wasn’t,” Cheronis said.
Update, January 23, 2020: This story was updated to include Anabelle Sciorra’s testimony.
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fortune--2020-01-23--5 surprising consequences from a decade of Citizens United

Ten years ago this week, the Supreme Court issued a bombshell decision that tore up rules limiting what corporations could spend on political campaigns. Conservatives hailed the 5–4 ruling, known as Citizens United, as a victory for free speech, but critics warned it would distort democracy.
A decade later, the actual impact of the court’s ruling has become clearer. It is now apparent that Citizens United has indeed altered the course of American politics and that critics’ fears have been validated—though not in the ways they may have predicted. Here are five fallouts from one of the most significant Supreme Court cases in modern history:
Remaining limits on election spending are all but meaningless
Even though the Supreme Court ended limits on what companies could spend on political campaigns, it left in place rules that forbid or limit direct contributions to candidates. In theory, this would let companies and wealthy individuals advertise their views on candidates and issues, but without influencing those candidates directly. In practice, it has created a distinction without a difference.
That’s because Citizens United helped fueled the emergence of so-called super PACs—political action committees that can raise and spend unlimited funds for and against candidates—that often host events where people pay to see a candidate speak. Even though candidates who attend can’t solicit funds directly, the events serve as fundraisers in everything but name. Meanwhile, nonpartisan research firm OpenSecrets notes how campaigns and super PACs have worked hand in glove to coordinate ad spending, barely concealing their cooperation. One egregious example, reported by the Brookings Institution, involved both political parties communicating with super PACs over Twitter to coordinate ad buys and polling strategies.
The takeaway is that limits on direct giving may remain, but Citizens United opened a loophole big enough to drive a Brinks truck through.
Wealthy individuals dominate election spending
In the aftermath of Citizens United, many predicted that big corporations would seize on the new opportunity to make unlimited donations to super PACs and other outside groups that spend money to boost—or more often tear down—certain candidates. And indeed, the amount of money flowing into politics has surged, including in the 2018 midterms, which saw nine of the 10 most expensive non-special- election House races in history. Most of this, however, is not coming from corporations.
According to an OpenSecrets report on Citizens United, corporations have accounted for less than 10% of outside fundraising each election cycle. Instead, it is ultrawealthy individuals such as casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and Chicago billionaires James and Mary Pritzker who are behind the gusher in political money, which has amounted to $4.5 billion in the last decade. Such figures have benefited from a follow-up court ruling, which held that Citizens United meant there can no longer be limits on what individuals can donate to PACs or other independent political entities. Underscoring the point, the report found that 10 major donors and their spouses alone accounted for 7% of all election-related spending in 2018.
Liberal groups are a big reason for the spending surge
While Citizens United is regarded as a victory for Republicans, Democrats and their liberal allies have not been shy about joining in the financial free-for-all. The two super PACs that have raised the most money since the decision are dedicated to electing Democratic presidential and Senate candidates, while No. 9 is the influential liberal women’s group, Emily’s List.
All of this has led the likes of the Wall Street Journal and other publications to claim that Citizens United has not distorted democracy, and to point out that election spending by unions and other left-leaning groups has counterbalanced that of Republican-allied groups.
Common Cause, a nonpartisan group that advocates for fairness in U.S. democracy, disagrees. Its vice president, Paul S. Ryan, told Fortune, “It’s entirely true that the wealthy in both parties are using this new system, but who is not benefiting is the everyday American.”
Ryan believes that massive campaign expenditures by a handful of wealthy people, which can outstrip the collective donations of thousands of ordinary individuals, diminishes the power of regular voters. And while the Democratic candidates running for President have railed about the corrupting influence of money on politics, they have nonetheless embraced the money spigots available in the post–Citizens United era. Joe Biden, for instance, initially refused to accept super PAC support but quietly changed his position last fall after a soft fundraising quarter.
“Dark money” is a new force
Critics’ concerns that Citizens United would allow big corporations to dictate election outcomes appear to have been overblown. The decision, however, seems to have paved the way for an equally troubling phenomenon: the rise of nonprofit entities known as “dark money” groups.
These groups, which enjoy a different legal status than super PACs, came into being thanks to another ruling by the Supreme Court’s conservatives, which held that nonprofit groups don’t have to disclose their donors. That ruling came in 2007, but Citizens United served to magnify its impact by removing restrictions on how much donors could give to dark money groups.
As the chart above shows, conservative groups, including Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS and the National Rifle Association, have been the most active in deploying dark money tactics. In the past decade, they spent nearly $1 billion on election ads without disclosing who paid for them.
Campaign finance reform has moved to the local level
The ruling in Citizens United is more entrenched than ever at the federal level thanks to a more conservative Supreme Court and its embrace by politicians from both political parties. Campaign finance reform, however, remains very much active in the United States.
Ryan of Common Cause notes that the Supreme Court did not strike down laws that require groups to disclose who is funding them or that forbid coordination between candidates and outside groups. In response, local governments have taken up the cause of preventing money from distorting politics.
“We are getting lots of wins at the state and local level in passing laws obliging disclosure, including the city of Seattle and in Montgomery and Howard counties in Maryland,” says Ryan. “There are wins all over the place—just not on Capitol Hill.”


