fortune--2020-08-12--Zoom and face masks are giving cosmetics brands an eye lift

The lipstick index may now be the mascara index. With many people required to wear a mask while out in public, consumers have turned to upping their eye game.
Greater consumer interest in eye makeup has been building for months, tracking closely to the increase of face mask usage since the emergence of COVID-19 at the beginning of the year. In China, Alibaba reported eye makeup sales increased 150%, month over month by the end of February. In South Korea, sales of eye makeup increased by 51.8% in March, year over year, at Lalavla, the health and beauty store chain operated by GS Retail. And Seoul-based Aekyung Industry’s cosmetics brand Luna saw a 100% monthly increase in orders in March for its eyeliner. Lotte Shopping, which operates department stores and discount stores in South Korea, found higher-end beauty brands, like Dior and Bobbi Brown, saw sales growth of 40% in eye makeup sales in February.
“This beauty boom has been driven in part by the popularity of ‘mask makeup looks,’ a trending phrase on social media that took off when Chinese beauty influencers began sharing makeup looks to wear with surgical masks amid the COVID-19 outbreak,” wrote Christine Chou for Alizila, the news unit at Alibaba, on March 30. “Per Taobao Live, a series of live-stream sessions on how to create makeup looks while wearing masks attracted 8.2 million viewers on Feb. 18, and led to a 150% month-over-month sales increase of eye shadow palettes that week.”
The eye shadow collection from Kosas Cosmetics, a clean beauty brand with a cult following. Courtesy of Kosas Cosmetics
In the cosmetics aisle, lipstick sales saw the biggest drop in the U.S. with Amazon tracking a 15% decline, compared with a 5% increase for eye cosmetics in the four weeks leading up to April 11. Sheena Yaitanes, founder of Kosas Cosmetics, a clean beauty brand with cult and celebrity followings and sold at Sephora and Goop, says the company saw a 12% increase in sales for its eye category from January to August.
“The biggest thing we’ve seen is an acceleration of a trend that we were already seeing in 2019, which was a shift away from complicated, layered, ultraprecise beauty looks that had taken over all our feeds in the preceding few years,” Yaitanes tells Fortune.
“We believe that brushes continue to perform strong as consumers are extra cautious about applying makeup in a hygienic way, and our brushes are perfect for that,” says Gayitri Budhraja, VP of brand at e.l.f. Cosmetics. Courtesy of e.l.f. Cosmetics
But it might not just be mask mandates fueling interest in eye makeup but also the desire to look polished for video calls and meetings, suggests Gayitri Budhraja, vice president of brand at e.l.f. Cosmetics.
“We’ve seen a shift from categories like foundation to a trend towards lighter-wear makeup or products that help you be ‘Zoom-ready,’ like concealer, for example,” Budhraja says. “And while fuller pigment lip color is down, traditionally a lighter form, such as lip gloss and lip balm, is up.”
And Budhraja says she has seen the industry soften in the eye category since the pandemic, explaining that at e.l.f., the brand has seen a shift where brow and eyeliner have softened (but are still positive in sales) while eye shadow has picked up. “We are seeing strength in our launches from earlier this year [Bite-Size eye shadow and Liquid Glitter], as well as continued growth in core black eyeliners and brow, which is the No. 1 [seller] in America,” Budhraja says, citing Nielsen data from June 2020.
“Even in this Zoom environment, a little self-care goes a long way. One of the beauty trends I think will be sticking with us is the desire to keep things simple,” says Amazing Lash Studio CEO Heather Elrod. Courtesy of Amazing Lash Studio
But it’s not just eye makeup seeing a surge but also eye-focused cosmetology services, such as eyelash extensions and permanent color tinting for eyelashes and eyebrows.
“I believe this is due to women putting greater emphasis on the appearance of their eyes with mask mandates in place,” says Emily Raburn, owner of several Amazing Lash Studio locations in Texas. Before the pandemic, Raburn says sales in all of her locations were trending upward, hitting membership numbers not seen before. After reopening, it took a minimum of 60 days for numbers to stabilize again. But since the pandemic started, Raburn says her business saw a spike of roughly 46% in year-over-year client leads and a 22% increase in digital client leads since March.
“Because of mandates in most states currently, I believe that eyelashes are becoming even more popular now than before the pandemic,” Raburn says. “Even while wearing a mask, other people can still see your beautiful eyes—not your makeup or your lips—just your eyes.”
Right now, all locations of Amazing Lash Studio are open nationwide for indoor services, with the exception of California, where services were ordered to shut down again in July as COVID-19 cases spiked. However, many franchise managers are trying their best, and eyelash extension services can be provided outside the walls of the studio.
“We have owners who have rolled up their sleeves and found a way to make it happen, turning a parking lot or sidewalk into a studio, while at the same time following the industry-leading safety and sanitation protocols we have implemented,” says Heather Elrod, CEO of Amazing Lash Studio, adding that some studios are seeing higher service volumes outside, versus pre–COVID-19 indoor service levels. “Guests have been so grateful for the opportunity to enjoy a little self-care and return to normal.”
In studios that have reopened in other states, Elrod describes the balancing act in meeting pent-up demand with lower capacity owing to the extra time taken for enhanced cleaning between each appointment to deep-clean private rooms and common areas. This requires salon managers to be more strategic in the scheduling of appointments, including using staggered schedules to avoid gatherings in the reception area.
“During this time when masks are part of our daily routine, our eyes are an even more powerful form of personal expression than they were before,” Elrod says. “Our focus has always been on owning the eyes, and our commitment to innovation has not wavered.”


fortune--2020-08-12--Diversity is long overdue in the drug industry—and it’s going to take more than just hiring Black ca

Diversity is long overdue in the drug industry—and it’s going to take more than just hiring Black candidates

What is Trump ’ s payroll tax holiday and how will it affect you ?
Everything you need to know

Companies across America have scrambled to deepen their commitments to workplace diversity and inclusion in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the ensuing national outrage. In many cases, these efforts have taken the form of widening applicant pools to Black candidates and other people of color, conducting pay equity analyses, and mentorship programs, among others.
American drug giant Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) is no different. The firm announced on Wednesday that it was adding to its existing diversity measures with a new $300 million investment over five years to achieve equity across multiple fronts. But this effort comes with a clinical twist.
BMS and its charitable arm the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation say this investment will help fund workplace diversity initiatives such as achieving executive level gender parity worldwide by 2022, and within the U.S., to double the number of Black, Hispanic, and Latino employees at the executive level.
But as a drug developer, BMS has opportunities to expand equity beyond its own workforce—including in the clinical trials it conducts and the local suppliers it uses.
The company says those efforts will include actually training 250 new clinical trial investigators (those who are in charge of overseeing the research which fuels the development of new drugs) across the racial and ethnic spectrum. The thinking is that this expansion will lead to a wider net of patients in underserved populations who may not even know they have access to clinical trials.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has admitted as much and set up task forces to make up for the disparities—a critical initiative given the way that biology works.
If a disease disproportionately afflicts one population, yet that population isn’t properly represented in clinical trials, an approved drug may prove more effective for a certain set of people than it does for another.
That’s been a persistent problem in drug development. For instance, in cancer drug trials, a participant’s race may not even be reported at all, and Black and Hispanic populations tend to be under-represented. For instance, about 20 percent of patients with the blood cancer multiple myeloma are Black, two to three times the number of white patients.
And yet, a median of just 4.5 percent of participants enrolled in pivotal multiple myeloma trials between 2003 and 2017 were Black, according to a study by the American Society of Hematology (ASH).
“Clinical trial diversity needs acceleration. We see tremendous opportunity for longer-term, sustainable impact by supporting ethnically diverse physician scientists to engage in clinical research while also establishing clinical research sites in diverse communities,” said BMS chief medical officer Samit Hirawat in a statement.


fortune--2020-08-12--Off-price retailer Stein Mart seeks bankruptcy protection and could liquidate

Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
Stein Mart Inc. said on Wednesday it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and suggested it would likely liquidate.
The discount chain operates 281 stores in 30 states, focusing most heavily on the South and Texas, and sells clothing, accessories, home decor, and shoes at low prices compared to department stores. But while off-price retail as whole has boomed in recent years—lifting T.J.Maxx and Marshalls’ owner TJX and Ross Stores—Stein Mart has not been able to tap into the same growth.
Stein Mart has been struggling for years and never showed its peers’ knack for finding good buys and sufficient new product. “It lacks the scale of Ross, the buying savvy of T.J.Maxx, and the fashionability of Nordstrom Rack,” is how Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, put it in a research note.
In the company’s first quarter, when the pandemic’s impact was the strongest, total sales declined 57.3% from a year earlier. But while the depth of that drop-off was new, the larger trend was not: Comparable sales declined in each of its last four fiscal years, and the retailer posted a net loss for each of those years. Total sales were $1.24 billion last year.
“The company has determined that the best strategy to maximize value will be a liquidation of its assets pursuant to an organized going out of business sale,” CEO and CFO Hunt Hawkins said in a statement. “The company lacks sufficient liquidity to continue operating in the ordinary course of business.” He did suggest some stores could continue to operate under a new owner. Stein Mart is also looking to sell its e-commerce business.
The bankruptcy follows a long series of retail Chapter 11 filings so far this year as the pandemic has pushed already weak retailers over the edge. Those have included J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus, J.Crew, Stage Stores, Brooks Brothers, and Pier 1 Imports.


