fortune--2020-09-18--China’s Sinovac plans to test COVID vaccine on children before the company is sure the inoculation w

China’s Sinovac plans to test COVID vaccine on children before the company is sure the inoculation works in adults

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With over 1 billion students taken out of school, and children missing critical stages of social development, kids have shouldered a massive burden amid the pandemic. Now children appear to be taking on one more—trialing a vaccine before it’s proved safe in adults.
This week the Chinese vaccine maker Sinovac announced it will launch a Phase I and II clinical trial later this month to test its vaccine in over 500 children ages 3 to 17 in China. The trial will test both the safety of the vaccine and also examine whether it produces an immune response among the participants.
Experts say the need to conduct COVID-19 vaccine safety trials specifically among children is clear, but that holding the trials before a vaccine has been proved safe and effective among adults represents uncharted and ethically fraught territory.
CoronaVac
Sinovac’s vaccine candidate, called CoronaVac, is based on the most tried-and-tested approach to vaccine development: using an inactive version of COVID-19 to teach the immune system to build up tolerance against the disease.
After initiating development of the vaccine on Jan. 28, the company is now among the lead pack of companies in the global vaccine race and is one of nine vaccine makers globally to reach Phase III trials. The company is currently testing CoronaVac among thousands of participants in Brazil, Indonesia, and Bangladesh.
But Sinovac has also shown a willingness to eschew some normal safety procedures in deploying its vaccine.
The company is one of several Chinese vaccine makers involved in the country’s controversial emergency-use program, which has inoculated hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens, including frontline medical workers and other select population groups, even though Phase III clinical trials—which are designed to prove a vaccine is effective as well as safe—have not been completed. In early September, Dr. Yin Weidong, chief executive of Sinovac, told Reuters that the company had already injected as many as 3,000 Sinovac employees and their families who are not part of the clinical trials.
Sinovac’s rushed and norm-breaking path may in part explain why it is willing to test its vaccine in children.
John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Cornell University’s Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, said it is highly unusual to conduct pediatric trials before a vaccine had first been proved to be safe and effective in adults.
“You would normally gradually expand the trials into children only after it was shown to be something safe and effective in adults,” he said. He explained that getting Phase III results back would usually be a vaccine maker’s “first port of call” before considering trials on children, but that Sinovac’s decision was one of many examples in which drugmakers seem to have discarded the usual playbook in order to develop a COVID-19 vaccine at a record pace. “This is not normal times,” he said.
Children and vaccines
Sinovac published the results of Phase I and II trials—studies that are designed to show a medicine is safe—Aug. 10 in a non-peer-reviewed paper on the online health research repository MedRxiv. The studies involved 600 people between the ages of 18 and 59. The company said there had been no serious adverse reactions among any of those receiving the vaccine. Sinovac also reported that its Phase I and II trials proved safe specifically among elderly volunteers in China in preliminary results on Sept. 9.
This data alone would not generally be adequate to commence trials on children, experts said. Moore said it was possible Chinese regulators had additional safety information from Sinovac that has not yet been published. “You have to hope the Chinese regulators have a body of safety data on this vaccine,” he said. “You have to assume they have a serious body of safety data in adults but we’ve not seen it because it has not been published.”
Sinovac did not return Fortune’s request for comment on this article.
U.S. regulators will almost certainly require pediatric vaccine safety trials before approving any vaccine for use in children, according to Dr. Steven Joffe, a pediatric oncologist and professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
He said normally a research team would want to wait for large-scale Phase III trials to prove that the vaccine is effective and to be reasonably confident that researchers had picked up on any rarer safety problems that might only be identifiable after the vaccine had been given to thousands of people. But he also said that the urgency of the global pandemic could alter this calculus.
“It’s a delicate balance,” Joffe says. “If you wait for more definitive efficacy results in adults, it puts you a year behind in kids. But if you jump out ahead of the adult results, you risk exposing kids to a vaccine that doesn’t work and will never get rolled out in the market.”
This is why U.S. and European vaccine makers may not be far behind Sinovac in testing vaccines on children. American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, for example, recently said it would expand its Phase III trials in the U.S. to include included participants as young as 16.
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Oxford in England, who are developing a COVID-19 vaccine in partnership with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, said they had put off initial plans to conduct a trial of their vaccine in children in the U.K. this fall. “At present we are not recruiting under 18-year-olds” into the vaccine trials, a university spokesman said. “Whilst we do plan to run a trial in this age group, we first hope to generate evidence of the vaccine efficacy in adults.” It said strong evidence that children were far less likely to become seriously ill from COVID-19 led the researchers to prioritize clinical trials for adults, who would likely also receive any vaccine before children do.
Chinese skepticism
Sinovac had spoken of its desire to conduct vaccine safety trials in children as far back as April, says Yanzhong Huang, vaccine expert and senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
By starting such trials so early, Sinovac may be aiming to boost domestic confidence in a Chinese-developed vaccine among a skeptical public, he says.
In the 2010s, a series of domestic scandals in China’s vaccine industry undermined public trust in the country’s efforts to produce a vaccine. In 2018, 60% of Chinese parents surveyed said they were considering having their children inoculated outside of China after a government regulator found that a major Chinese producer distributed 250,000 substandard doses of a vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough.
Sinovac was not directly tied to any of China’s substandard vaccines, but the company has been prone to missteps. In 2017, a Beijing court ruled that China’s pharmaceutical regulator received improper payments from vaccine makers including Sinovac. This prompted U.S. regulators to freeze trading on Sinovac’s stock on Nasdaq, and Sinovac’s case remains tied up in U.S. courts.
Huang says that China’s rushed COVID-19 vaccine development process is once again raising concerns about the safety and efficacy of Chinese-made vaccines and the reliability of government released information. Such pressure may help explain why Sinovac is motivated to prove as soon as possible that its vaccine is safe in children.
In China, there is a “growing critique of China’s approach to vaccine development,” Huang says. Such skepticism is why trials with children “may help boost public trust in Chinese-made vaccines.”


fortune--2020-09-18--The Best Workplaces for Women are expanding the turf for women in finance