fortune--2020-01-23--Bezos phone hack: What we know, and don’t, about the alleged Saudi intrusion

U.N. human rights experts are asking Washington to investigate a suspected Saudi hack that may have siphoned data from the personal smartphone of Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and owner of The Washington Post. But the forensic evidence they cite comes from an incomplete study of Bezos’s phone, raising multiple questions.
Here’s a quick guide to what’s known, and what remains unknown, about their findings.
What happened to Bezos’s phone?
According to a cybersecurity firm run by a former Obama administration official, evidence on the phone suggests it was infected by spyware in May 2018 via a WhatsApp message from the account of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. That message included a video file that the firm’s investigators say likely contained malware.
Bezos’ personal security adviser had been advised in February 2019 to have the phone examined by an intelligence official who has not been named. Bezos went public with the suspected hack shortly thereafter, saying the National Enquirer tabloid had threatened to publish his private messages and photos.
Are the forensic findings conclusive?
Not at all. Outside security researchers highlighted several issues with the forensics report by FTI Consulting, run by former Obama administration National Security Council cybersecurity official Anthony Ferrante.
For instance, the FTI report, dated November and obtained Wednesday by the Vice News site Motherboard, said researchers didn’t find any malware on the phone, nor any evidence that Bezos’ phone had surreptitiously communicated with known spyware command servers.
Further, an examination of the crucial root file system—where top-flight hackers often hide their malware—was still pending when the report was written. iPhone security expert Will Strafach, CEO of Guardian Firewall, said that if the FTI investigators didn’t look at the root file system, they didn’t do a thorough forensic exam.
“I think the U.N. intentions are good but the details really matter here and the public reporting falls short of any real firm smoking gun,” said Strafach.
Other security experts questioned the FTI team’s forensic chops, wondering on Twitter and in blog posts why it was unable to decrypt the software that would have delivered the malware payload along with the video file.
Alex Stamos of Stanford University tweeted: “The funny thing is that it looks like FTI potentially has the murder weapon sitting right there, they just haven’t figured out how to test it.”
Ferrante of FTI did not respond to emails and text messages seeking comment.
Could hackers have erased all evidence of intrusion?
Absolutely, said Strafach. Elite hackers plant malware that erases itself after surreptitiously sending sensitive data to command servers.
“It scoops up everything they want and removes itself so there’s no trace, no evidence,” he said. “Anyone who knows what they are doing are going to cover up their tracks.”
Sophisticated mobile spyware—such as a package called Pegasus, made by the Israeli hacker-for-hire company NSO Group—is designed to bypass detection and mask its activity. Saudi Arabia i s reported to have used Pegasus against dissidents and human rights activists within weeks of the suspected Bezos hack.
On Wednesday, NSO Group “unequivocally” denied that its technology was used in the Bezos hack.
Why is the United Nations involved?
One of the two U.N. officials seeking answers in the case, Agnes Callamard. focuses on extrajudicial killings and has already investigated the Saudi government’s role in the October 2018 murder in Turkey of Saudi critic and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
The other, David Kaye, is the U.N. point person on free expression. He focuses on the growing and lawless use of malicious spyware to monitor and intimidate human-rights defenders and journalists.
Both are independent experts in the U.N.’s human rights arm, not employees of the international organization.
Are other pubic figures at risk?
It’s difficult to say at the moment. Prince Mohammed has attended gatherings with numerous U.S. entertainers, technology executives and sports-team owners. A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said Jared Kushner, a White House aide and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, has communicated with the crown prince via WhatsApp.
Why isn’t the U.S. government more involved?
A top U.S. Justice Department official, Adam S. Hickey, would not say whether federal investigators were looking into the allegations. Trump has been reluctant to condemn the Saudi prince over the Khashoggi killing and often expresses satisfaction with his government’s purchases of U.S. weapons.
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fortune--2020-01-23--Couples are including cannabis at their weddings. How you can, too

“Folks have been consuming cannabis at weddings for as long as cannabis and weddings have existed,” explains Andrew Mieure, budtender and founder of Colorado-based Top Shelf Budtending. “We’re just putting a new, classier twist on the presentation.”
That elevated spin includes everything from edibles in the goodie bags to a fresh bud bar. It can help a couple take a “first toke” instead of a first kiss or have a signature strain in place of a couple’s cocktail. For Mieure, the sky is literally the limit—he even has budtenders juggle bongs into the air.
Since launching his company six years ago, Mieure has served more than 80,000 customers in six adult-use marijuana-legal states at weddings and social events. Like mixologists, budtenders help create experiences for guests through their product. But instead of wine and spirits, it’s indica and sativa. “Our jobs are more complex than just selling a product or rolling a joint for a guest,” he adds. “It may sound ridiculous, but we really like to take it over the top.”
Top Shelf Budtending will curate a cannabis lounge and flair budtenders for your nuptials. Courtesy of Top Shelf Budtending
Whether he’s curating a cannabis lounge’s wares or tossing around consumption devices, Mieure is onto something, namely, that cannabis is becoming a regular part of weddings. According to a study by WeddingWire in August 2019, 17% of engaged couples plan to incorporate marijuana, CBD, or edibles into their wedding; 10% of couples surveyed already had, including cannabis in some form or hiring a budtender.
“The amount of inquiries Top Shelf receives has grown by double every year since Colorado has legalized adult-use cannabis,” Mieure says of wedding clientele. “Families are loosening up their restrictions on what they feel can be allowed at a wedding.”