fortune--2020-08-12--Why REI is putting its brand-new Bellevue HQ on the market

REI said on Wednesday it is looking to sell its brand-new headquarters campus near Seattle to bolster its finances amid a sharp pandemic-related sales decline.
The outdoor gear cooperative had lofty dreams for a new corporate campus in 2016, when it announced its plans to move from Kent, Wash., to Bellevue’s Spring District 20 miles from Seattle, offering its 1,400 headquarters staff the most modern of office amenities. Those were to have included features such as two large outdoor courtyards connected by bridges, and a façade with large windows and garage doors that roll up, according to Fast Company.
Alas, due to the COVID-19 outbreak that led REI stores to close for weeks, it is not to be. REI chief executive Eric Artz told employees in a video call Wednesday that selling the newly finished campus, into which staff was to have moved this summer, will likely yield a profit and put the company on safer financial footing.
“These dollars would also play an important role in stabilizing our business through the ongoing impacts of current disruptions,” said Artz, according to a transcript of the call shared with Fortune. The CEO noted that REI’s business had fared better than initially feared but cautioned, “The pandemic is far from over.”
Prior to the onset of COVID-19, REI had been on a hot streak. Sales rose 12.3% last year to hit $3.1 billion. But having stores closed for weeks devastated business, and the company said last month it would cut about 25% of headquarters jobs, reducing the need for so much office space. REI continues to open stores, however.
Instead of a swanky new headquarters, REI will have multiple smaller satellite offices in Greater Seattle that will reduce commuting time for employees. The company says this approach will make it easier to attract talent that might not be willing to relocate to metro Seattle. Artz expects the majority of headquarters staff to work from home through at least the end of this year.
At the same time, the CEO acknowledged that something can be lost by not having people working in a central location. “You miss hallway conversations. You miss in-person work sessions. You miss our incredible cultural moments,” he told staff.
He is not the only CEO facing this dilemma. Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke told Fortune in May that he expects most staff to work remotely in the future, well past the pandemic, and is rethinking office space.
At the same time, many corporate chief executives worry about the longer-term impact on culture, creativity, and teamwork of having people scattered to the winds. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told shareholders in June, “How do you get to know people? How do you get a sense for what the culture is like? Culture inside a company is such an important aspect.” That company is forging ahead with its plan to open a new headquarters campus in 2025.
Senior executives at IBM, Johnson & Johnson, and Mastercard recently told Fortune that while working from home has benefits, ultimately companies could not do without in-person collaboration to foster culture.
But in REI’s case, a new, modern campus would have been a luxury that must, at least for the moment, take a back seat to the fundamentals of its business.
“This decision allows us to do two things,” REI chief customer officer Ben Steele tells Fortune. “It allows to replenish [our balance sheet] for the disruptions, but it also allows us to strategically invest in the opportunities we see.”


fortune--2020-08-12--McDonald’s takes on accusations of ‘sexual harassment problem’ with lawsuit against former CEO

On this story there would be no Friday afternoon news dump—the preferred modus operandi of companies trying to hide the likes of bad earnings or legal proceedings.
Instead, McDonald’s filed its lawsuit against former CEO Steve Easterbrook first thing on Monday morning. Those fishing around for the complaint, filed in Delaware state court, did not even have to look very hard: McDonald’s included it as part of its filing with the SEC.
The suit alleges that Easterbrook, who was fired for sexting with a subordinate, did far more than that. The complaint claims that “recently identified evidence shows that Easterbrook had physical sexual relationships with three McDonald’s employees in the year before his termination; that he approved an extraordinary stock grant, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, for one of those employees in the midst of their sexual relationship; and that he was knowingly untruthful with McDonald’s investigators in 2019.”
With these alleged new revelations, McDonald’s is now arguing that it had cause to fire Easterbrook and in turn wants him to repay his severance, which the New York Times has reported is valued at more than $40 million.
It’s highly unusual for a company to opt for such a public airing of its dirty laundry. And there’s plenty of it here. The suit alleges that newly discovered evidence “consisted of dozens of nude, partially nude, or sexually explicit photographs and videos of various women, including photographs of these Company employees, that Easterbrook had sent as attachments to messages from his Company email account to his personal email account.” The complaint also claims that Easterbrook deleted this evidence from his phone “with the intention of concealing their existence.” A call by Fortune to Easterbrook’s lawyer was not returned.
Why would McDonald’s want to shine a spotlight on the alleged malfeasance of its former CEO? As longtime industry watcher Jonathan Maze, editor-in-chief of Restaurant Business Magazine, tweeted, “Point is: McDonald’s likely sees this lawsuit as good press and not bad.”
To be sure, McDonald’s has received plenty of bad press in recent years related to the working environment in its stores, with numerous lawsuits accusing the company of failing to respond to a culture of sexual harassment.
An article in The Nation from late July, for example, cited a poll conducted by a coalition of U.S. labor unions, with three-quarters of respondents saying they had experienced sexual harassment on the job. Two-thirds said they had experienced multiple forms of harassment. Nearly 30% had been asked to have sex with a coworker, and 12% said they were sexually assaulted or raped. (McDonald’s responded by saying the survey represented less than 0.1% of employees in its U.S. restaurants.)
In April, two McDonald’s store employees filed a $500 million class action lawsuit accusing the company of creating an environment of rampant sexual harassment. The suit is backed by Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, which pays legal fees for victims of sexual assault and harassment and is not the only one the organization is funding against McDonald’s.
When Easterbrook was fired last year, it was easier for critics to make the argument that the tone was set from the top. Now with its suit against its former CEO, McDonald’s is effectively distancing itself from Easterbrook and his alleged bad behavior. It’s a chance to show how seriously the company takes the improper conduct of its employees—even those at the highest level.
In addition to making its case against Easterbrook, the complaint filed on Monday spends just as much time stressing the importance of the company’s ethics and values.
For example, the suit says that in 2017 the board “emphasized to management that all employees, including top executives, should undergo the most current anti-harassment training.” The suit claims that management, including Easterbrook, “assured the directors that the senior leadership team was receiving such training and that the Company was implementing enhanced safe and respectful workplace training throughout the organization.”
The complaint also notes that the company revised its anti-harassment policy in 2019 after input from nonprofit organizations, to more clearly inform employees of their rights and more clearly define unacceptable behavior and how to report it.
Integrity is the message the company is pounding in its internal communications as well. A memo obtained by Fortune that was sent to company employees by chief people officer Heidi Capozzi and an email sent by CEO Chris Kempczinski to the entire McDonald’s system together mentioned “values” 16 times. McDonald’s declined to comment on the record beyond providing the email sent by Kempczinski.
In a press release in response to Monday’s filing, Amanda Harrington, vice president of communications at Time’s Up Now, put it bluntly, saying, “McDonald’s has a sexual harassment problem, plain and simple.”
But with its lawsuit, the company is attempting to make the case that it’s Easterbrook’s problem, not McDonald’s.


fortune--2020-08-12--Trump’s $400 extra weekly unemployment benefit may be shrinking to $300

Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
On Saturday President Donald Trump signed a memorandum that would grant $400 enhanced weekly unemployment benefits to out-of-work Americans if their state picked up $100 of the tab. That would temporarily replace the weekly $600 enhanced unemployment that expired the week ending July 25.
But on Tuesday the White House publicly corrected their initial stance, and said states could get the $300 weekly federal funds without throwing in another $100. And with most states facing COVID-19 spurred financial constraints and budget shortfalls, they’re likely going to opt for the $300 option.
Ohio, for one, has already said it would opt for just the $300 per week federal payment, and not throw in an additional $100.
The $44 billion allocated by Trump for the enhanced unemployment benefit is estimated to fund the weekly benefit for five weeks, or through August 29, according to a report by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. But there still remains the possibility the memorandum will face a legal challenge.
And states aren’t sure when they’ll start paying out the funds. The Texas Workforce Commission said Tuesday they’re waiting for guidance from the U.S. Department of Labor before they’ll know when the first payment will be sent out.
Unlike the $600 enhanced unemployment benefit, this new benefit will go only to Americans who are currently receiving $100 or more per week in state unemployment benefits. The enhanced benefit gets paid on top of state benefits.
It remains possible the enhanced benefit could get increased or extended if Congress passes a broader stimulus package. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appeared on CNBC and told viewers that the White House is still open to a stimulus bill. And Democratic leaders said this week they’d still like to get a deal done.


fortune--2020-08-12--Sumner Redstone, Viacom founder and old-fashioned media mogul, dies at 97