Finance has typically not been welcoming to women. But the “boys club” of yesterday is changing. A sign of the times: Financial firms rule this year’s list of Best Workplaces for Women. Nine organizations in financial services and insurance earned a spot in the top 20—triple the number on last year’s list.
What’s behind the shift? One reason is that the industry is evolving, with the value of financial advice changing. Almost nowhere is digital transformation shaking up an industry as it is in finance. With a finger swipe across a smartphone, investors can access their accounts and see how their portfolios are doing.
But women are adding value in ways that “robo-advisers” cannot compute.
“In the past, the value of financial services or the value of a financial adviser was in constructing a portfolio or trading stocks,” said Kristin Johnson, chief human resources officer at Edward Jones, No. 5 on the list. “That part of the financial services business has been replaced by computers. It’s shifted the value to the financial advice.”
Women tend to possess skills now coveted in client care, Johnson said.
“The coaching that investors are looking for really requires deeper listening skills and empathy—just some of the traits that women have that the industry has recognized,” Johnson explained.
To determine the Best Workplaces for Women, Fortune partnered with people analytics firm Great Place to Work to analyze anonymous survey feedback representing more than 4.7 million U.S. employees.
Eighty-five percent of the ranking is based on what women report about their workplace and how those experiences compare with men’s. Fifteen percent of the remaining rank is based on how well-represented women are from the front lines to the executive suite.
Diversity is a business imperative
Our list is the latest sign that the financial services industry now recognizes gender diversity as a strategic issue that affects business outcomes.
“Financial institutions are seeing that all stakeholders benefit from diversity,” said Sarae Janes Lewis, director of associate and client experience at Pinnacle Financial Partners, a Nashville-based financial services firm that ranked No. 4 on the list.
“If associates love the place where they work, then the business improves, the client experience improves, the community impact and engagement is greater, and the financial results improve,” Lewis said. “Ultimately, it’s worth the investment.”
Culture expanders, not ‘culture fit’
Freedom in self-expression is another reason women join—and stay—at the Best Workplaces for Women. Women are constantly told they need to change themselves—be more assertive, or wear more makeup—to succeed. At workplaces on our list, women are encouraged to bring their authentic selves to work.
Jennifer Windbeck, senior vice president and head of branches, cafés, and private banking at Capital One, says women no longer have to present as “male” to make it in the field.
“The industry has moved from an atmosphere where women had to assimilate to traditionally male norms—adapting their communication styles, networking approaches, leadership strategies, business decisions, and even attire, to be successful—to an environment where individuality is accepted,” Windbeck said. Capital One landed at No. 12 on our 2020 list.
Put another way: Women feel more included at these workplaces. And this feeling of inclusion is what Great Place to Work research found distinguished the Best Workplaces for Women from other organizations.
In the same research, we found that men feel more included at work than women on average. But the experience of inclusion improves for women as they rise up the ranks.
Kristin Johnson, chief human resources officer at Edward Jones, keeps her virtual team connected with “mug shots”—a spark of fun in companywide Zoom meetings. Great Place to Work
Why do women feel more included at the top? One theory is that senior employees are more involved in decisions. Great Place to Work research shows that involving employees in decisions that impact them goes a long way in making them feel included.
Another reason the financial services industry is becoming more welcoming to women is that companies are being more inclusive with their benefits. That means benefit programs don’t exclude any employee groups and support employees’ lives outside work.
Johnson recalls when there were fewer women at Edward Jones, and she was pregnant with her youngest son, who is now 19.
“I remember going in to tell my leader that I was pregnant, when I was having my first child, and I was so embarrassed. I felt like I had done something wrong, and I took off eight weeks.
“We now offer four months of parental leave—paid parental leave, for all of our female financial advisers and associates.”
Benefits don’t discriminate
Flexible benefits for all, not just women, is essential for closing gender gaps. Many of the Best Workplaces for Women offer shared, or in some cases equal, parental leave, one of the major structural imbalances in policy for men and women in the workforce today.
Topping generous paid leave is American Express, No. 15 on the list. The company gives mothers 135 paid days (20 weeks) and 100 paid days for fathers. The U.S. average is just four weeks, according to a survey by Mercer on paid parental leave.
The financial industry is also holding on to its top women workers through inclusive social and networking opportunities. Steakhouse dinners and wheeling and dealing over 18 holes of golf are outdated. And after-work drinks can exclude women who still shoulder the bulk of caregiving responsibilities globally.
Employees at Capital One can mix with clients and senior leaders at cultural and spectator sporting events, in fitness classes, and at lunches. Social media forums like Slack provide a digital connection so “Networking feels democratized, where there’s something for everyone” Windbeck said.
Pinnacle started with an open-door attitude that helps crack the glass ceiling for women, Lewis said.
“Part of it is things like having no executive suite. Our leaders sit in the same-size offices as everybody else,” Lewis said. “And they eat lunch at the same table. Our CEO spends three days with every new associate, and he has a special gift for names and knowing things about people.”
Pulling down the ivory tower
Approachable leaders are crucial for what we call removing “executive blinders.” Another striking finding of the women in the workplace study was that men are twice as likely to believe employees are treated fairly, regardless of their gender, compared with women.
That blind spot gets bigger as employees move up the ladder. Compared with female executives, male executives are 2.6 times as likely to believe employees are treated fairly in the workplace regardless of their gender.
It seems that many male leaders are divorced from the reality of their more junior and female colleagues. Having proximity to inequality awakens something important for an equitable workplace.
Edward Jones is removing the executive blinders by building unconscious bias training into the hiring and training process. The company is also changing the promotion process so advancing up the ladder does not depend on your proximity to senior leaders or exclude underrepresented groups.
“It’s not just based on who you know—which are those in your circle and could be those who are just like you,” Johnson said.
Helping parents doing triple duty
While some argue that benefits targeted to mothers are self-reinforcing, in the face of a pandemic, such measures are essential in keeping women in the workplace.
Parents are juggling work, childcare, and homeschooling, and the data says women are most often the ones leaving work to manage childcare during the pandemic.
But Edward Jones is putting radical flexibility on their list of benefits so women “don’t have to make a career choice based on the challenging times that we’re going through,” Johnson said. “We want to make sure that as women grow their career, they can also nurture their personal lives and take care of their friends, their family, and what’s in their personal lives.”
Capital One is also keeping women in the workforce by supporting multitasking parents. Employees get a discount for in-person or virtual tutoring and free access to online summer camp.
Representation at the top is essential for advancing women in the workplace and an overall positive employee experience. At Edward Jones, the most senior executive—managing partner Penny Pennington—is a woman. The company’s top-producing financial adviser is also a woman—Jennifer Marcontell. And a total of three of its eight executive committee members are women.
Edward Jones’ Women’s Leadership Experience program grows female representation from the entry level to senior leadership. In this initiative, a team of 22 high-potential female leaders, seven of those being women of color, took part in an eight-month program. And of those 22, 70% had job changes, and 61% were promoted.
Overcoming impostor syndrome
Representation in senior positions is also essential for curbing impostor syndrome, which affects women more than men.
In a landmark study in the 1970s, psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes identified the impostor phenomenon as an “internal experience” of “intellectual phoniness” which appears to be particularly prevalent among “high-achieving women.”
The same study found that impostor syndrome claws at us when we find ourselves in a role that would have been unfamiliar or out of reach for our parents. And so, the higher many women rise in an organization, the more likely they are to feel inadequate—to experience impostor syndrome.
“I’ve had it for quite some time,” said Johnson, who has moved around the firm from operations to branch development to her role as chief human resources officer.
“In 2014 I was asked to join our management committee when I was in a branch development role. That’s our group of 20 leaders that, at the time … got together with our managing partner. And I still would sit there and think, ‘Somebody is going to come in and tap me on the shoulder and tell me I shouldn’t be here.’ Like, ‘You’re in the wrong meeting,’” Johnson said.
“I am very grateful for having mentors at Edward Jones that have been really supportive of me and building my confidence to really get that out of my mind and be who I am and focus on the strengths that I bring to the table.”
Mentoring the next gen of female leaders
Johnson shares her experience of impostor syndrome when she coaches younger female associates: “I try to mentor others on that because you can definitely get in your own head, and you can need somebody to help get you out of that and focus on the work at hand.”
Judging people first as individuals, rather than members of a group, creates a real sense of inclusion. And that’s another part of making work great for women.
“I’ve really never thought of myself as a woman at Edward Jones,” Johnson said. “That really hasn’t been anything that I’ve been challenged with or that I feel like has limited my opportunities during my career.”
At the Best Workplaces for Women, the boys club culture is gathering cobwebs. Inclusion is the new currency for finance.
Click here to see the full lists: The 75 Best Large Workplaces for Women and the 25 Best Small and Medium Workplaces for Women.
Claire Hastwell is the Content Marketing Manager at Great Place to Work.