Andrew Mieure, budtender and founder of Colorado-based Top Shelf Budtending, sharing his wares with a wedding guest. Courtesy of Top Shelf Budtending
Fortune chatted with Mieure about what it means to be a budtender, how couples choose to include cannabis, and what to name your signature strain.
Fortune: What goes into being a budtender?
Mieure: On the surface budtending seems really simple, right? Consult with your guests, break up some cannabis, put it into the guest’s device, and hand it over to them to consume. The reality of this profession is much more complicated than what you may see on the outside. Specialized, highly trained budtenders often fit into a niche, much like wine sommeliers do. These cannabis sommeliers use their senses to relay not only smell and taste recommendations, but potential effects from the flower that they are consuming. Beyond this, we as budtenders must be very aware of the legal and safety issues associated with the business.
What are some ways a couple can wow their guests with cannabis?
Cannabis can be integrated into weddings in nearly every way alcohol can; in some cases, even more. Budtender-staffed bud bars are the most simplistic option, but there are many other premium services that guests can add to take their cannabis wedding experience to the next level. The bride and groom could go with a paired joint or a ceremonial bowl or bong hit to kick off their vows. Custom-infused edible arrangements, cannabis cocktails, bespoke goodie bags, and over-the-top bud bars round out just a small percentage of what is available to wedding guests. We’ve taken it as far as handcrafting bong water, allowing the guest to taste unique flavors sourced locally to pair with the cannabis they are consuming.
A budtending station complete with a Bello, touted as the world’s first “vapor tap” for cannabis at social events. Twenty-Five/Eight Photography
You also offer flair budtenders. How does that work?
Flair budtenders serve their guests by juggling bongs and other consumption devices. They toss around glass, bongs, and joints in a way that looks like a circus act. It adds a whole new layer of entertainment to the guest experience.
Couples sometimes include a signature strain like a signature cocktail. Would you tell me more about that?
This is certainly a thing. Each variety of cannabis has different chemical compounds that make them interesting and diverse to consume. We recommend thinking about a feeling or vibe you want; instead of the name, focus on the smell, taste, effect of each variety. That said, some names can be very fitting for weddings, but here is a pro tip: You can name a strain anything you want. If you want to rename your “Cat Piss” to “Wedding Dress OG,” definitely do so. Signature names can go far when getting guests excited to consume. These names create banter and fun plays on words that guests will remember for years to come.
There are special wedding cocktail menus…and then special varietals menus. Eichar Photography
For all the fun, cannabis is a tricky subject on so many fronts these days. What’s challenging about working with cannabis and weddings?
Cannabis affects guests differently than alcohol, so understanding the nuances with cannabis consumption in public can be a very unique experience for those who are unfamiliar with it. The price points are generally different as well. If you want to go all out on your cannabis bar, you could spend nearly the same or more in comparison to alcohol bars. Plus, there is a lack of cannabis-friendly venues and cannabis-based insurance; issues stemming from prohibition mindsets; compliance issues; DUI prevention; and children being at the wedding reception. Prevention first is always the best policy.
If you could offer three major tips to a couple looking to include cannabis in their big day, what would those be?
Find a venue that will allow full consumption far in advance of your wedding date. Finding consumption-friendly venues is always a struggle. Companies like us have a preferred, cannabis-friendly venue list. Make sure that all of your family and those who are assisting in financing your wedding know that cannabis will be present at the event. Not much is worse than the guests not being aware that cannabis was integrated into the event when they are vehemently against it. Be honest, and everyone should have a great time.
Finally, compliance is king. Make sure you consult with a company well-versed in serving cannabis to avoid common pitfalls of cannabis events.
The Bud Bar Eichar Photography
Do you see these being a rising trend? What do you see for the future of budtending and weddings?
The future is now. What we are doing in adult-use legal states will be and has been the road map for the rest of the country moving forward. I predict that the model will be expanded upon, and new services, products, and techniques will be introduced to create next-level experiences as the laws allow.
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fortune--2020-01-23--These tailors show that custom suiting is no longer just for men

Luxury is not one size fits all. One person’s lifetime dream of an Antarctic cruise is another’s frozen nightmare. Your storybook 18th-century villa is my creaky old dump. So while some fashionistas thrill to personal shoppers’ ferrying flutes of Veuve Clicquot, my most indulgent shopping experience involves the revelation that my left leg is almost an inch—an inch!—shorter than my right.
That news, delivered by New York City–based designer Shao Yang, is followed by a running commentary on my apparent grab bag of a physique: shoulders (right about a quarter inch higher than left), hips (slightly askew), and posture (the word “concave” was used). A bit disconcerting, yes, but there is luxury in being so precisely seen after years of frustration about why I could never find pants or jackets that fit just so. And the real delight was still to come: Yang’s assessment is a first step in building a luxurious scaffolding designed to bring symmetry to my stubbornly asymmetric frame—a custom-made suit.
Men have known the airbrushing power of custom tailoring for centuries. But there was something new about what was transpiring in Yang’s Flatiron studio that afternoon: She and I—as well as the vast majority of her clients—are women. Yang’s business, The Tailory, is part of a small but growing cadre of tailors and custom-suiting companies catering to women who want their own spin on what has long been the official uniform of the old boys’ club.