Many of the final years of Sumner Redstone’s life were spent tied up in fractious litigation over his multibillion-dollar estate, but in his prime he was a man who truly embodied the old-fashioned term “media mogul.” Through his ownership of both Viacom and CBS, Redstone controlled large swaths of the American media landscape, and he maintained that control with an iron grip, even to the detriment of his relationships with his own family.
Redstone died on Tuesday, at the age of 97, National Amusements Inc., the Redstone family’s private holding company, said in a statement issued today.
“Over the course of his distinguished life and career, Sumner played a critical role in shaping the landscape of the modern media and entertainment industry,” the statement read. “At National Amusements, he transformed a regional theater chain into a world leader in the motion picture exhibition industry. Sumner was also a keen investor who took stakes in a variety of companies, including Viacom Inc. and CBS Corporation—today merged as ViacomCBS—which he built into prominent, international, and industry-leading conglomerates in the media industry.”
Sumner Redstone was born Sumner Murray Rothstein on May 27, 1923, in Boston. His father, Michael, who owned a movie theater and a nightclub called the Latin Quarter in Boston, anglicized the family’s original Jewish name in 1940.
The Redstones’ theater company eventually became National Amusements, which in turn would become the cornerstone of Sumner Redstone’s media empire. Through it, Redstone and his family controlled CBS Corp. and Viacom, and through Viacom they controlled assets like BET Networks, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and the movie studio Paramount Pictures. According to Bloomberg, Redstone died with a net worth of $1.9 billion, a fortune closely controlled through National Amusements.
World War II veteran
Before he became a mogul, Redstone graduated from Harvard and served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, where he worked with a special team that decoded Japanese communications. After the war ended, he went to Georgetown University Law School, before transferring to Harvard Law School, where he graduated with a law degree in 1947.
After working for the U.S. Attorney General, Redstone joined his father’s company in 1954 and eventually became CEO in 1967. His father’s single theater had by that time become three drive-ins, and it continued to grow throughout the 1970s. When the drive-ins started to close down, the company still made money because it owned the land beneath them, which it sold to developers. National Amusements still has 32 theaters across the United States with over 400 screens.
Sumner Redstone in his office in Dedham, Mass., on Oct. 2, 1986. (Wire photograph: John Blanding/The Boston Globe via Getty Images.) John Blanding—The Boston Globe/Getty Images
In the 1970s, Redstone came to believe that while movie theaters might be slowly dying, content such as movies and television would always be valuable. The Viacom chairman is believed by some to have coined the phrase “Content is king,” and he also came up with the term “multiplexes” to describe theaters with more than one screen, which became popular in the 1980s.
In pursuit of his vision of the future of media, Redstone started investing in movie studios like Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Warner Communications, and Paramount Pictures. He sold most of these holdings in the 1980s and made substantial returns, but kept his stake in Paramount and eventually acquired the company in the 1990s for $10 billion.
Never gives up
Redstone’s ambitious plans came to a halt briefly when he suffered third-degree burns over 40% of his body in a fire at a hotel in Boston in 1979. He survived by crawling out onto the window ledge, where he was rescued by firefighters, and had to undergo 30 hours of surgery. Redstone often told this story, and the underlying lesson was obvious: Sumner Redstone never gives up.
After rehabilitation, Redstone was back on the acquisition trail, and his sights were set on Viacom (whose name is short for “video and audio communications”).
Viacom was spun off from CBS in 1971, after the Federal Communications Commission ruled that TV networks couldn’t syndicate their own programs once they had finished their run on regular TV. So the company became a stand-alone entity that syndicated CBS hits like Hawaii Five-0, as well as shows from other networks such as The Cosby Show and All in the Family. Viacom also owned MTV Networks and the Movie Channel.
Redstone took control of Viacom in 1986 for $3.4 billion after a four-month hostile takeover battle, and then embarked on a series of acquisitions, including Paramount Communications, which he won only after a long and tense bidding war with John Malone and Barry Diller.
Redstone also acquired CBS, the former parent of Viacom, in 2000 for $40 billion, and later spun it off as a separate entity, one which holds all of Paramount’s TV shows and back catalog. And Viacom acquired Blockbuster Entertainment, which included TV giant Aaron Spelling’s production company. In 2005, Redstone acquired DreamWorks SKG—the studio cofounded by Steven Spielberg—for $1.6 billion.
The battle over control of Redstone’s empire started years before his health began to fail. His trusts initially made it clear that his daughter, Shari Redstone—from his first marriage, which ended in 1999—would assume his role as chairman of Viacom and CBS after his death. In 2016, he stepped away from day-to-day management, handing the reins to Shari, with whom he had a contentious relationship over the years.
Last year, Shari Redstone remerged the two entities—CBS and Viacom—and now serves as chairwoman. In May, she told Wall Street analysts the company was seeing “significant growth” in demand for its content. The ad business, however, has been hit by the pandemic, as is the case with rival media companies.
Live-in girlfriend
In late 2015, the billionaire’s former live-in girlfriend Manuela Herzer—who was 40 years Redstone’s junior—filed suit, claiming that Redstone’s signature had been forged on a document, and that he was being manipulated by those who wanted to control his assets and business affairs. At that point, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman had taken over responsibility for Redstone’s medical care.
Although Herzer’s lawsuit questioned whether the billionaire was in control of his faculties, Dauman and others close to Redstone maintained that he was still involved in his companies, and a video deposition showed that while he was physically frail, Redstone was still able to testify in a profanity-laced statement to the court. He also said he had repaired his relationship with his daughter, who will now exercise a significant degree of control over the fate of his Viacom and CBS holdings.
Following the court case over Sumner’s mental abilities, the two Redstones went after Dauman, whom they blamed for the underperformance of the company’s stock. After a legal battle, Sumner Redstone removed him from the board of directors of his family trust, and not long afterward Dauman was forced to step down as CEO.
‘I will miss him always’
In his final years, Redstone and his daughter, Shari, appeared to have patched up their earlier differences. Shari Redstone on Wednesday spoke fondly of her father and his legacy.
“My father led an extraordinary life that not only shaped entertainment as we know it today, but created an incredible family legacy,” Shari Redstone told Variety. “Through it all, we shared a great love for one another, and he was a wonderful father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. I am so proud to be his daughter, and I will miss him always.”
Although Sumner Redstone was one of the wealthiest men in the world, he often denied that he was motivated by a desire to be rich. In a speech he gave to graduating law students at Boston University in 2007, the old-fashioned media mogul said: “Money, and I mean it sincerely, has never motivated me. The passion to win has motivated me.” And win he certainly did.


fortune--2020-08-12--Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank bets on public tech equities