fortune--2020-09-18--As investors pull back, this Big Tech darling is flirting with bear territory

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
Happy Friday, everyone. Can stocks stage a comeback to avert another down week? It’s not looking promising.
Asia is higher, Europe is mixed and Nasdaq futures are off their lows. That’s good news, particularly for tech bulls, as the Nasdaq flirts with a new correction and some FAAMG stocks even threaten to fall into bear territory.
Let’s check in on the action.
Markets update
Asia
The major indexes are solidly in the green with Shanghai leading the way, up 2% .
leading the way, up . President Trump has yet to give the green-light (nor has Beijing, for that matter) to the Oracle– TikTok tie-up, but there’s already talk of an IPO as early as next year.
has yet to give the green-light (nor has Beijing, for that matter) to the Oracle– but there’s already talk of an IPO as early as next year. Coronavirus hit a grim toll in the past day, topping 30 million recorded cases worldwide, and more than 940,000 deaths.
Europe
The European bourses were mixed at the start with the Stoxx Europe 600 off 0.1% , before climbing.
were mixed at the start with the off , before climbing. Stocks in Madrid were lower despite a major acquisition in the Spanish banking sector as CaixaBank SA and Bankia SA agreed to merge . This will fuel hopes the long awaited consolidation of Europe’s fragmented banking sector is finally underway.
were lower despite a major acquisition in the Spanish banking sector as CaixaBank SA and Bankia SA . This will fuel hopes the long awaited consolidation of Europe’s fragmented banking sector is finally underway. Do green economies grow? The European Commission offered compelling evidence in the affirmative yesterday, outlining an ambitious plan to grow GDP in the coming decades while dramatically cutting greenhouse gas emissions. A reminder: GDP does a terrible job of measuring the benefits of clean air and clean water for society.
U.S.
Dow and S&P futures are trading sideways this morning while the Nasdaq futures are pushing higher. That’s after yet another tech-led sell-off on Thursday.
and are trading sideways this morning while the are pushing higher. That’s after yet another tech-led sell-off on Thursday. Investor enthusiasm even cooled for the newest tech darling, Snowflake . It fell 10% yesterday, and is edging lower still in pre-market trading.
. It fell yesterday, and is edging lower still in pre-market trading. Confusion over Trump’s proclamations about an October coronavirus-vaccine surprise, crummy jobless claims numbers and sinking hopes for a new stimulus package are also weighing on the markets.
Elsewhere
Gold is up, trading above $1,960/ounce .
is up, trading above . The dollar is down.
is down. Crude is up with Brent trading above $43/barrel.
By the Numbers
Zero. The Fed this week told us interest rates will be at virtually zero for the next three years. (Many on Wall Street, including Goldman Sachs, believe it could be even longer than that—into 2024 and beyond.) Rock-bottom interest rates reward borrowers and punish savers. You remember that from Econ 101, of course. “So if you have funds parked in a bank or money market account fund, which many do, and you want to earn anything the next three years, the Fed thinks you should take risks—i.e. interest rate, liquidity, credit or equity risk,” BofA Securities analysts write. Not surprisingly, investors started pulling money out of stocks during the March meltdown. The next thing we saw was a rise in money market deposits (see chart below). Now money market holdings are once again declining because, well, it makes little sense to park your cash there if it’s earning meager returns. The big question is: where will that money go? Back into stocks? It’s a tough conundrum.
-9.5%. Since hitting an all-time high on Sept. 2, the Nasdaq has fallen seven out of the past 10 trading sessions. Once again, the tech-heavy index is a mere half-percent away from correction territory (defined as a fall of at least 10%). Over that stretch, Facebook is down 15.8%, Microsoft is off 12.4% and stay-at-home powerhouse Amazon is off 14.8%. Apple has fallen even further, down 17.8% over that stretch. Don’t look now, but the biggest names in tech are actually nearing bear territory.
***
Postscript
Football (or, calcio) is the national sport in Italy. As national obsessions go, politics is a close second. Voter turnout in Italian elections is impressive. And with national governments rising and falling all the time (there have been 61 governments over the past 75 years), Italians vote a lot.
Voter turnout for European Parliament elections: Italy vs. EU average.
They go back to the polls this weekend for regional elections and for a referendum on whether to cut down the number of MPs.
It will be an in-person vote. And, despite a recent upswing in COVID cases, turnout again this time is expected to be high.
There are huge political stakes—it always seems as if the governing party is at risk of imminent collapse—in this round of voting. The center-left government is clinging to a tiny majority. As Berenberg Bank economists write in an investor note this morning, “thanks to the EU’s €750bn recovery fund, Italy has c€100bn to distribute over the next couple of years. The two parties [in the ruling coalition] want to hand out the money rather than leave that pleasure to the right.”
But I’m just as fascinated in the mechanics of this vote. Democratic transitions are full of surprises in the best of times. Elections during pandemics dial up the volatility factor to an extreme. And, as is the case everywhere, there are political schemers who see an election held amid a coronavirus outbreak as an opportunity to exploit voters’ deepest fears.
But it will likely go down fairly smoothly. Again. Here’s the simple reason why:
Italy keeps the polls open over a two-day period—on Sunday and Monday—when most of the country is off from work. It’s hardly the only country to do this. But it still mystifies me that so many other democracies try to limit the vote to a 12(ish)-hour window on a single day in the middle of the week. That’s hardly fair to workers or single parents or anyone, really. In the age of COVID, spacing out the vote is not just good for a healthy democracy, it’s good for a healthy electorate.
Nobody expects Italians to wake up on Tuesday morning to a post-election high. Italy has huge problems with a no-growth economy, persistent corruption and intractable political infighting. That’s not going away. But in one area it’s looking like a model to much of the rest of the world: the pandemic hasn’t diminished the country’s faith in the basic functioning of a democracy.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
***
Have a nice weekend, everyone. I’ll see you here on Monday.
Today's read
Tech bubble 1.0. In 2000, I was working for a business magazine (does anybody beyond my Fortune colleague Aaron Pressman remember The Industry Standard?) that grew so fat with ad pages, we had to go to perfect-bound, phone-book-sized weekly issues. Everyone knows what happened next. The wheels fell off the dot-com boom and so many businesses, including The Standard, went belly up in a blink. Investor exuberance for tech stocks is different this time round. Or is it? Fortune's Anne Sraders runs the numbers.
Some of these stories require a subscription to access. There is a discount offer for our loyal readers if you use this link to sign up. Thank you for supporting our journalism.
Market candy
Quote of the day
We've seen an unusually high number of IPOs this year that rank near the top in foregone proceeds. But Snowflake dwarfs them all.
That's Jay Ritter, a professor at the University of Florida and an expert in tracking IPO hits and misses. Snowflake goes down in history as the second-most underpriced IPO ever (as measured by dollars left on the table). Fortune's Shawn Tully runs the numbers, and finds SNOW left about $4.88 billion on the table. Here's how.