Today, the universe of women’s custom attire echoes the options available to men, though on a far more modest scale. There’s the traditional bespoke, an elite strata that includes tailors like Kathryn Sargent, the first woman to rise to the title of head cutter on London’s Savile Row, and New York’s Dara Lamb, who’s dressed some of the most recognizable female chiefs of the Fortune 500. Bespoke, like many tailoring terms, tends to vary slightly depending on who’s wielding it but is generally agreed to include the process of making a hand-cut-from-scratch pattern and creating a basted (loosely sewed) garment for the first of multiple fittings to make sure the details are perfect.
Tools of the cutter’s trade. No lasers or CAD here. Photograph by Harry Mitchell for Fortune
More affordable is made-to-measure, which has experienced something of a boomlet in recent years. This more simplified—and e-commerce friendly—method generally involves a standard pattern, which is adjusted based on an individual’s measurements and preferences. Women can now order customized suits from companies like SuitKits (where the process starts online with a “virtual stylist”), Bluesuits (which also offers bespoke), Sene (men’s and women’s options in stretchy athleisure fabrics), Gormley & Gamble (headquartered on Savile Row), and a handful of others.
Finally, there are those that exist somewhere in between—usually referred to by the catchall phrase “custom.” This group, which includes The Tailory, creates individual patterns rather than starting with an existing template but relies on technology to trim away some of the more time-consuming and technical aspects of the bespoke process.
As different as these approaches—and their starting price points, which range from a few hundred dollars to $5,000 or more—may be, they’re all trying to solve the same problem, one laid out neatly by professor Lynn M. Boorady, head of apparel design at Oklahoma State University: “As women, we’re all walking around wearing suits that don’t fit us.”
The Tailory is designed to put the uninitiated at ease. While the small office contains some of the clubby touches you’d expect from a menswear purveyor—stocked bar, mannequins draped in trenches and tweedy blazers—the velvety pink upholstery and a delicate china tea set nestled on the bottom shelf of the bar cart reject the cigar-chomping cliché. Noting that the majority of her customers come from the LGBTQ+ community, Yang says she wanted the space to feel familiar and welcoming to everyone in a way the hypermasculine world of suit tailoring often does not. And as we launch into the custom process, I begin to see another reason that creating a sense of comfort is essential—and, perhaps, a reason that cart is full of liquor: A head-spinning number of decisions are required to create a single garment.
The process starts simply enough: Yang asks me about my personal style, and where and when I might wear the suit. Then out comes a towering stack of fabric books, each one packed with dozens of samples. (I’ve opted to stick to the house fabrics for a $995 suit, which limits my choices to just 500.) From there, we flip through a multitude of lining options (I admire, but do not choose, one silky sample covered in roaring lions), piping colors, buttons, embroidery threads, and monogram fonts. Then it’s time for the design of the suit itself. Jacket pockets, lapels, vents, and length all need to be considered. How should the legs be cut? Where should the waist hit? Do I want cuffs on ankles or cinches on the hips? Belt loops: yes or no?
Kathryn Sargent in her eponymous Mayfair atelier. Photograph by Harry Mitchell for Fortune
When all the decisions are made, and Yang’s tape measure has been draped around 34 places along my arms, legs, and torso, it’s over—for today. A few taps to her iPad, and my measurements are fed into her proprietary pattern algorithm, then tucked into a “tech pack”—specifying the measurements and all materials—that will soon be winging its way to her partner factory in Qingdao. I’ll get my first look at the results in two and a half weeks when I return for my fitting.
So why, given the many “Women be shoppin’!” jokes we’ve all endured, has the world of custom suiting spent most of the past century giving women the cold—if impeccably tailored—shoulder? Sargent, whose clientele is about a third female, points to the history of tailoring in England, where many of our modern conceptions about suiting were formed. She says women’s bespoke has historically been viewed “as country attire—something you’d wear horseback riding or to a society event, which is quite … I’m going to use the word ‘frumpy’ in the nicest possible way.” Modern women wanted nothing to do with these looks (“a bit Mary Poppins,” notes Sargent), and traditional tailors have done little to attempt to woo them back to the atelier with more tempting garments.
The might of the Fashion Industrial Complex has also played a role. Women’s ready-to-wear sheds its skin twice a year, burying shoppers in a deluge of new fabrics, cuts, and hems. Newness is the nemesis of custom—particularly on the bespoke side of the business, where it’s shockingly easy to drop $10,000 on a single suit—and which requires the buyer to believe she’s investing in a garment she’ll wear for years, even decades.
But perhaps the biggest factor holding women’s tailoring back is less cultural—and more anatomical. “There’s a lot that happens in 10 inches on a woman from here to here,” says Lamb, gesturing at the expanse between her shoulder and bust. “And from here to here,” she continues, dropping her hands to her waist and hip. “It’s that simple.” The accumulated knowledge and skill set of master tailors is based on the relative simplicity of men’s bodies. Women’s physiques vary far more dramatically, making them a far “harder nut to crack,” says Lamb. For decades, the overwhelmingly male tailoring establishment didn’t bother to try.
The author at her final fitting for a custom suit at The Tailory New York. Sharp. Photograph by Rebecca Greenfield for Fortune
Ironically, the very curves that stump so many tailors are also one of the reasons custom tailoring can help professional women stand apart. Jamak Khazra, founder of Bluesuits, says her bespoke business revolves around women who because of their size ranges “just can’t buy off the rack”—e.g., her client Martine Rothblatt, founder of United Therapeutics, a transgender woman who stands a statuesque six-two. At The Tailory, Yang specializes in a different, if equally tricky, fit, creating a purposefully androgynous silhouette.