This is the web version of Term Sheet, a daily newsletter on the biggest deals and dealmakers. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
Japanese telecom giant SoftBank has been known for its outsized bets in venture capital.
Now it’s diversifying. On Tuesday, SoftBank said that it is establishing an asset management subsidiary with $555 million to invest in about “30 highly liquid publicly listed stocks,” though Bloomberg reports that the subsidiary is targeting more than $10 billion and may rise beyond that.
In particular, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son says the subsidiary has already invested in the likes of Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Facebook.
It’s a notable roster. It’s all about tech—an area SoftBank’s Vision Fund has been heavily focused on—and the investments are much safer bets compared to its Vision Fund companies. They don’t exactly take advantage of the market dislocation that some firms, such as those in the travel and leisure space, are facing. It really is, as SoftBank puts it, about the high liquidity—which makes sense at a time when the company is shedding assets.
That said, we don’t have full insight into the subsidiary’s investments, given the vehicle’s unusual financing structure that can stop SoftBank’s name from appearing in public records, per Bloomberg.
And I say diversification because Son is not characterizing it as an about-face for SoftBank. “We still plan on Unicorn hunting with Vision Fund two, three, and so on,” he says.
Airbnb’s IPO: The home-sharing platform is nearing a public filing that may come later this month, per the Wall Street Journal. Although the pandemic sent travel into a vortex, CEO Brian Chesky was surprised by the level of bookings that returned in recent months. What still remains unclear: whether the company may choose to go public by merging with a SPAC or via the much-rumored direct listing.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Trumid Financial, a bond trading platform, raised $200 million in funding from those including T. Rowe Price Associates and BlackRock. The platform is now valued at over $1 billion. Read more.
- Varjo, a Helsinki-based VR/XR hardware and software maker, raised $54 million in Series C funding. Tesi, NordicNinja, and Swisscanto Invest by Zürcher Kantonalbank are among the new investors contributing to the round. Existing investors Lifeline Ventures, Atomico, EQT Ventures, and Volvo Cars Tech Fund also participated.
- Perimeter 81, a Tel Aviv-based VPN alternative, raised $40 million in Series B funding. Insight Partners led the round.
- Simplebet, a New York-based sports betting technology company, raised $35 million in total after closing an $11 million Series B in March. Investors include San Francisco Giants Baseball Club, David Blitzer (Co-Owner & Co-Managing Partner, Philadelphia 76ers), Jeff Mallett (Founding COO & President, Yahoo), Steve Ellman (former owner/Chairman, Phoenix Coyotes), David Levy (Former, AT&T/Warner Media), and Howard Schultz (Chairman Emeritus, Starbucks).
- Lumeon, a Boston-based care digital platform for hospitals and clinics, raised $30 million in Series D funding. Optum Ventures and Endeavour Vision led the round and was joined by investors including LSP, MTIP, IPF Partners, Gilde and Amadeus Capital Partners.
K2View, a Dallas and Tel Aviv-based provider of DataOps solutions, raised $28 million in funding. Forestay Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Genesis Partners.
- Fyllo, a Chicago-based maker of a compliance platform, raised $10 million, closing its Series A funding round at $26 million. JW Asset Management and K2 & Associates led the investment and was joined by investors including Arcadian, Salveo Capital and Phyto Partners.
- cred.ai, a Philadelphia-based credit card fintech company, raised over $18 million in Series A funding Darco Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Michael Rubin, Ben Simmons, John Legend and Tim Armstrong.
- Censys, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based cybersecurity company, raised $15.5 million in Series A funding. GV and Decibel led the round and were joined by Greylock Partners.
- Bodyport, a San Francisco-based digital health company focused on the detection and management of heart disease, raised $11.2 million in Series A funding. Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund led the round and was joined by existing investors Playground Global and Initialized Capital.
- ImmunoScape, a Singapore-based biotech firm focused on the immune system, raised $11 million (SGD $14.8 million) in funding. Anzu Partners led the round and was joined by investors including University of Tokyo Edge Capital, and NPR Holdings.
- Klima, a Berlin-based startup with an app that calculates carbon footprints, raised $5.8 million in seed funding. Backers include Christian Reber (Founder of Pitch), Jens Begemenn (Founder of Wooga), Niklas Jansen (Co-Founder of Blinkist) e.ventures, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, and 468 Capital.
- Mighty, a Salt Lake City-based platform for emote and cross-functional teams, raised $4.3 million in seed funding. Investors included Slack Fund, GSV Ventures, Origin Ventures, Album VC, Acadian Ventures, and Village Global.
- Incomlend, a Singapore-based invoice trading platform, raised $20 million in Series A funding. Sequoia India led the round.
- Artemest,, a Milan and New York-based e-commerce platform selling Italian luxury designs and home decor, raised $5 million in funding. OLMA Luxury Holdings and Brahma invested.
- Trala, a Chicago-based music education software company that teaches violin, raised $3.5 million in seed funding. Next Play Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Lachy Groom’s fund, Techstars Ventures, Blue Titan Ventures, Hyde Park Angels, Webb Investment Network, Phoenix Rising and Concrete Rose Capital.
- SMBX, a San Francisco-based fintech for small businesses to get bonds from everyday investors, raised $2.5 million in seed funding. Better Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Impact America Fund and Unusual Ventures.
- GoPeer, a Boston-based educational technology company that pairs college students with K-12 students for virtual tutoring lessons, raised $2 million in seed funding. Ed Baker, former VP of Product and Growth at Uber, led the round.
- Allergy Amulet, a Madison, Wis.-based company with a portable allergen sensor, raised $3.3 million in seed funding. TitletownTech, a joint venture between Microsoft and the Green Bay Packers, led the round.
- The Privacy Co., a New York-based personal privacy and security company, raised $3 million in funding from investors including K2 Intelligence FIN.
- Mission Control, a St. Louis-based B2B SaaS platform for recreational league esports, raised $1.8 million in seed funding. Dundee Venture Capital led the round and was joined by investors including M25, Cultivation Capital, and MATH Venture Partners.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Arcline Investment Management acquired Jersey Elevator, a provider of elevator maintenance, modernization and installation services in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Clayton, Dubilier & Rice will acquire HD Supply Holdings’s (NASDAQ:HDS) Construction & Industrial--White Cap business, a distributor of specialty concrete and construction products and services in North America serving professional contractors, for $2.9 billion in cash. CD&R will hold 65% of the combined company, while current Construction Supply Group shareholders, led by Sterling Group, will hold 35%.
- One Equity Partners acquired American Medical Technologies, an Irvine, Calif.-based provider of wound care, ostomy, urology and tracheostomy supplies and services. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Santa Monica Fertility, a portfolio company of Webster Equity Partners, acquired Newborn Advantage Surrogacy, a Dallas-based surrogacy agency. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Payroc, backed by Parthenon Capital, has acquired Strategic Payment Systems, a Canton, Mass.-based provider of products to merchants, sales offices, financial institutions and associations. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Resolute Industrial Holdings, a portfolio company of AE Industrial Partners, acquired the assets of DriExpress and Empire Holdings, two specialty HVAC&R equipment rental and logistical support businesses. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
OTHERS
- StoneCo (Nasdaq: STNE) plans to acquire Linx SA (BSP: LINX3), a Sao Paolo-based software provider, for 6.04 billion reais ($1.12 billion) in stock and cash.
- SpotOn Transact acquired Seatninja, a reservation management company for restaurants. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
BREAKUPS, HANGUPS, AND BANKRUPTCIES
- Brooks Brothers, an apparel retailer that filed for bankruptcy, plans to sell to Authentic Brands Group and SPARC Group after the group increased their offer to $325 million.
IPOS
- FuboTV, a New York-based streaming platform also known as FaceBank Group after a merger in March, re-filed for an $100 million IPO. Backers include Disney, AMC Network Ventures, and Comcast. Read more.
- Inhibrx, a La Jolle, Calif.-based maker of cancer and rare diseases therapies, plans to raise $102 million by offering 6 million shares priced between $16 to $18. RA Capital Funds and Viking Global back the firm. Evercore ISI, Barclays and Nomura Securities are underwriters. It plans to list on the Nasdaq as “INBX.” Read more.
- Duck Creek Technologies, a Boston-based provider of software for insurers, plans to raise $360 million in an offering of 15 million shares priced between $23 to $25.
F+FS
- Rocketship.vc, an early-stage venture capital firm, raised $100 million for its second fund Backers include Vulcan Capital, Adams Street Partners, as well as the family office of Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon from A16z.
- La Famiglia, a Berlin-based firm investing in B2B firms, raised a €50 million fund.


fortune--2020-08-12--Want to find the next $10-billion-plus takeover target? Watch executive stock sales carefully

The past six weeks have seen a resurgence in M&A activity, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Marathon Petroleum’s recent $21 billion sale of its Speedway gas station business to 7-Eleven parent Seven & I Holdings is just one of the most notable megadeals among a slew of recent transactions.
No fewer than eight deals worth more than $10 billion have been announced since June 30, the fastest start to a second half of the year since before the 2008 global financial crisis, according to a Financial Times analysis of data from Refinitiv.
How can you spot the next megadeal before it happens? Well, newly published research suggests it pays to keep careful tabs on the stock sales of top execs.
Researchers from Concordia University in Montreal and the University of Missouri have found that the top managers at companies targeted for acquisition significantly reduced sales of their own company’s stock in the 12 months prior to the possibility of a deal surfacing.
Shares in takeover targets typically climb on deal news, even if the rumors turn out to be false. Rumors that a firm may be purchased typically send its shares up an average 3.72% compared with the benchmark index for firms of that size in the 24 hours after the rumor first appears, the researchers found. Over the next 20 days, the cumulative average excess return is as high as 13.92% if the rumor proves true and a deal is announced. But there is still some excess return—1.55%—20 days out even if the initial report proves to be inaccurate and no deal materializes.
This, of course, gives executives a big incentive to purchase shares in their own companies prior to any news leaks about a possible deal. But, in the U.S., it is illegal for executives to buy or sell shares on the basis of material nonpublic information. And, in fact, the researchers found little evidence that executives blatantly violate the law: Top managers at acquisition targets didn’t typically purchase more stock in the run-up to news of a possible deal leaking.
But, the researchers note, in a paper published in the journal European Financial Management and posted to research repository SSRN earlier this week, it is not illegal to refrain from sales that would have otherwise taken place. And this, the academics claim, is exactly what top managers at target companies tend to do.
The researchers examined 1,642 publicly traded U.S. companies that were subject to takeover rumors between 2002 and 2011. In the year prior to rumors of an M&A deal surfacing in the press, top executives at alleged takeover targets cut back on selling, to the extent that the overall number of shares they held grew on average 28% relative to their usual pattern of activity.
By comparing this activity with those from executives in a control group of similar companies that were not subject to takeover rumors, the researchers conclude “that the high level of pre-rumor net purchasing is driven by insiders’ use of privately available knowledge, rather than an astute capacity to anticipate stock price movements.”
This latest paper, which was cowritten by Concordia’s Frederick Davis, Hamed Khadivar, and Thomas Walker, and Missouri’s Kuntara Pukthuanthong, confirms a similar study from 2012 that looked at a slightly different time period and also found target company insiders reduced sales significantly prior to takeover rumors.
It also comports with previous research showing stock prices in takeover targets tend to increase even prior to rumors of a deal being made public, indicating that information about a deal may be leaking, or that insiders are trading on nonpublic information.
A 2015 study also found clear evidence of abnormal trading volumes in short-dated options of target companies in the 20 days prior to a deal rumor being reported, also indicating possible trading on inside information, although the same research noted that the Securities and Exchange Commission brought insider trading cases in very few instances in which researchers found abnormal activity.
The new paper’s authors write that their research points to possible holes in insider trading laws. The target company executives’ activity, they write, “[strikes] at the spirit of insider trading policy: Profiting from material private information is contrary to both the stated intention of the regulatory legislation and to the implicit concept of moral fairness, which is required for investor confidence.”
In the meantime, the phenomenon the researchers have uncovered presents an opportunity. By carefully monitoring the net purchases of top executives compared with prior periods, savvy investors may be able to scoop up shares in the next megadeal target and earn a tidy profit.
Subscribe to Well Adjusted, our newsletter full of simple strategies to work smarter and live better, from the Fortune Well team. Sign up today


fortune--2020-08-12--Here’s how much Microsoft’s new folding Duo phone costs and how to order it