fortune--2020-09-18--The ghost of the dot-com bubble

The ghost of the dot-com bubble

This is the web version of CEO Daily. To get it delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning.
Are we in a tech stock market bubble? I’m amazed to be asking that question, given we are still in the grips of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression. But tech stocks have risen so far and fast in the past year, despite a brief recession-related dip, that parallels to the 2000s are hard to escape. The top dozen tech stocks have risen 170% on average in the past year, versus 146% in the year before the 2000 crash. And the top ten tech stocks comprise an outsized 29% of the S&P 500 today, compared to an outsized 23% in 2000.
But Fortune’s Shawn Tully says there is one key difference in today’s market compared to the dot-com bubble. And I’m not going to tell you what it is. Instead, you can read Shawn’s story here. (And maybe this will be the moment when you finally subscribe to Fortune, so you can always have access to such valuable content!)
Of course, one thing driving today’s tech stock performance is the massive move to digital driven by the pandemic. Hardly a day passes when I don’t hear another mind-blowing story about this quantum shift. Yesterday’s came from Hanzade Dogan-Boyner, who is founder and chairperson of the Turkish ecommerce platform Hepsiburada. “In mid-March, we suddenly saw a level of growth that we thought we would reach in three years,” she told me. “We have tripled, and it is here to stay. We have reached a new plateau. Today, we are doing as much business as we did in May.”
Dogan-Boyner said the company realized during the pandemic that “we had become more than an ecommerce platform. We had become a lifeline.” And it implemented some unusual policies for its users, such as “removing our commissions from all of our fashion merchants” because their business had been hurt the most.
Hear that, Amazon?
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
TikTok Global
TikTok Global, the new company that would arise from the White House's prising of the hit video app from China's hands, would reportedly hold a U.S. IPO next year (if it materializes in the first place.) Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, TikTok owner ByteDance and its soon-to-be-partner Oracle have apparently come up with a revised deal they can all agree on—with new ingredients addressing the national security concerns that sparked this saga—but it all still needs the sign-offs of President Trump and Beijing, so let's see. Fortune
SoftBank divestiture
SoftBank continues to sell off its assets. This time it's Brightstar Corp, the loss-making American wireless-services unit, which is being sold to a private equity firm called… Brightstar Capital Partners, which was founded by former Brightstar COO Andrew Weinberg. Wall Street Journal
Brexit optimism
You'd think the U.K. and EU's post-Brexit-trade talks would have broken down completely by now, what with the U.K. being set to pass a law that potentially overrides the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement signed just months ago. But no, the U.K. says this week's round of informal talks were "useful" and yielded "some limited progress," and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says she's "convinced" a deal can be struck, despite the U.K.'s "very unpleasant surprise." Bloomberg
Irish border
It's not just the Democrats (Nancy Pelosi, then Joe Biden) who are warning the U.K. not to mess with Irish peace by doing anything that could impose a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (see above). Now Trump's White House is getting in on that act, with special envoy Mick Mulvaney warning against a "hard border by accident". Mulvaney, whose job is to keep an eye on the peace process (the U.S. is its guarantor): "The Trump Administration, State Department and the U.S. Congress would all be aligned in the desire to see the Good Friday Agreement preserved to see the lack of a border maintained." Financial Times
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Orange dot
Hey iPhone users—if you've started seeing a little orange dot appearing in the top right corner of the screen, that's a new feature that lets you know when an app is accessing the camera or microphone. Apple added it to counter "spyware" or "stalkerware" apps that, well, those terms say it all really. Fortune
Equal pay
A widespread embrace of stakeholder capitalism would "unleash sustainable economic growth for customers, employees, partners, communities, and society at large," writes Pipeline CEO Katica Roy in a piece for Fortune. And she argues that this embrace should include: the publication of companies' diversity data; the addition of pay data to the already-required reporting on gender and race across job classifications; and the addition of a new category of metrics covering things like rates of promotion and representation on each step of the corporate latter. Fortune
Changing NDAs
Non-disclosure agreements "bear some responsibility for some of the worst cover-ups of our time," Lioness CEO Arielle Steinhorn and employment lawyer Vincent White argue in a piece for Fortune. They write that NDAs have their place, particularly where trade secrets are concerned, but a shift to a more targeted approach is in order. Fortune
Biological age
A new iPhone app called Young.ai claims to determine users' biological age by feeding everything from photographs to fitness-tracker data through its algorithms. It's the latest example of buzz around so-called "longevity tech." Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-09-18--The reported IPO of TikTok’s Chinese rival is another coup for Hong Kong

Chinese short-video app Kuaishou is planning to debut in a Hong Kong initial public offering that could raise $5 billion and give the startup an estimated valuation of $50 billion, media outlets reported on Thursday.
The startup, which is backed by Chinese tech giant Tencent, is reportedly preparing to list in Hong Kong in early 2021.
The offering would be another coup for Hong Kong’s stock exchange, which has experienced a windfall of mainland Chinese listings as U.S.-China political tensions drive Chinese tech companies away from U.S. markets. In September 2019, Bloomberg reported that Kuaishou was considering a U.S. IPO.
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Kuaishou is considered the chief rival of Douyin, ByteDance’s China-only version of TikTok. (TikTok itself is unavailable in China.)
China is Kuaishou’s main market, and the app doesn’t have a presence in the U.S., unlike ByteDance-owned TikTok, which is hugely popular there. TikTok has been engulfed in uncertainty in recent months as U.S. government threats to ban the app prompted ByteDance to seek a deal with U.S. firm Oracle that will create a new U.S. company, TikTok Global.
TikTok’s estimated value is $50 billion, the same as Kuaishou’s reported valuation goal for its IPO. Kuaishou was most recently valued at $28 billion.
In China, Douyin has ousted Kuaishou as the No. 1 short-video app even though Kuaishou, founded in 2012, is four years older. Kuaishou surpassed 300 million daily active users in February; in August, Douyin reached 600 million daily active users.
In 2019, Kuaishou’s founders sent a joint memo to their staff about Kuaishou’s lagging performance, which they attributed to the startup’s relatively laid-back office culture compared with that of its competitors.
“We’re no longer the team that runs the fastest. Somewhere during the growing-up process, our muscles are losing their strength, reaction times are slowing, and our connection to users is weakening,” Kuaishou founders Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao wrote in the memo. The founders set a goal for Kuaishou to reach 300 million daily active users by February 2020, a target the company achieved.
Kuaishou didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Apart from short-video content, Kuaishou has expanded into live-streaming, a popular method of e-commerce promotion in China. In May, Kuaishou and JD.com, China’s second-largest e-commerce retailer behind Alibaba, announced a partnership for Kuaishou live-streamers to sell JD products.
Viewers are able to purchase products shown on Kuaishou live streams without ever exiting the app interface, and Kuaishou said the partnership has generated over 100 million daily active buyers.