The undeniably luxe materials of high-end custom have other advantages as well. A “powerful fabric” can help the wearer communicate, says Lamb as she reaches for a jacket made of a deep blue English wool shot through with silvery pinstripes. “For a senior woman, a large part of her audience may be men,” she says. “Most of them have gotten their suits custom made, most of them have seen fabrics like that.” Lamb believes this kind of visual familiarity can “take the walls down—it really does allow you a greater level of influence.”
Such messaging isn’t lost on Dr. Susan Nicholson, VP of Women’s Health at Johnson & Johnson, who purchased her first suit from Kathryn Sargent last year—a two-piece in “a classic Prince of Wales brown-and-black check with lavender lining.” She says, “For me, co-opting that male symbol of power and influence says, ‘Hey, I’m influential too.’ ” Nicholson made the decision to go bespoke after years of “getting clothes that didn’t quite fit and then spending a couple hundred dollars on tailoring. It just didn’t make sense.” Of her dream suit, she told Sargent: “I want to be able to walk into any meeting and feel absolutely confident … to feel like I belong there.”
It’s the moment of sartorial truth. I step out from behind The Tailory’s dressing screen at my final fitting and peer into the mirror. Looking back, an elegant, if faintly rakish, figure. Her shoulders cut a smooth, crisp line. Her pants skim down her legs before ending neatly, with the slightest flare, just above the ankles. Something Sargent told me rings in my ears: “Men have had it good for so long.” Now, it seems, women do too.
Ready to suit up?
The world of custom tailoring can be overwhelming. Follow these three tips for getting the most out of your first appointment.
1. Find a good listener.
Personality matters. You will be leaning on your tailor for advice, so seek out someone you can be honest with, even when it comes to sensitive topics like insecurity about your physique. Your tailor should be engaged and curious about what you want—as opposed to telling you what you should want.
2. Know your taste.
The number of decisions a shopper must make in custom tailoring can be gobsmacking to someone used to buying off the rack. The more focused you are going into the process, the more likely you are to come out of it with something you love. Yang encourages customers to create a Pinterest board.
3. Focus on fabrics.
Don’t fall into the trap of choosing the finest fabrics. Yes, they’ll be softer and more luxurious, but going too fine can make your suit less durable and more likely to wrinkle.
A version of this article appears in the February 2020 issue of Fortune with the headline “A Suit of One’s Own.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—The most anticipated books of 2020, according to Goodreads
—Cabo’s newest luxury resort favors tranquility over nightlife
—The magic of the wedding industry’s most exclusive conference
—High-tech fitness offerings are the newest luxury hotel must-have—The best travel destinations for every season of 2020
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-01-23--The Trump impeachment trial: An American constitutional crisis once again proves no match for the po

The Trump impeachment trial: An American constitutional crisis once again proves no match for the power of the markets

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
Good morning, Bull Sheeters. Today, I want to talk politics. Specifically, the I-word.
The impeachment trial of President Trump may be a lead story in newspapers from London to Los Angeles—it’s getting decent TV ratings, too—but it’s barely moving the markets.
This has been true for months. The global markets just don’t seem to get freaked out about America’s constitutional crises the way they do about other geopolitical risks. Investors seem far more preoccupied with coronavirus this morning. (The Asia markets are down as I type this.) Earlier this month it was the fear of war with Iran.
Historically, American presidential impeachments have had a mixed—lately, it’s been downright good—impact on markets. Paradoxically, when lawmakers rally to boot out of power the leader of the free world, investors tend to shrug it off.
True, there’s not a lot of data to go on. But so far with the Trump affair, markets have not only survived the drama, they’ve actually rallied. And you know what? The same thing happened during the Clinton affair, as the chart below shows. (A big thanks to LPL Research for helping me put some of this data together).
***
Another impeachment, another rally
As you can see, there was no longterm Nixon rally back in 1974. Soaring oil prices put an end to that. The Clinton saga in 1998-99 was a whole other story. The markets rallied longer and more dramatically during that matter, climbing 41.6% over the first six months, helped by the strong economy of the late ’90s and investors’ newfound love for tech and dot-com stocks.
But the 12% rally on the S&P 500 since Sept. 24, 2019, the day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the opening of a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump, ain’t shabby either.
I’m guessing Trump won’t be re-tweeting this particular chart.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
Today's reads
The plan to save WeWork. Yes, there is one. Fortune's Polina Marinova met with WeWork's other founder, Miguel McKelvey, to find out the steps the troubled unicorn intends to take to bail itself out of the mess it's in. For starters: they'll be slowing down.
Back to school, Greta! U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin dropped a groan-inducing "joke" on Davos when he told the great and the good that climate activist Greta Thunberg should go to college and study economics. And then, and only then, "she can come back and explain... to us" how divesting in fossil fuels is in the world's best economic interest. Breaking all rules of comedy, Mnuchin hastened to add it was “a joke. That was funny.” Ba-dum-chhhh.
Luanda Leaks. The scandal around Isabel dos Santos, Africa's richest woman, for allegedly enriching herself at the expense of her fellow countrymen in Angola threatens to now implicate accounting firm PwC, the Guardian reports.