Microsoft started taking preorders on Wednesday for its new folding phone, the Surface Duo, which costs $1,400.
The Duo, which was unveiled in October, has two 5.6-inch touch screens that open and close like a small book. The device is compatible with Microsoft’s Surface Pen stylus for handwriting and the company’s Xbox game controller for video gaming.
Customers are supposed to receive their Duos on Sept. 10.
Microsoft chief product officer Panos Panay says the Duo is aimed at people looking for a new way to work on the go, on something that is between a tablet and a phone. “I’m not trying to reinvent the phone, but I do believe this is a better way to get things done, a better way to create, and a better way to connect on a mobile device,” he said during a virtual press conference earlier this week.
The preorder period starts as the mobile market is still trying to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Smartphone sales plummeted 25% in the second quarter. The Duo’s price tag will test whether many consumers are willing to spend big money on a phone during difficult economic times, particularly on a device that lacks the most hyped new feature of 2020: superfast 5G Internet connectivity. So far, consumer interest in rival folding phones like the Motorola Razr and Samsung Galaxy Fold has been tepid, at best.
The Duo marks Microsoft’s return to the smartphone market four years after it stopped making devices relying on technology acquired from Nokia and running its Windows mobile software. The Duo uses a version of Google’s Android phone software and includes access to Google’s Play store with its millions of mobile apps.
“When it comes to mobile apps, the answer is Android,” Panay explained. “I love what’s possible with Windows and everything we’re doing but Microsoft has to light up on every platform.”
Though Google and Microsoft compete in many areas, particularly cloud services, they collaborated on the Duo, extending the features of Android to let apps take advantage of the two separate screens. The technology they developed can be used by any app developer on any phone that features dual screens.
All of Microsoft’s mobile apps, including its Outlook email program and OneNote note-taking app, can take advantage of the Duo’s two screens. In Outlook, for example, the app can show a list of emails on one screen and the contents of a selected email on the other screen. Other major apps, including Spotify and Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, have also been updated to work with the Duo’s two screens.
When unfolded, the 5.6-inch screens are only 4.8 millimeters thick, a little more than half the thickness of an iPhone 11 Pro or Samsung’s Galaxy S20 5G. But when folded closed to fit in a pocket, the Duo is about 2 millimeters thicker than its rivals. The Duo weighs 250 grams, or nine ounces, more than the iPhone, at 188 grams, and the S20, at 163 grams.
The Duo has just one camera that can be used for taking pictures, snapping selfies, or making video calls. The camera, which has a resolution of 11 megapixels, can shoot 4K video at 30 frames per second. Photos were “not a primary focus” in designing the Duo, Panay admitted.
Consumers can preorder the Duo from Microsoft’s website or buy it from AT&T or Best Buy. Despite the sales exclusive, the phone will work on all three major U.S. wireless networks, including Verizon and T-Mobile, Microsoft said.


fortune--2020-08-12--How will race and gender stereotypes affect Kamala Harris’s VP run?

This is the web version of the Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Pinterest’s former COO sues for gender discrimination, Belarus’s opposition candidate flees the country, and Sen. Kamala Harris makes history several times over. Have a powerful Wednesday.
– Harris makes history. Nothing like a little history-making news drop on a Tuesday afternoon! Yesterday, the question we’ve all been speculating about for months was finally answered when Joe Biden announced that he’s chosen Kamala Harris as his VP.
While the pick wasn’t exactly a surprise—Sen. Harris has been the frontrunner for the spot for at least the past few weeks—the announcement did seem to spark the kind of excitement that the presidential race has been missing, certainly since COVID-19 hit, and perhaps stretching even further back.
Leaving political ideology aside for a moment (as if!), there are deep-seeded reasons to celebrate this moment. It’s impressive how many ‘firsts’ Harris just checked: She’s the first Black woman—and first woman of color, period—to be named to the presidential ticket of a major U.S. party, as well as the first person of Asian descent to tick that historic box. She’s also only the second Black person and fourth woman to run for president or VP on the ticket of either of the U.S.’s two major parties. And, if she and Biden win November, we’ll be writing a whole new list of milestones.
It’s also incredibly meaningful to see a Black woman rise to the tippy top of national consciousness in this moment, when so many people are in the streets calling on Americans to value Black women. (Though it must be noted that Harris, a former prosecutor, is far from beloved by all those protesting against racism and police brutality.) Harris’s selection also seems like long overdue acknowledgement that Black women are core to the Democratic base.
If you want to read smart opinions on Harris and the role she’s likely to play in the campaign, there are many, many to choose from—and given that we’re still months out from the election, there are certainly more to come.
Personally, I’ll be watching to see how her addition helps shape the Biden campaign. (Might we see the nominee move closer to her proposed six months of paid parental leave? Or her innovative plan to curb states from continuing to try to block women’s access to abortion?)
And as a veteran of chronicling of the 2016 race, the Broadsheet will be keeping a watchful eye on how stereotypes related to gender—and, this time around, race—creep into the political discourse, especially as it relates to Harris. Just last week we wrote about the way doubters referred to the senator’s “ambition” as if it were a shameful secret she should tuck away in the attic. One might hope the pundits and pols learned a few things about deploying words like “shrill,” imploring female candidates to smile, and critiquing their “likability” in the last go-round—but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Primary results. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.) prevailed in her primary on Tuesday, beating out four opponents. "Organized people will always beat organized money," she tweeted. Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene won a Republican primary runoff in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. Greene believes in the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory and has come under fire for racist remarks. Her ascent has alarmed Republicans, but given her district's demographics, she's likely to end up in Congress.
- Pin this. Françoise Brougher, the former COO of Pinterest, sued the company for gender discrimination and retaliation. Brougher says she was left out of meetings, given gendered feedback, paid less, and fired for speaking out. Pinterest says it is reviewing the lawsuit and conducting an independent review of its culture. New York Times
- Dramatic election. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition candidate in Belarus's presidential election on Sunday, fled to Lithuania after contesting election results amid widespread protests. Many details surrounding her departure are unclear, including whether she faced threats from the government, but the candidate said she "made a very hard decision" to leave. CNN
- Police complaints. The NYPD faces a gender-discrimination lawsuit from Chief Lori Pollock, who retired after being assigned to a new role she said was a demotion. An NYPD spokesperson said the department would review the lawsuit. In Seattle, police Chief Carmen Best stepped down over cuts to the city's policing budget.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: In a surprise move, GM CFO Dhivya Suryadevara left the job to join fintech startup Stripe in the same role. General Assembly hired Ethical Ventures cofounder Lisa Lewin as CEO. Law firm Susman Godfrey elected Kalpana Srinivasan managing partner, the first woman to hold the role.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Granting leave, period. India's food-delivery service Zomato is offering "period leave" to its employees, allowing members of its workforce to stay home while suffering painful menstruation symptoms. The company's CEO says that women shouldn't feel any shame using the leave, that "this is a part of life." New York Times
- Bittersweet story. In 2011, Janet Mock told her story in a Marie Claire cover: "I Was Born a Boy." Now Mock, the writer, director, and activist for transgender rights, is reflecting on that milestone piece; she views it—and its approach to her identity—as "bittersweet." Marie Claire
- Dangerous precedent. In California, a woman last year was charged with murder after her pregnancy ended in stillbirth; prosecutors blamed the woman taking methamphetamines for the fetus's death. The state's attorney general has joined groups calling for the charges to be dropped, worrying about the precedent it could set to "subject all women who suffer a pregnancy loss to the threat of criminal investigation and possible prosecution for murder." New York Times
ON MY RADAR
The forgotten history of women’s suffrage in the United States Fortune
How the publisher of Simon & Schuster gets it done The Cut
100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment: Unpacking the legacy Teen Vogue
PARTING WORDS
"I want a president who makes me feel secure. I want a president who understands the pain of the people. I want a president who is going to give us answers."
-Cardi B on the 2020 election


fortune--2020-08-13--It’s Black Women’s Equal Pay Day. The pay gap won’t shrink until employers take these steps

My daughter Heather Heyer ’ s death taught me how to grieve .
We all need to know how today