fortune--2020-09-18--Goldman Sachs sends traders home after positive COVID-19 case in Manhattan office

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sent some traders home from its Manhattan headquarters after at least one employee tested positive for Covid-19, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The quarantine was imposed on a select group directly exposed to the infected worker at the firm’s downtown New York office, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information isn’t public. The bank is moving forward with plans to start bringing back staffers across most divisions, telling some of them to prepare for week-in, week-out rotational shifts starting in October, the people said.
“Our people’s safety is our first priority, and we are taking appropriate precautions to make sure our workplaces remain safe for those who choose to return,” Leslie Shribman, a spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs, said in a statement Thursday.
Banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Barclays Plc have faced similar setbacks, highlighting the challenges they will face in refilling offices. Even as Wall Street firms have seen revenue rise with most staff working from home, executives have expressed concerns about productivity and the erosion of company culture six months after their main towers emptied out.
Read more about JPMorgan’s return-to-office efforts
Goldman hasn’t seen any transmission of cases within its offices, according to a person monitoring the situation.
Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer David Solomon reinforced to the bank’s traders the importance of bringing people back to work, citing the damage to culture if things didn’t return to normal soon, the people said. The bank has taken a more relaxed approach with those facing child-care issues or pre-existing medical conditions.
Adding to the dilemma facing company decision makers, JPMorgan’s move last week to mandate that its senior traders return by Sept. 21 became politicized after drawing the attention of Donald Trump. The president inaccurately congratulated the bank for ordering everyone back.
Goldman has also revised its method of sharing information about new infections, choosing a different approach this time around compared to the initial outbreak earlier in the year. Broadly shared messages have been ditched for a more selective follow-up from the human resources department, communicated only to those who have been in close proximity to anyone who tested positive, the people said.


fortune--2020-09-18--Companies must commit to equal pay to make stakeholder capitalism work

The U.S. is now experiencing the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression—with the starkest levels of wealth inequality since the 1920s. We need to act, but how? Perhaps we should heed the significance of today, International Equal Pay Day, to guide our path forward.
Grounded in the data and the spirit of American resilience, I’m calling for a furthering of the social contract. We the People must unambiguously embrace stakeholder capitalism. Such an embrace would unleash sustainable economic growth for customers, employees, partners, communities, and society at large. This is America’s future.
To accomplish this next stage of capitalism, we must shake ourselves from the binds of a false narrative, the one that pits the interests of stakeholders against the interests of shareholders. This narrative has fueled, albeit inefficiently, American corporations on the taxpayer dime.
If we are serious about digging ourselves out of today’s economic turmoil and creating economic prosperity for all, then we must overhaul our current revenue-and-profits-based performance indicators used to evaluate the success of a corporation.
Traditional financial reporting took us this far. It’s time to pass the baton. To recalibrate our economy, we need to implement a new set of key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure and track organizational success.
Why stakeholder capitalism clashes with traditional financial reporting
The year 2015 was the first on record that the middle class no longer constituted the majority in the U.S. Now, the top 1% of U.S. families hold more wealth (over $25 trillion) than the entire American middle class ($18 trillion).
That’s why Americans applauded in August 2019 when the Business Roundtable redefined the universal purpose of a company in pursuit of an economy that serves all stakeholders: customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders alike. In calling for a new standard of corporate responsibility, top CEOs from around the country recognized that “Americans deserve an economy that allows each person to succeed through hard work and creativity and to lead a life of meaning and dignity.”
Unfortunately, no matter how noble the intentions, businesses cannot and will not realize their newfound purpose until we expand the scope of standard reporting metrics.
Today’s shareholders evaluate company performance using standard metrics such as revenue, profit, return on capital, margin, share price, and capital efficiency. When a company performs well according to this set of metrics, investors show their support by buying that company’s stock. Existing shareholders are rewarded when stock prices rise, and CEOs reap the benefits via compensation and professional accolade. Expecting CEOs to suddenly shift their focus away from the metrics that shareholders (and by proxy the board of directors) primarily care about goes against the status quo.
Lest we forget how budding enterprises are funded in the first place: Entrepreneurs succeed in growing their businesses by selling the promise of financial return to investors across the spectrum—angel investors, venture capitalists, retail investors, institutional investors, banks, and other financial institutions.
And yet, shareholder primacy is a myth we have already busted. In the long term, what’s good for customers, employees, and the community is good for shareholders too. Companies with intersectionality gender equitable workforces (i.e., with equitable rates of pay, promotion, and performance evaluation across gender, race, ethnicity, and age) increase their profitability, return on equity, innovation, productivity, and ability to attract top talent.
My company, Pipeline, conducted original research across 4,161 companies in 29 countries, subsequently collecting over 1 billion data points, and found that for every 10% increase in intersectional gender equity, businesses see a 1% to 2% increase in revenue.
Moreover, companies that support diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) workforces not only perform better in good times, they also are better at weathering economic downturns. From 2007 to 2009, the S&P 500 declined 35%. However, businesses where key employee groups (such as women and people of color) said they had “very positive experiences” saw their stocks rise an average of 14.4%.
DEI businesses beating the market extends beyond the boundaries of a recession too. The stocks of DEI businesses where key employee groups thrived rose 35% between 2006 and 2014, whereas the aggregate S&P 500 rose only 9% during that time.
How to overcome diversity data deficits
The basis for standard DEI reporting should stem from current Equal Employment Opportunity Commision (EEOC) requirements. As it stands, companies with 100 or more employees must provide data on gender and race broken down across 10 different job classifications every year.
From here, we must demand a series of updates. First, this data must be made public every year. Today, a mere 4% of companies voluntarily publish their data. Second, we must include pay data to the already required reporting on gender and race across job classifications. Third, we must add a new category of metrics to track the entire employee lifecycle by gender, race, and ethnicity. These metrics include rates of promotion, representation on every step of the corporate ladder, representation on boards, performance evaluation scores, and access to resources, sponsorships, and growth opportunities.
Now is the time to move from self-reported data and optional reporting to a standard set of key performance indicators that are based on real data.
At best, the absence of DEI metrics will damper efforts to achieve the ideals of stakeholder capitalism. At worst, it will deepen the growing wealth inequality already undermining our economic prosperity and democracy—in which case everyone is held back. We could, for instance, expand the U.S. economy by $512 billion simply by closing the intersectional gender pay gap (though of course, that would not be simple).
Supporting the next iteration of the great American experiment
Most of the commitment to DEI has been outward-facing. We’ve seen press releases, such as this one by the Business Roundtable, against racial injustice. We’ve seen over $2.8 billion in donations pour in from large public companies to fight systemic racism. Black squares on social media.
But where’s the commitment to hire people equitably, to promote them equitably, and to pay them equitably? And where can we find the data to prove companies are making good on these commitments? How can we be certain that companies truly stand for DEI when five of the largest U.S. tech companies represent 22.7% of the S&P 500, and yet less than 3% of workers from the largest tech companies identify as Black?
For its part, the Business Roundtable has publicly committed to increasing minimum wages, investing in opportunities for employee growth, and expanding affordable access to health care. But where is the data to prove they pay their employees equitably? What about the data to prove they promote people at equitable rates? How will we know that they evaluate performance objectively and in an unbiased manner?
In the wake of COVID-19’s economic fallout and amid renewed calls for racial justice, we need to raise corporations to a higher calling. Because what’s good for employees, customers, and communities is also good for shareholders. Stakeholder capitalism expands the tax base, increases consumer spending (which drives 70% of the U.S. economy), and brings us one giant step closer toward equity for all. It is the next iteration of American greatness.
Katica Roy is a gender economist and the CEO and founder of Pipeline, a SaaS company that leverages artificial intelligence to identify and drive economic gains through gender equity.