$100 billion. Tesla's share price closed up 4% yesterday, putting the automaker into the $100 billion valuation club, and triggering a big payday for Elon Musk. If it's a good day for Musk it must then be another bad day for the army of Tesla short-sellers out there. Musk, we're reminded, "does good at rockets" too.
Market candy
-14.9. Today's candy might leave a bitter taste. It's an historical look at geopolitical risk and the impact on markets, put together by Shroders, examining how a number of major global news events impacted the markets over the years. The September 11 attacks is still up there as the most disruptive, triggering a significant flight to safety. Gold soared, as did U.S. Treasury 10-year notes in the aftermath. The S&P 500 fell 14.9%.
One last thing
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fortune--2020-01-23--Davos: The stakeholder capitalism debate is over

This is the web version of CEO Daily. To get it delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning.
“Stakeholder capitalism” is nothing new in Davos. It’s been part of the ethos of the World Economic Forum since it was founded a half century ago. But the Business Roundtable’s decision last August to revise its statement on corporate purpose has given the issue new life this year, with countless panels and conversations on the topic being held in meeting rooms and over meals throughout this Swiss village.
This morning, I attended a breakfast session billed as a debate over stakeholder value versus shareholder value. But there was no debate. The four CEOs participating agreed they face growing demands to look after stakeholders—customers, employees, their communities, and the environment. But all insisted that doing so was in the long-run interest of shareholders.
“It’s not a ‘versus’,” said James Quincey, CEO of Coca-Cola. “The Coca-Cola business has been set up under a simple idea for a long time: it can’t be a viable business without a viable community.” Unilever CEO Alan Jope agreed: “The predominant paradigm is an either/or paradigm—either deliver financial performance, or pay attention to social impact. We believe nothing could be further from the truth.”
Jope says his company’s focus on sustainability has had a positive impact on innovation, on cost, and “it has made us an absolute magnet for talent. Unilever has gone from being an unknown company in the talent market to being ranked by LinkedIn as number three, after Google and Apple.” Stanley Black & Decker CEO Jim Loree told a similar story. Embedding social impact in its corporate purpose has been transformative, he says. “I had no idea how impactful it would be for employees. Employees are so motivated by this approach.”
But the big change from two or three years ago is in the financial markets. “This topic has evolved massively,” said Geraldine Matchett, the CFO and incoming co-CEO of DSM, the Dutch nutrition and materials company. “For a long time, this was a minor, niche, ‘impact investing’ topic,” largely ignored by investors. Now it has moved front and center: “Suddenly, we are having a conversation instead of a monologue.”
Fortune will continue that conversation tonight, with a dinner including the CEOs of Microsoft, UPS, Workday, Mastercard, Deloitte, Salesforce, RBC, Royal Phillips, Genpact, PayPal, Henry Schein, Dassault, Dow Chemical, Occidental Petroleum, Novartis, HP, HP Enterprise, Sanofi, A.P. Moller-Maersk, and more.
News below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Wuhan virus
Chinese stocks have fallen again—the Hang Seng by 1.5% and Shanghai Composite by 2.8%—after authorities moved to stop people leaving the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the mysterious coronavirus that has so far claimed 17 lives. Similar measures are being taken in Huanggang and Ezhou. The World Health Organization has so far held back from declaring a global emergency over the virus, which is for now known as 2019-nCoV. Fortune
Tesla valuation
Tesla market cap hit $100 billion yesterday, surpassing that of Volkswagen. If it stays above that threshold on average over the next six months, including a run of at least 30 consecutive days, CEO Elon Musk effectively scores a payout of more than $370 million. New York Times
TripAdvisor cuts
TripAdvisor is cutting about 5% of its workforce, or 200 jobs, apparently due to competition from Google's new travel search tools. The firm's Experiences business is reportedly a likely focal point for the cuts, as it has experienced falling earnings. Skift
Isabel dos Santos
Angolan prosecutors have formally accused Africa's richest woman, Isabel dos Santos, of embezzlement. The charges follow the leak of documents suggesting that the daughter of the country's former president used her position to amass her $2.1 billion fortune. Dos Santos, who these days lives in the U.K., has denied the allegations. BBC
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
GPS woes
GPS signals have become unreliable in the last couple years and, as Fortune's Katherine Dunn reports, the shipping industry is deeply concerned. Interference with the signals takes place for a variety of reasons, such as geopolitical conflict and crime, and the consequences are becoming more severe due to the proliferation of offshore infrastructure such as wind farms and undersea cables. Fortune
Digital tax
Although France has for now backed down over its attempt to tax the local revenues of tech giants, the U.K. says it will press ahead with its own plans. The U.S. is threatening to retaliate with tariffs on British car exports. The spat is taking place just as the U.K. is preparing to start negotiations with the U.S. over a free trade deal, as soon as Brexit takes place next week Friday. Financial Times
No-deal preparedness
The head of international at the U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority has reminded financial firms that there is still a possibility of the year-end Brexit transition deadline passing without a deal with the EU—in other words, a belated no-deal Brexit scenario. Reuters
Trump and Siemens
Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser says he has received assurances from President Trump that his administration would support the German conglomerate's participation in Iraqi and Syrian reconstruction efforts, despite trade tensions between the U.S. and Europe. Siemens employs around 60,000 people in the U.S., and supports a further 100,000 indirect jobs there. CNBC
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-01-23--China locks down 3 cities and suspends flights: The latest on the deadly Wuhan virus outbreak

Chinese government authorities on Thursday morning moved to shut off transportation in and out of Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak that has killed 17 people and infected hundreds. Authorities put two more cities, Huanggang and Ezhou, under a travel ban later on Thursday. The three cities have a combined population of almost 20 million.