This op-ed is the second in a series by LeanIn.Org on the state of women in the workplace.
Today is Black Women’s Equal Pay Day. That means Black women had to work all of 2019 and this far into 2020 to earn what white men earned last year alone—four months longer than white women had to work to accomplish the same goal. Over the course of a Black woman’s career, the pay gap accounts for almost $1 million in lost income.
That’s a major injustice. It’s also part of a much bigger problem.
For five years, LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company have run Women in the Workplace, the largest study on the state of women in corporate America. Year after year, the data tell the same story: The workplace is worse for women than for men, worse for women of color than white women, and for Black women in particular, in many ways, it’s worst of all.
At this moment when our national conversation has finally turned to the systemic injustices Black people face, it’s critical that we take a hard look at what’s happening in the workplace. For too many Black women, work is yet another area where they encounter inequality and discrimination.
To understand the depths of this problem, consider the findings from last year’s Women in the Workplace study. Black women are underrepresented at every level of corporate America. The gap is largest at the top: Only 1% of C-suite leaders are Black women. But the problem really begins to show itself at the first step up from entry-level job to manager—what we call the “broken rung” on the corporate ladder. For every 100 entry-level men promoted to manager, only 58 Black women get the same recognition.
Whether you rise at work often depends on who champions you. For many Black women, it feels like no one does. Black women are less likely to have managers advocate for them. They receive less sponsorship (the informal support senior employees give promising junior employees). And 59% of Black women say that they have never—not once—had an informal interaction with a senior leader at their company.
All this contributes to a workplace where Black women regularly deal with disrespect and microaggressions. They’re more than twice as likely as men to be mistaken for someone at a much lower level. They’re more likely than other employees to hear people express surprise at their language skills or other abilities. And for the half of Black women who are the only or one of the only women of color on their teams, being at work means feeling closely watched and on guard.
Finally, there’s allyship. More than 80% of white employees consider themselves allies to people of color at work, according to new data from Lean In and SurveyMonkey. But only 45% of Black women say that they have strong allies at work. And fewer than 40% of white employees say they have ever spoken out against racism at work.
This data about Black women’s experiences at work should ring alarm bells in every C-suite; we’ve presented it in a new report: The State of Black Women in Corporate America. Companies must move swiftly to change things for the better. What better day to take action than Black Women’s Equal Pay Day?
Business leaders should commit publicly to doing more to advance Black women. Then they must embrace an intersectional approach. The challenges Black women face are rooted in a combination of sexism and racism, so any attempt to support them must take both into account. For example, companies should track representation by gender and race combined and set hiring and promotion targets for women of color and Black women specifically. Right now, only 7% of companies set hiring and promotion targets in this way. That leaves many Black women and other women of color at least somewhat invisible, which is exactly the problem companies should be solving. And that intersectional approach should be applied across the board: to compensation, to access to mentorship and sponsorship, and to other factors that affect employees’ success and satisfaction.
Companies must also work on creating a culture in which Black women are meaningfully included and welcome. Educating employees about sexism and racism—and empowering them to speak up when they see them—is key. But rooting out bad behavior isn’t enough. Companies must proactively cultivate good behavior—for example, by requiring allyship training that teaches white employees how to advocate for colleagues of color.
For years, Lean In has urged employers to make their workplaces equal for women. We know from our data that the only effective and lasting way to do that is by centering the women who are most marginalized. If employers want to do better by women, they must do better by Black women.
Raena Saddler is VP of people and managing director of LeanIn.Org. Rachel Thomas is cofounder and CEO of LeanIn.Org. Their new report is The State of Black Women in Corporate America.


fortune--2020-08-13--In the U.S. presidential election, how will China vote?

This is the web version of Eastworld, Fortune’s newsletter focused on business and technology in Asia. Subscribe here to get future editions in your inbox.
Officials from the U.S. and China are expected to meet virtually this weekend to review the progress of the “phase one” trade deal the two countries signed in January. It promises to be an interesting encounter.
Beijing and Washington are at loggerheads on issues across the board, including technology, investment rules, Hong Kong autonomy, and China’s treatment of ethnic Muslims in the northwestern province of Xinjiang. As Geoff Colvin notes in the cover story of the latest issue of Fortune, the world’s two largest economies are hammering at each other like a pair of exhausted professional wrestlers, expelling each other’s media, shuttering each other’s consulates, barring each other’s companies from doing business, and slapping sanctions on each other’s leaders.
In the past week, President Donald Trump has upped the ante by vowing to ban TikTok, the wildly popular Chinese-owned short video app, unless it is sold to an American buyer. He also outlawed WeChat, the messaging platform that is a lifeline for millions of Chinese living in America.
As former Obama White House security adviser Evan Medeiros told the Financial Times: “We’re entering the Twilight Zone of U.S.-China relations.”
On Monday, Trump suggested he doesn’t care about the trade deal anymore, scoffing that it “means very little” in light of America’s more recent beefs with China.
That’s contrary to the account of Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, who asserted in a recent memoir that the trade deal was the only aspect of the China relationship Trump does care about because he believes that Chinese purchases of American agricultural products will help him claim victory in crucial farm states in November’s presidential election.
By Wednesday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow was dialing it back, reassuring reporters in Washington that the trade deal is “fine,” and dismissing suggestions that the agreement might come apart amid escalating U.S.-China conflict on other issues. “The one area where we are engaging is trade,” Kudlow said.
That may be so. But the fate of the “phase one” deal is suddenly fraught. China has fallen far behind on its pledge to expand purchases of U.S. goods and services in 2020 and 2021 by a combined $200 billion above to 2017 purchasing levels. Through June, China’s 2020 imports from the U.S. were about $40 billion, or less than a quarter of the targeted full-year amount agreed to under the deal, according to calculations by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
With the U.S. presidential election less than three months away, Chinese President Xi Jinping faces a tricky decision. Does he try to ramp up purchases to put China’s imports back on schedule? Or should he dither, blame the pandemic for the lag, and promise to close the gap next year?
Either choice will influence electoral outcomes—though by how much is hard to parse. And which is in China’s interest?
The conventional wisdom is that a dramatic increase in Chinese purchases of U.S. soy beans would send grateful farmers in key states like Wisconsin and Iowa rushing to the polls to vote for Trump. If the purchases don’t materialize, in theory, that enables Democratic rival Joe Biden to claim that Trump got played.
But those assumptions may be flawed. A thoughtful essay by Dan Kaufman in the latest New Yorker suggests smaller farmers are disillusioned with Trump and unlikely to vote for him in any case.
If Xi really can influence the outcome of the U.S. election, which candidate would he prefer? To hear Trump tell it, Xi is rooting for Biden who’s so soft on China that he’s practically The Manchurian Candidate. “If I’m defeated, China will own the United States,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt this week. “You will have to learn to speak Chinese!“
An assessment released by American intelligence officials last week concluded that while Russia is actively meddling in the U.S. election in an effort to benefit President Trump, China wants Trump out. But the assessment, according to the New York Times, found that Beijing was “weighing whether to take more aggressive action in the election.”
Even so, many foreign affairs analysts concur with former Singapore diplomat Kishore Mahbubani, who argued in a recent Eastworld Spotlight that Trump, for all his anti-China bluster, is the devil Beijing knows—and has diminished U.S. leverage over China by picking fights with virtually all of America’s traditional allies.
Several recent reports suggest Xi, while not quite reverting to Deng Xiaoping’s old maxim of “hiding China’s brightness,” is trying to keep the conflict with the U.S. from escalating further by, among other things, muzzling some of the nation’s more belligerent “Wolf Warrior” diplomats. On Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian, who has been a harsh critic of U.S. policies in the past, struck a conciliatory tone. “China is always ready to work with the United States,” he said. “We are prepared for a tough slog, through thick and thin, to pass this crisis in U.S.-China ties.”
Wall Street Journal correspondent Lingling Wei argues that, no matter which candidate wins in November, Xi is bracing for a protracted standoff with the United States. She notes that, in a series of speeches to government audiences since May, he has floated an idea called “domestic circulation,” laying the rhetorical groundwork for a major policy shift aimed at lessening China’s dependence on foreign markets, investment, and technology.
This week’s Eastworld Spotlight is a conversation with Anthony Tan, co-founder and CEO of Grab, one of Southeast Asia’s most dynamic tech players. Grab began as a ride-hailing venture and, since acquiring Uber’s operations in Southeast Asia, has blossomed into an “everyday super-app” offering consumers a wide array of different services on a single platform. While American counterparts like Uber and Lyft have been staggered by the pandemic, Grab reports unusual success in reassuring riders that its cars and motorbikes are clean and safe. In recent months, the group has rapidly expanded its food delivery, financial services businesses, and other businesses and has seen a quantum leap to cashless. Anthony also has a vivid account in the Commentary section about how the pandemic has accelerated innovation among Southeast Asia’s small and medium-sized businesses.
More Eastworld news below!
Clay Chandler
clay.chandler@fortune.com
This edition of Eastworld was curated and produced by Grady McGregor. Reach him at grady.mcgregor@fortune.com.
Eastworld news
King of the chips
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the Taiwanese chipmaker, controls half of the world’s contract chip manufacturing; its chips are in a vast array of devices, from Chinese Xiaomi phones to American missiles. The company is currently trying to navigate an escalating feud between its two largest markets, the U.S. and China. The company, however, is benefitting from a recent stumble from one of its main competitors, Intel, and is hoping that its highly-effective and secretive processes for developing chips will allow it to maintain its dominance. Fortune
We (can't) chat
For many of WeChat’s 19 million users in the U.S., Trump’s proposed WeChat ban threatens their only connection to friends and family in China. In China, WeChat is nearly ubiquitous and most social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are blocked. “[WeChat is] the only app that we can download and [family in China] can download,” one New York City resident told Fortune’s Naomi Xu-Elegant this week. “How else are we going to communicate with them?” Fortune
The rise of the e-yuan
This week, Fortune's Robert Hackett documents China's efforts to create an e-yuan, a digital currency that the government has already rolled out in pilot projects and plans to launch across the country by 2022. Though inspired by decentralized, blockchain efforts like Bitcoin, China's government will have full control over the currency that offers benefits like lower transaction costs and greater financial inclusion. Most important, its rollout may put China years ahead of any other country in the potentially transformative technology. “China is sprinting ahead in a race that few others realize they’re running,” Hackett writes. Fortune
In plain sight
Jio Platforms, India's largest telecommunications firm, has ambitions to become India’s first tech giant, and has raised over $20 billion in the last few months thanks to funding from Silicon Valley heavyweights like Facebook and Google. One investor, Egon Durban, co-CEO of technology investment firm Silver Lake, tells Fortune's Vivienne Walt that Jio is “the world’s greatest private tech company hidden in plain sight.” In Walt’s profile of Jio this week, she dives into the company’s plans for expansion and why American firms have been so eager to grab a foothold in the company. Fortune
A note from Chengdu
In the 1990s and 2000s, Peter Hessler's books on China helped provide the world with a more nuanced window into the large and often misunderstood country. This week, Hessler turns his eye towards China’s experience with COVID-19, providing a textured portrait of how the country has navigated the pandemic. From his vantage point as a professor in Chengdu, a city in southwestern China, Hessler documents students' struggles in navigating lockdowns, the country's complicated efforts to track its citizens amid the pandemic, and how the U.S.'s struggles with the pandemic are viewed in China. The New Yorker
The great floods
On the heels of a pandemic outbreak, China experienced its worst flooding in decades this summer. Torrential rains led to flood waters that submerged entire villages, broke through levees, and even raised concerns over the integrity of the country's famous Three Gorges Dam. Yet experts don't expect the Yangtze River flooding to make a significant dent in the country's economy this year. That's due in large part to the Chinese government's carefully calibrated policies that direct flood waters away from cities and industrial areas and toward farmland and less populated regions. Fortune
Coronavirus by country
New Zealand went 102 days without recording a single locally-transmitted case of COVID-19, giving it one of the world’s most successful pandemic responses. Its streak ended on Wednesday, with the country now recording nearly 20 new cases in Auckland, where authorities have imposed a three-day lockdown. The aggressive measure reflects the country's successful spring efforts, which involved implementing early travel restrictions, lockdowns, and widespread testing and contact tracing efforts. The government suspects the new outbreak may have originated in a refrigerated shipping container that came from abroad, a similar claim to one the Chinese government made in June that linked a Beijing outbreak to salmon imports. Fortune
Markets and movers
Tencent – The Chinese tech giant beat expectations and posted $4.8 billion in second quarter profits on Wednesday, less than a week after the U.S. announced a ban on the company’s flagship super-app WeChat. Tencent said it expects the ban to have a small impact on the company’s bottom line. Reuters
Carlyle Group – The American private equity firm will invest $9.4 billion into Japan in the next three to five years, anticipating that pandemic-inflicted reforms will create new investment opportunities. Nikkei Asian Review
Shell – The Dutch oil major is in talks to purchase a 50% stake in the Indian petrochemical firm Nayara Energy for up to $9 billion, a deal that would provide Shell with a major foothold in the world’s largest growth market. Reuters
Shake Shack – The American burger chain opened its first outlet in Beijing on Wednesday, pushing full steam ahead in expanding in the mainland market amid worsening relations between the U.S. and China. Shake Shack has one outlet in Shanghai and several in Hong Kong. New York Times
Final figure
$51 million
Relatives of three of the top four members of the Chinese Communist Party have purchased homes worth a combined $51 million in Hong Kong over the last few years, according to a new investigation from the New York Times. In particular, the report looks into Li Qianxin, daughter of the third highest ranking official in China’s government Li Zhanshu. She recently purchased a $15 million Hong Kong home. This year, Li Zhanshu oversaw China’s passage of the new national security law for Hong Kong, which has quashed the city’s protest movement. The Times investigation alleges that “as the party now takes a stronger hand in running Hong Kong, the top leadership in Beijing has a vested interest, politically and personally” in the city's fate. New York Times