fortune--2020-09-18--NDAs bear blame for some of the worst corporate cover-ups. How that should change

In the past few months, workplaces across all industries have seen a reckoning, brought about not by courts of law, but by the court of public opinion. These revelations are the latest in a years-long recalibration of workplace hierarchies and power structures.
In media, entertainment, sports, and fashion, a worker-led uprising has brought pent-up frustrations and injustices to the fore. Health care workers revealed a life-threatening lack of protective gear in a pandemic. Factory workers raised alarms over their inability to socially distance. As images of police brutality and other forms of racism seared our collective conscience, Black people shared the millions of subtle and overt ways racism permeates their everyday lives.
Many of the stories that have come to light in the past few months have one thread in common: They were told by people who broke nondisclosure agreements (NDA) in order to share their truth. Exhausted by the inability to enact change through traditional channels, they have risked legal peril from former employers to tell these stories publicly over social media or to journalists.
Research published in the Vanderbilt Law Review found that today, nearly 33% of American workers are bound by an NDA. The data revealed “a robust trend” in NDA contracts: More and more have appeared over time, and the companies requiring them have greatly expanded their enforcement rights.
The rise of the NDA can be traced back to the 1970s tech industry. It was originally conceived of as a way to protect intellectual property. Fifty years on, the power of the NDA has expanded, along with the power of corporations, morphing into—in certain cases—a document that, in practical terms, gags people from speaking out about wrongs.
Today, NDAs bear some responsibility for some of the worst cover-ups of our time. NDAs have allowed bad actors in powerful positions to not only commit offenses without risk of exposure, but to continue to do so without the threat of public accountability. This, coupled with at-will employment laws, has meant that in certain workplace environments, there is little incentive for a company to hold people in power accountable or change workplace conditions—that is, unless a clear line can be drawn to a negative impact on the bottom line.
This is not to say that NDAs do not have their place. If we were to wake up tomorrow and decree that all NDAs are now defunct, companies would have both legitimate and illegitimate concerns.
A legitimate concern for a company would be that an employee with access to sensitive information could expose trade secrets, business plans, technologies, client lists, relationships, or vendor lists. It could even be argued that this purpose of an NDA is beneficial to employees, because without NDAs, employers would rarely be willing to take a risk on a new hire. A company would end up mostly retaining existing staff and hiring people with whom it already had relationships. Such a scenario would hurt efforts to improve diversity in hiring.
Illegitimate concerns would include a company wanting to preempt negative PR or silence victims of discrimination and harassment with hush money.
Instead of doing away with all NDAs, a shift to a more targeted approach is in order. Passing a law that invalidates any portion of an NDA that silences an individual speaking out about workplace discrimination or sexual harassment is one remedy. Such a law could be tailored to still protect trade secrets and proprietary corporate information. This legislation already exists in California: In 2018, the state signed into law a ban on nondisclosure provisions in settlements involving claims of sexual assault, harassment, or discrimination based on sex.
This splicing and dicing of NDAs is realistic and possible; employment attorneys routinely draft similar language for client agreements. And employers routinely accept it, even if kicking and screaming, once they see that the provision still provides them with their legitimately desired protections.
Additionally, when current or former employees speak out about especially egregious situations that media organizations find newsworthy, corporate counsel should consider discouraging employers from enforcing NDA agreements. Instead of using employer coffers to wage lopsided legal wars, they would be better served overhauling corporate practices—whether making personnel changes, investing in diversity and inclusion initiatives, or revamping HR policies.
Some companies are already limiting their use of NDAs. For instance, Condé Nast announced earlier this year it would “no longer enter into NDAs that prevent an employee from making a disclosure of conduct they were subjected to that they believe, in good faith, constitutes harassment, discrimination, or retaliation.”
In 2018, we saw the takedown of countless serial sexual harassers from positions of power because a number of women were fed up enough to take the risk and break their NDAs. Many, in fact, were not sued for breaking their agreements, because it was likely considered that doing so would only damage the perpetrator’s reputation further. Black Lives Matter protests have given us another chance to upend the power structures that have been long protected by corporate might.
Stories can be as effective or even more effective than litigation at pushing through change, because they win hearts and minds. By reforming the way we write and implement NDA agreements, we can reach a more balanced power paradigm. It’s long overdue.
Ariella Steinhorn is the founder and CEO of storytelling firm Lioness.
Vincent White is a partner at employment law firm White, Hilferty & Albanese.


fortune--2020-09-18--The new TikTok-Oracle company named ‘TikTok Global’ plans to go public in a year