The dramatic attempt to contain the virus comes as Beijing tries to shake criticism that its cover-up of the 2002-2003 spread of the deadly SARS virus increased its death toll.
On Thursday morning, Chinese officials stopped planes and trains scheduled to leave Wuhan, blocked highways, and suspended public buses, subways, and ferries within the city.
As the city came to a standstill, Wuhan residents rushed to supermarkets and pharmacies and queued up for petrol.
“Nobody was ready for the lockdown,” one Wuhan resident told the South China Morning Post. “I went to the supermarket this morning, many people were there and vegetables were all sold out.”
As China moved to contain the spreading coronavirus outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) held an Emergency Committee meeting on Wednesday to discuss the situation, but delayed a decision on whether to declare a global public health emergency due to the “evolving and complex” nature of the situation.
The international health group is set to meet again on Thursday to decide on a health emergency declaration.
The spreading virus
Wuhan, the provincial capital of landlocked Hubei, has a population of 11 million people—over two million more than New York City—and is one of China’s most vital thoroughfares.
“This city happens to be a hub—a transportation hub and also a financial hub […] It’s the most important city in central China,” says Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore who studies the political economy of Greater China.
Before the transportation lockdown, Wuhan’s role as a hub helped the virus spread. As of Thursday, the virus had sickened nearly 600 people and killed 17, many of whom had pre-existing health conditions. Cases have been confirmed in some of China’s biggest cities including the capital, Beijing, as well as Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Macau.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Tuesday confirmed the first case of the Wuhan coronavirus in the U.S., from a patient who had recently traveled to the Chinese city. A total of 16 people who came into contact with the infected man are under observation in the U.S., and the CDC is developing a test for the virus to distribute to state health departments.
Officials in Japan and South Korea have reported one case each, and four cases have been confirmed in Thailand. The U.S. case is the first confirmed report of the virus outside of Asia.
Hong Kong SARS memories
Officials confirmed the first case of the Wuhan virus in Hong Kong on Wednesday, and announced a second case soon after. The first patient arrived from mainland China by train on Tuesday evening with signs of fever and told authorities he had been to Wuhan.
Even before the Hong Kong government announced the first case, a majority of pedestrians and public transport passengers in the city were already donning green and blue medical masks—this time to protect against infection rather than as a political signifier.
And for the past few weeks, Hong Kong’s subway stations have run loudspeaker announcements on loop, encouraging commuters to wash their hands with soap and wear masks if they have flu symptoms (cough, cold, fever, sore throat), and if they feel unwell, to alert station staff, who man “caring point” booths on some station platforms, wearing medical masks.
The 2002-2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, remains vivid for many in Hong Kong. The city came to an effective standstill during the outbreak, which infected 1,755 and killed 299 in Hong Kong out of more than 800 fatalities worldwide.
Economic effects
The timing of the outbreak coincides with the start of China’s Lunar New Year public holiday, when people are expected to take three billion trips across the country, sparking fears of the disease spreading further.
Canceled journeys and drops in spending could wound China’s already-slowing economy: during last year’s holiday period, people spent an estimated $74 billion on travel and $145 billion on shopping and food.
A virus outbreak would also likely batter Hong Kong’s economy, which entered recession last year under strain from from months of anti-government protests that dented tourism and retail. The 2002 SARS outbreak pushed Hong Kong’s economy into recession in the first half of 2003.
This week, Hong Kong’s stock market recorded its worst day in more than five months amid mounting news of the coronavirus outbreak and a Moody’s credit rating downgrade.
Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific Airways, which just suspended flights to Wuhan, is letting employees wear surgical masks and will allow passengers to and from Wuhan to cancel or change their flights for free through March 31. Between Dec. 2002 and April 2003, shares in Cathay Pacific dropped almost 30% due to the SARS crisis.
Governments and companies across Asia are taking serious precaution in the wake of the current virus outbreak.
Airport authorities across the Middle East, in Australia, and in other countries have instituted virus screening measures for arrivals. North Korea put a temporary ban on foreign tourists, many of which visit from neighboring China.
Large companies with operations in China, including HSBC Holdings, Citic Securities, and Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings, restricted employee travel to Wuhan, and Singapore Airlines’ budget carrier Scoot suspended daily flights to Wuhan on Thursday.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—The World’s Most Admired Companies in 2020
—A.I. in China: TikTok is just the beginning
—China braces for a deadly new virus as millions travel for Lunar New Year
—CEOs more pessimistic about global economy than they’ve been in 8 years
—U.S. brands think they understand China’s market, but they don’t
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-01-23--Captain Davos: CEOs urged to lead in sustainability

This is the web version of The Loop, Fortune’s weekly newsletter on the revolutions in sustainability. To get it delivered daily to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning.
The foothills of the Himalayas are greening, as climate change melts glaciers and vegetation grows in their place. The snowy slopes of Davos greened a little, too, this week as the financial and political elite once again met at the World Economic Forum to discuss their futures and ours.
The theme to this year’s conference is Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World — a nod to the assertion from CEOs that businesses should cater to all stakeholders, not just shareholders. The thematic choice was already a given, as discussion on climate change stole the show in 2019.