fortune--2020-08-13--How Livongo reached its historic $18.5 billion Teladoc merger

In October of 2008, the same year the first iPhone came to market, a company called EosHealth, focused on chronic disease management (at the time, diabetes) was officially incorporated in Delaware. It had an ambitious goal of combining health care support for those with the most common chronic conditions with the kinds of software used by new technologies such as smartphones.
By the end of 2014, the startup renamed itself Livongo Health. In July 2019, Livongo went public with a listing on the Nasdaq. And just over a year later, in August 2020, it forged the biggest digital health deal ever with an $18.5 billion merger with Teladoc, which also provides telemedicine services but in a different niche of the market.
Livongo’s growth strategy has relied on a series of secret sauces, including an employee base that is largely made up of actual diabetes patients—including its own president, Jennifer Schneider.
Schneider told Fortune a personal story shortly after the company’s IPO about her use of Livongo’s platform, which had soared in popularity (and revenues) in the preceding years. She was touring the country to promote the public offering before waking up with low blood sugar, leaving her confused and woozy. That particular incident may have been a one-off in the midst of a hectic tour, but it can be a living reality for many diabetes patients.
With the firm’s technology, Schneider says she took her blood sugar readings, and the Livongo connected platform was then able to beam this information to a diabetes specialist who could give her immediate and personalized advice. (In this case, the advice was to raid the hotel minibar to get her glucose numbers back up.)
That convenience factor has only grown as interconnected technologies have become a regular part of our everyday lives, leading to shifting consumer attitudes in digital health care. For instance, Accenture finds that consumers are increasingly likely to choose health care service providers that can offer virtual offerings, such as the ability to use remote devices (such as Livongo’s) to keep track of their biometrics.
Those trends are borne out by Livongo’s revenues, which more than doubled to nearly $170 million, from $68 million, between 2018 and 2019, buoyed by high engagement rates.
Although Livongo has made rapid progress in the past few years, it took more than a decade—and a global crisis—to get to this point. “We as humans are kind of slow to behavior change,” Schneider tells Fortune.
Just as with everything else right now, the coronavirus pandemic put the process on overdrive.
“There was that big, big aha! moment with COVID. And I think that the market then said, ‘Oh, wow, this is not just a small piece of the puzzle. This is actually the future going forward,'” she says, referring to telemedicine’s staying power in American health care. As more patients were able to see their doctors virtually, they realized the benefits of the approach.
At the large New York Presbyterian health system, some 4% of outpatient visits were telehealth visits before the pandemic. That number has skyrocketed since, with somewhere between 85% and 95% of outpatient psychiatric visits being conducted online. Similar spikes have occurred for chronic disease maintenance.
This speaks to the synergies of, and the logic behind, the Livongo-Teladoc deal. Piper Sandler analysts paint the merger as a natural corporate marriage, particularly during pandemic times.
“Teladoc’s challenge has been utilization, which has improved considerably because of COVID,” they write in a research note. “Livongo helps solve for this because of their high engagement rates of 35%” and more.
On the flip side, Livongo’s health coaches for diabetes and hypertension and other chronic conditions can’t actually prescribe medication—a problem that Teladoc can solve by giving the company’s customers access to a bevy of doctors on the Teladoc network.
This particular merger may be the biggest of its kind to date. But don’t be surprised if you see a growing number of similar deals as telehealth leaves a lasting footprint on American health care.


fortune--2020-08-13--Grab CEO Anthony Tan says the pandemic’s digital revolution is ‘permanent’