The new U.S. company that TikTok’s owner Bytedance Ltd. plans to form with Oracle Corp. intends to hold an initial public offering in about a year, according to people familiar with the matter.
The new company, which would be called TikTok Global, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, will be the result of a transaction forced by President Donald Trump last month because of national security concerns about TikTok’s Chinese ownership. Bloomberg News reported earlier that the Treasury Department, Bytedance and Oracle agreed to terms for the deal late Wednesday.
Mnuchin sent Bytedance a revised terms sheet late Wednesday and the company and Oracle accepted it. People familiar with the matter described the government’s changes as addressing national security concerns about the transaction and asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
An administration official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said Thursday night that Trump had been briefed on some of the parameters of the deal and that the president didn’t want China to retain a controlling interest in TikTok that would imperil Americans’ personal information.
‘Situation Is Very Fluid’
As he left the White House for a campaign trip to Wisconsin, Trump told reporters that administration officials had spoken with the companies involved in the deal on Thursday but didn’t elaborate.
“We spoke today, to Walmart, Oracle, I guess Microsoft is still involved, we’ll make a decision but nothing much has changed.”
ByteDance rejected Microsoft Corp.’s bid for the U.S. operations of TikTok last weekend, and a person familiar with the company said Thursday night that it was no longer involved in talks related to TikTok.
During the trip to Wisconsin, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said, “The situation is very fluid. There’s no definite proposal that the president’s being asked to consider or reject at this point. And obviously he’ll need to weigh in before the deadline” on Sept. 20.
In a sign that the deal may go through, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who held some of the strongest reservations about the agreement, had since softened his opposition and told Trump so on Wednesday morning, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Bytedance is trying to win U.S. approval for a transaction with Oracle that would leave the Chinese-headquartered parent company with majority ownership of TikTok.
Any deal must be approved by both Trump — who could still reject the transaction — and the Chinese government. Beijing is unlikely to oppose an arrangement that doesn’t involve the transfer of ByteDance’s technology, especially if the Chinese parent retains majority control of TikTok, another person close to the negotiations has said.
White House senior adviser Jared Kushner is aware of the revised terms but hasn’t reviewed the latest details in depth and hasn’t weighed in on whether Trump should sign off on the deal, one person familiar with the matter said.
The White House, Treasury and TikTok declined to comment.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin urged the U.S. to “provide an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for foreign companies operating in the U.S.” during a briefing.
Meadows said earlier Thursday that he’s concerned that Oracle’s bid for TikTok may be a “repackaging” that won’t meet the president’s goals.
“We’re still looking at the potential details of the deal, and whether it meets the national-security thresholds, the American-interest thresholds,” Meadows said. “My big concern is if all we’re doing is repackaging it and still keeping it as a predominantly Chinese-government run company, that would not sit well with the original goal the president outlined.”
Under the plan, Oracle would acquire a minority stake in a newly formed TikTok that would be headquartered in the U.S. with an independent board approved by the U.S. government.
The new terms, which are designed to protect the data of U.S. citizens from falling into Chinese hands, include 20 pages of detailed provisions over data and national security, the people said. Under those terms, the board of directors would have to consist entirely of U.S. citizens and would include a national security committee.
That body would be led by an American data-security expert who would be the primary contact with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which would oversee any issues of concern to the U.S. government. The previous terms hadn’t included language on the formation of that committee.
Terms of the proposed deal would give Oracle full access to TikTok’s source code and updates to make sure there are no back doors used by the company’s Chinese parent to access data on the video-sharing app’s 100 million American users, Bloomberg reported.
At least three shareholders in TikTok’s Chinese parent company — General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital and Coatue Management — would take stakes in the new business, Bloomberg has reported.
Walmart Inc., which had previously partnered with Microsoft Corp. to make an outright bid for TikTok’s U.S. business, remains interested in investing as well, and could also end up with a seat on the board, according to one of the people. With Oracle, Walmart and the continued involvement of existing U.S. investors, the new company, TikTok Global, would have a strong contingent of American investors, some of the people said.


fortune--2020-09-18--Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies at 87

iPhone ’ s new ‘ orange dot ’ feature warns you when an app is listening

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a diminutive yet towering women’s rights champion who became the court’s second female justice, died Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87.
Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, the court said.
Ginsburg announced in July that she was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for lesions on her liver, the latest of her several battles with cancer.
Ginsburg spent her final years on the bench as the unquestioned leader of the court’s liberal wing and became something of a rock star to her admirers. Young women especially seemed to embrace the court’s Jewish grandmother, affectionately calling her the Notorious RBG, for her defense of the rights of women and minorities, and the strength and resilience she displayed in the face of personal loss and health crises.
Those health issues included five bouts with cancer beginning in 1999, falls that resulted in broken ribs, insertion of a stent to clear a blocked artery and assorted other hospitalizations after she turned 75.
She resisted calls by liberals to retire during Barack Obama’s presidency at a time when Democrats held the Senate and a replacement with similar views could have been confirmed. Instead, President Donald Trump will almost certainly try to push Ginsburg’s successor through the Republican-controlled Senate — and move the conservative court even more to the right.


fortune--2020-09-18--NBC reaches deal with Roku over Peacock app, avoiding blackout

NBCUniversal reached a deal to have its Peacock service carried on Roku Inc. devices, adding potentially millions of viewers after agreeing to share advertising revenue.
Earlier Friday, NBC had threatened to stop delivering content to more than 11 of its apps on Roku by Saturday morning, escalating a standoff with the company over its refusal to carry Peacock.
But on Friday afternoon, an NBCUniversal spokesman said the two companies had reached an agreement that would keep NBC’s apps on Roku and ensure that Peacock will gain a spot on the platform. A representative for Roku confirmed the truce, calling it “an expanded, mutually beneficial relationship.”
Terms weren’t disclosed, but Roku said the deal included “a meaningful partnership around advertising” — a key element of the dispute. Roku had been seeking, among other things, a cut of the advertising inventory on those apps to sell on its own. Comcast Corp.’s NBC and AT&T Inc.’s HBO Max — another service that has been frozen out from Roku — rejected demands to share space for advertising on their streaming services.
Peacock and HBO Max, which both launched earlier this year, also have been kept off Amazon.com Inc.’s Fire TV. The situation prevented them from reaching millions of Roku and Fire customers, which use those platforms to watch TV.
“We are thrilled millions more will now be able to access and enjoy Peacock along with other NBCUniversal apps on their favorite Roku devices,” an NBC representative said. “Roku’s incredible reach will not only help us ensure Peacock is available to our fans wherever they consume video but continue to expand NBCUniversal’s unrivaled digital presence across platforms.”
The blackout threat had weighed on Roku shares Friday, with the stock closing down 2.6% at $160.47 in New York trading. It had been up 23% this year through the previous close.
The standoffs have been a sign of how Roku, which has about 40 million active users, is flexing its muscles as the largest platform in the U.S. for aggregating streaming services.
Roku and Amazon together control about 70% of the U.S. streaming-device market, limiting the growth of any video apps that aren’t available on them.
Ad Conflict
In exchange for hosting an app with advertising, Roku typically takes 30% of the ad inventory to sell on its own. NBC has promised to keep the number of commercials on Peacock under five minutes per hour, leaving little airtime to share with Roku.
The threatened blackout involved NBC-owned apps that come free to pay-TV subscribers who can log in to watch NBC News or Bravo. NBC’s deal with Roku for those apps had ended last week.
More than 15 million users have signed up for Peacock, which launched nationwide July 15.
In an interview with Bloomberg News this week, AT&T Chief Executive Officer John Stankey said he is “optimistic” that one of HBO Max’s disputes with either Roku or Amazon “will resolve itself in relatively short order.”


fortune--2020-09-18--With Trump’s WeChat ban approaching, here are several alternatives