Last year, British naturalist Sir David Attenborough warned the crowd that the stable, mild and pleasant Holocene period is over, while Swedish activist Greta Thunberg implored leaders to panic and “act as if the house was on fire.”
A year later, Thunberg was back to remind Davos the house is still on fire; Al Gore, who’s campaigned on climate change since before Thunberg was born, tried to rally the troops by comparing the climate crisis to Dunkirk and 9/11; while Prince Charles advocated for “taxes, policies and regulations” that spur sustainable action.
That last one might actually work. Last year the IMF recommended a levy on carbon emissions at $75/ton to keep global warming beneath 2°C and, this week, Refinitiv calculated that would amount to a $4 trillion fine for global business — roughly 4% of global GDP.
Behind closed doors at Davos, says BBC journalist Nik Gowing, business leaders recognize the financial imperative of going green. “Sustainability is no longer niche. The price of unsustainable use of natural resources is painfully obvious,” says one. “It is a myth if you invest in sustainability, performance will be worse,” another.
On stage at Fortune events and elsewhere, CEOs have said much of the same. More frequently than before, companies are setting ambitious sustainability goals. However, many business leaders don’t rank climate change among the top ten risks to business.
So maybe the business community at large isn’t openly embracing sustainability, but they are at least starting to get close.
More below.
CARBON COPY
Bin it
China is putting a ban on millions of tons of single-use plastic, banning non-degradable bags from all major cities by the end of the year and expanding the prohibition to all townships by 2022. However, maddeningly, fresh food markets will be exempt until 2025. Plastic straws are out, too — banished from restaurants by the end of the year. Per capita, China produces less plastic waste than the U.S., but by tonnage China is out ahead — generating 60 million tons in 2010 to America’s 38 million. Wall Street Journal
Rolling in the green
Bloomberg has put out a short list of billionaires that have made their fortunes through “green” business. The 14 men and one woman are primarily in the battery or renewable energy industries, with China battery maker CATL boosting four billionaires to the top of the list all by itself. China has a strong showing on the list, producing nine of the fifteen billionaires. Bloomberg
Truth
The U.K. is leading a space mission to accurately measure the amount of light reflected off the Earth so that, in the future, the accuracy of models on climate change can be checked. Dubbed TRUTHS (it’s an acronym), the mission hopes to record a sort of “climate fingerprint” that future missions can use as a baseline to measure against. The European Space Agency has allocated $36 million in funding to the project, but feasibility research will likely cost an extra $340 million before the satellite can launch in 2026. BBC
Climate refugees
A UN committee on human rights has ruled it unlawful for a country to return refugees fleeing climate change. The judgement relates to a case brought in 2013 by Ioane Teitiota from Kiribati, which is threatened by rising sea levels. Teitiota sought shelter in New Zealand, which rejected his application. However, while the committee legitimized the rights of climate refugees, the UN actually upheld New Zealand’s dismissal of Teitiota’s case. The UN said Kiribati had an obligation to mitigate the risks threatening Teitiota in the next 10 to 5 years. The Guardian
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
World leaders finally accept the economic risk of climate change, but business chiefs are a holdout by Katherine Dunn
Making green energy more trusted—with the same tech that keeps cryptocurrency safe by David Z. Morris
Trump’s Davos speech sought to appease business leaders. On climate change, it isolated them by Claire Zillman
California power outages hit small businesses—but bolster generator companies by Kat Eschner
WeWork’s other cofounder has a plan to save the company. It’s the opposite of what Adam Neumann envisioned by Polina Marinova
SCRAPBOOK
Resource positive
Starbucks unveiled a new sustainability pledge for 2030 with a view towards becoming “resource positive.” Starbucks plans to half its carbon emissions, waste and water usage; the coffee giant will increase the number of plant-based items on its menu; and the company is looking to move towards reusable packaging. One more novel shift: Starbucks wants to find a way to make whipped cream without the use of nitrous oxide. Perhaps a whisk? Bloomberg
Carbon negative
Microsoft has pledged to be carbon negative by 2030, through a combo of cutting emissions — by more than half by 2030 — and buying offsets. Microsoft’s offsets will focus on investments that can remove carbon from the atmosphere. The intention is that by 2030, Microsoft will be reclaiming more carbon than it produces, but the technology to achieve that goal doesn’t exist yet. Microsoft plans to fund its creation. Financial Times
COME TO BRAINSTORM A.I.
If you’re interested to learn how some of the biggest, most influential companies are strategizing about artificial intelligence, come to Fortune’s Brainstorm A.I. conference in Boston on April 27-28, 2020. A.I. is a game-changing technology that promises to revolutionize business, but it can be confusing and mysterious to executives. The savviest leaders know how to cut through the deluge of A.I. buzzwords and reap the technology’s benefits.
Attendees of this invite-only confab can take part in cutting-edge conversations with top corporate execs, leading A.I. thinkers, and power players. Among them: United States Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios; Accenture CEO Julie Sweet; Land O’Lakes CEO Beth Ford; Siemens U.S. CEO Barbara Humpton; Royal Philips NV CEO Frans van Houten; Landing AI founder and CEO Andrew Ng; Robust.AI founder and CEO Gary Marcus; and top machine learning experts from Bank of America, Dow, Verizon, Slack, Zoom, Pinterest, Lyft, and MIT. You can request an invitation here.