Subscribe to Eastworld for weekly insight on what’s dominating business in Asia, delivered free to your inbox.
The continuous spread of COVID-19 has disrupted the way the world does business, forcing executives and consumers alike to pivot dramatically toward e-commerce. Even when the crisis recedes, the digitization it has fostered is likely to stay, says Anthony Tan, CEO and cofounder of ride-hailing firm Grab.
“There has been a permanent shift,” Tan said. “This idea of ‘complete cashless’ food arrives, my e-commerce arrives, my groceries arrive, was a novelty. But now it has become a reality.”
Grab is a Singapore-based startup that’s become a sort of “super-app,” offering various services—food delivery, digital payments, health care, and financial services—along with rides in Southeast Asia. The company currently serves more than 187 million users in over 300 cities across the region.
Backed by SoftBank, Grab raised more than $850 million in February to fund its expansion into financial services. That same month, the pandemic upended Grab’s business.
As ride-hailing trips cratered during early coronavirus lockdowns, Grab’s delivery offerings grew 20% to 30%, says Tan. During the pandemic, the company has also scaled up its delivery services—GrabFood, GrabMart, and GrabExpress, which deliver food, daily goods, and parcels, respectively—to meet the growing demand from customers stuck at home. It has also assisted small businesses in digitizing their operations with merchant services app GrabMerchant and launched GrabProtect, a comprehensive set of safety policies for ride-hailing, to ensure the hygiene and safety of merchants and customers.
Those initiatives weren’t enough to fully offset the effects of the economic downturn. In June, Grab cut about 5% of its workforce or 360 employees. At the time, Tan said it would be the last organization-wide layoff of 2020.
Talking to Fortune’s Clay Chandler last week, Tan discussed how Grab is protecting merchants and customers and how consumer behavior and business strategy is changing in Southeast Asia during the pandemic. The conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.
Fortune: What sort of measures have you taken to promote hygiene and ensure the health and safety of team members during the pandemic?
Anthony Tan: We were the first to introduce GrabProtect. Imagine you jump in a car, there’s hand sanitizers, there’s the plastic shield. Every time you jump on your [Grab] app, you verify that you agree to all these terms, and when [a driver] comes in and he sees that you’re not wearing a mask, he can choose to reject you as a customer even if you pay. That would be something that we would never have accepted before, but today we will prioritize safety and hygiene, even above customers. And customers actually appreciate that, and we’ve seen how that’s really helped the business.
And not just in rides but also in food delivery. For example, we have all the contact layers, we make sure we do temperature checks for our merchants, our drivers. They have to submit temperature checks in the app constantly throughout the day.
Companies similar to yours like Uber and Lyft have faced difficulties in gaining customers’ confidence to use their services. What has been the response of Grab customers?
We have a diversified business from rides and transport mobility to food delivery, mart delivery, groceries, things like that, all the way to social e-commerce.
Diversity is playing out because as the pandemic hit, our rides came down naturally as cities went into lockdown. But our deliveries business shot up really, really fast. We’re also seeing…that because car ownership is much lower in this part of the world than in the U.S., we see that people tend to be more willing [to travel with Grab], as long as you can give them that assurance of safety and hygiene.
Do you suggest that one legacy of the pandemic is that people are much more habituated to the idea of shopping online and e-commerce, and that this would be a permanent shift?
That’s exactly right. Here there has been a permanent shift. For example, in food delivery, a lot of our customers are female from age 18, 20 to 35, 40. But because of the pandemic, we saw even our older segment customers, say, between age 35 and 55, embracing food delivery a lot more.
This idea of “complete cashless”—food arrives, my e-commerce arrives, my groceries arrive—was a novelty. But now it has become a reality.
You work a lot with small businesses—this must be a very difficult time for them. Have you been surprised by how successful most of the Southeast Asian economies have been in coping with the pandemic?
It’s been tremendously difficult for some of the small businesses. Many of them who weren’t on Grab had to close. This is where I believe that GrabFood and the likes of [mobile payment solution] GrabPay, a lot of these services that were seen as, maybe at one point in the early days, nice to have…today they [are] the primary source of business for many of these guys. In many of the governments around the region, they classified us as essential service, even more important than public transport because people weren’t going to work. It was a must-have to get food into homes during lockdown.
I think when your business is threatened with survivability, the demand for [Grab] grows. Where you say, “Hey, I just have to go online, my city’s in lockdown. How do I get online as fast as possible? How do I make sure that my business is saved?”
Most Southeast Asians’ businesses, something like 90%, are small to medium enterprises, SMEs, that are a major part of the region’s business. A lot of it was traditional, meaning that they were mostly offline. So the penetration of food e-commerce and grocery e-commerce and mobile payments was still very low. Cashless [is] very low compared to the U.S. or China. I think that COVID took what was clear [about] the future and just brought it forward by years.
This region, or at least Singapore and many other countries, can be quite disciplined. They were quite disciplined to make sure [that] “Hey, I’m [an] emerging market, I need this, and I need to embrace whatever it takes to survive.” That hunger was there. So they just quickly pivoted to online very quickly.
What is the current situation in Southeast Asia in reopening its economies, and how is Grab dealing with it?
I think it’s not going to be a one size fits all. [In] Singapore, they’re getting more and more willing to explore, more and more opening up. For example, weddings are now possible for 50 people; it started with five people at each table and now 50. Then there are markets like the Philippines that just went into…quarantine. That has gone in the opposite direction to Singapore.
I think the beauty about being a regional business, and again we are very blessed for that, is that when a market like the Philippines goes through a quarantine…[over] 90% of businesses there will come down, while in Singapore, which is opening up, business rises. I think we’re in 360 cities; the ability to have massive diversification across services and across geographies has really created that resilience for Grab.
How have you adapted your business planning for the COVID era?
One advantage we had was, because we had a lot of GrabCar and GrabBike drivers, the minute that transport came down, they were available. GrabFood saw a massive spike in volume, so we moved, like, 149,000 drivers in a period of two months from what they were used to—every day bringing people to work—to now going up stairs, picking up the food from the restaurant. Or shopping from a grocery store and then delivering that. We also saw how our GrabMart scaled to about 50 different cities in two and a half months; over 50 cities in eight countries. Now we are partners with [over] 3,000 stores in this short period, again all this literally came up during COVID.
The other thing is GrabPay [which allows for mobile wallet payments]. The idea of touching my [credit] card is now seen as nonkosher. So the idea that I can just QR code pay to many thousands of stores across the region…and because most of the people in this region—say, 70%—are underbanked in some shape or form…that to us was a great boost. You wouldn’t have thought that people wouldn’t even want to pass a credit card on. It’s so pervasive, from a customer behavior change. And merchants…actually encourage their cashier not to take [a credit card] because they don’t want a sick staff, then passing it on. So they said, “Please, I encourage you. Use your phone QR code pay, please.”
There are stores I see today [that] don’t even accept cash anymore…“That’s a new reality.
This story is part of Eastworld Spotlight, a series of conversations on matters of business, tech, and finance with executives, experts, entrepreneurs, and investors in Asia. Subscribe to Fortune’s Eastworld newsletter to get them in your inbox.


fortune--2020-08-13--The Boeing-Airbus tariff dispute just will not die

This is the web version of CEO Daily. To get it delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning. David Meyer here in Berlin, filling in for Alan.
It feels like the Airbus-Boeing tariff dispute, which at 16-years-and-counting is now old enough to be classified as an adult in some countries, will never end.
Just a few weeks ago, the European Union announced that the last illegal subsidies to Airbus had been done away with, through amendments to the plane-building consortium’s investment contracts with the French and Spanish governments. As a result, Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan said, the U.S. should “immediately” lift its tariffs of $7.5 billion in EU goods.
That didn’t happen. Yesterday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the EU’s actions were not enough. His office did not increase the U.S.’s tariffs on EU goods, but rather shuffled them around, taking some Greek and British items off the list of tariffed goods and adding an equivalent tally of French and German products.
Airbus isn’t happy, insisting that its funding arrangements are now in “full compliance” with the World Trade Organization’s rulings on the matter, and noting that the U.S.’s continued tariffs on Airbus aircraft come “at a time when aviation and other sectors are going through an unprecedented crisis.” The company called on the EU to “respond appropriately to defend its interests.”
The EU has already threatened to hit the U.S. with counter-tariffs, though it can’t do so until the WTO specifies an upper limit – a decision that should come very soon. (Of course, the U.S. sees such tariffs as unjustifiable, because it also claims to have removed the illegal subsidies that Boeing was receiving.)
So can fresh tariffs on American goods be avoided? Perhaps. As Lighthizer said yesterday: “The United States will begin a new process with the EU in an effort to reach an agreement that will remedy the conduct that harmed the U.S. aviation industry and workers and will ensure a level playing field for U.S. companies.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if some measured negotiations could reduce international trade tensions for once, and stop this dispute from reaching voting age?
More news below.
David Meyer
@superglaze
david.meyer@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Sumner Redstone
Sumner Redstone, one of the last old-school media moguls and possible originator of the phrase "content is king," has passed away at 97. Here's Fortune's obituary, with all the key details of Redstone's stewardship of CBS and Viacom (and Dreamworks) – and of his tumultuous last years. A valuable Redstone quote: "Money, and I mean it sincerely, has never motivated me. The passion to win has motivated me." Fortune
Misinformation deaths
Misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic killed at least 800 people in the first quarter of this year, according to a study that said around 5,800 people were admitted to hospital after ingesting alcohol-based cleaning products, or cow urine, or large amounts of vitamins, that they thought could cure the coronavirus. The paper said it was up to social media platforms, governments and international agencies to counter this "infodemic." BBC
English antibodies
A major antibody study has found that around 6% of people in England (so, 3.4 million) have been infected by the novel coronavirus. The survey took in 100,000 people. Londoners had the highest infection rates, at 13% of the population, while out in the boondocks of South West England the rate was more like 3%. And: "People from Black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups, care workers, and people living in larger households were among the most likely to have been infected." Bloomberg
Russian vaccine
Who would sign up for Russia's hugely controversial coronavirus vaccine, apart from Putin's daughter, and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte? The Brazilian state of Parana, that's who – though officials there insist that it won't be produced and used there until large-scale Phase 3 trials have been completed (reminder: this crucial part of the validation process has not yet been executed, hence the controversy.) That means production would only go ahead late next year. Moscow Times
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Tech and Harris
Joe Biden's selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate is potentially good news for Big Tech, as Fortune's Jeff John Roberts explains: "Until [Wednesday], Silicon Valley faced the prospect of Biden selecting a running mate such as Susan Rice or Tammy Duckworth who had few ties to their industry, or else Elizabeth Warren—an active scourge of the tech giants who had vowed to break up the likes of Facebook and Google. Instead, Biden chose a tech ally from their home state of California." Fortune
WFH costs
Fortune's Geoff Colvin takes a close look at the problems associated with working from home. He writes: "The stiffest penalty may be lost creativity and innovation. Every company is desperate for good ideas in this environment, and it would be hard to design a worse policy for finding them than unnecessarily requiring or encouraging employees to stay apart." Fortune
Pandemic offices
What will offices look like in the age of coronavirus? Fortune's Nicolas Rapp and Brian O'Keefe run you through it: "What’s out: crowded open-office work areas and collaboration spaces, touching door handles, and communal coffee machine…What may be in: density monitoring, to limit the number of employees in the office on a given day; going to meetings from your desk via videoconference; heavy-duty air filters; and interior design elements, such as new carpeting, that help reinforce social distancing." Fortune
Small businesses
Anthony Tan, the CEO of Southeast Asian "super-app" Grab, writes for Fortune that the COVID-19 crisis is pushing at least thousands of small businesses towards digitization. He writes: "While the social aspect of shopping at wet markets with our loved ones or visiting our favorite mom-and-pop store may be missed for now, going digital could be what ensures the survival of these traditional business ecosystems for future generations." Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.