WeChat, China’s most popular app, faces an imminent ban in the U.S., leaving many of its users in a bind.
The White House said Friday it would prohibit WeChat, owned by Beijing-based Tencent, from appearing in U.S. app stores starting Sunday at midnight.
Though WeChat has a comparatively minor U.S. presence, it remains a major conduit for communications between Chinese nationals living abroad and their friends and family back home. The app has an average of 19 million million daily active users in the U.S. versus more than a billion worldwide.
WeChat, called Weixin in China, is effectively the operating system for people’s digital lives in China. They use it to pay for services, hail cabs, go shopping, read news, chat, and more.
For people seeking to bridge the digital divide between the U.S. and China, WeChat is not easily replaced. China’s restrictions on foreign tech outlaws obvious substitutes, such as Facebook’s WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google’s Gmail and Gchat, and chat app Telegram.
While some people based in the U.S. may rush to install WeChat before new downloads become restricted, this is only a stopgap measure. When updated versions of WeChat’s software are released worldwide, U.S.-based users will be unable to update their apps, leaving them vulnerable to hackers.
Here are three alternative apps:
iMessage
China is a major market for Apple. A substantial part of the iPhone-maker’s supply chain is based there—and so the company has enjoyed some permission to operate where rival tech giants, like Google and Facebook have not.
Apple products come with a native messaging service, iMessage, that remains available in China. The service, which is generally encrypted and private (especially if you turn off iCloud storage), should work over the Internet.
While China has hundreds of millions of iPhone users, not everyone owns one. Other smartphone makers, like Huawei, compete for a share of the country’s 1.4-billion-strong population.
Signal
In case your friends and family aren’t in the Apple family, you may consider downloading another chat app called Signal, developed by a nonprofit called Open Whisper Systems.
Signal has been praised by cybersecurity researchers as having best-of-breed encryption. The technology helps keep conversations safe, secure, and private.
You might be using Signal’s tech already and not even even realize it. Facebook’s WhatsApp uses the same underlying software to protect its 2 billion users.
For now, Signal is not banned in China, and its downloads have been surging in the wake of the impending WeChat ban.
Wickr
Another chat app that may work is Wickr, which can’t be downloaded in China, but it can be brought into the country after being downloaded elsewhere.
The encrypted messaging service uses a VPN-like method to remain operational in nations where it might otherwise be censored. CEO Joel Wallenstrom told tech blog the Verge in 2018 that “people trust very secure stuff to Wickr, and they’re trusting us not only to secure the data but that we’ll get it where it needs to be.”
VPN and video conferencing
There are other options for people living in China to stay in touch with their relations abroad. Some can require some technical know how, like installing a VPN, to circumvent Chinese censorship.
Other options include video conferencing apps, like Zoom, Skype, or Houseparty, the last of which is partly owned by Epic Games, a video game maker partly owned by Tencent.


fortune--2020-09-18--Happy International Equal Pay Day?

Happy International Equal Pay Day?

Women of color have little reason to celebrate International Equal Pay Day, housekeepers suffer in the pandemic, and Latinx Americans are set to rock the vote.
But first, here’s your online teaching week review, in Haiku.
Good morning children!
Can you unmute and sing the
hello song with me?
Oh…no… the other
button. This sign shows you how…
That’s it, you got it!
Oh wait, no you don’t.
Yes! You can go to the bath—
Sweetie? Why the tears?
Who can show me five?
Three fingers…plus two fingers…
Yes, good work! Can you unmute?
Did everyone have
breakfast today? Sigh. I would
feed you if I could.
Sending love to all the educators who wish they could make everything magically better.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
In Brief
Today is the first-ever International Equal Pay Day. Globally, women earn some 77 cents for every dollar a man makes for the same job, a figure which does not reflect the regional barriers that women often face in their quest for paid work, training, and access to credit or other investment.
In the U.S., the pandemic threatens to reverse years of hard-fought economic gains. The gender gap in unemployment has spiked due to the coronavirus, eliminating the gender parity in nonfarm payrolls that occurred briefly at the end of 2019. And mothers of school-age kids or caregivers are struggling under the pressure of helping their families while working from home, sometimes cutting back on hours or forced to leave the workforce entirely.
For women of color, already underpaid and overwhelmed, it’s particularly grim.
"Even when jobs start to be regained, women of color are still going to—it's going to take that group longer to sort of recover from this pandemic," Michelle Holder, professor of economics at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told NPR. "We relied quite heavily on women during this pandemic, not only for work done in the home, but for work done outside the home. We saw that it was women out there, women as nurses, women as home health aides, as nursing assistants."
A host of solutions are needed to keep women safely working. But Katica Roy, an economist and the CEO and founder of Pipeline, a software company that uses AI to measure economic progress through a gender equity lens, says the first step is to re-make the business case for equity.
In this opinion piece for Fortune, she shares independent research that reminds us what we already know: Workplace equity is good for business. “[C]ompanies that support diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) workforces not only perform better in good times, they also are better at weathering economic downturns," she writes. "Between 2007 and 2009, the S&P 500 declined 35%. However, businesses where key employee groups (such as women and people of color) said they had ‘very positive experiences’ saw their stocks rise an average of 14.4%.”
But to turn this dire moment into an equity movement, she says, it’s time for corporations to get transparent with their data to find and fix the bottlenecks.
“The basis for standard DEI reporting should stem from current Equal Employment Opportunity Commision (EEOC) requirements. As it stands, companies with 100 or more employees must provide data on gender and race broken down across 10 different job classifications every year,” but that baseline is insufficient, she says.
“First, this data must be made public every year. Today, a mere 4% of companies voluntarily publish their data," she adds. "Second, we must include pay data to the already-required reporting on gender and race across job classifications. Third, we must add a new category of metrics to track the entire employee lifecycle by gender, race, and ethnicity. These metrics include rates of promotion, representation on every step of the corporate ladder, representation on boards, performance evaluation scores, and access to resources, sponsorships, and growth opportunities.”
I believe Roy is right—and when a few more details fall into place, I’ll be able to share a way that Fortune is preparing to support this effort.
But until then, it’s worth thinking about how all women, from the executive ranks to the women who clean their homes, can be paid fairly for their work, treated with respect, and supported to live healthy and dignified lives.
What ideas are hiding in plain sight? Let us know what you're working on.
On Point
Housekeepers face a “full-blown humanitarian crisis” The housekeeping profession is among the hardest hit in a world remade by COVID—some 72% report having lost all their clients by the first week in April. Though some have been booking new clients, the jobs are less well paid. This story digs into the details of what that means for the mostly Black, Latina and immigrant women, and reveals the ugly, racist New Deal history that denied key protections for domestic and farm labor work in 1935. That foundation of disregard and disrespect informs the plight of these essential workers today. “The ordeal of housekeepers is a case study in the wildly unequal ways that the pandemic has inflicted suffering,” says David Segal.
New York Times
Around the world, it’s women and children who are suffering most Nick Kristoff condenses the rising drumbeat of concern for the wellbeing of communities living in poverty around the world into a clear-throated call to action. Malaria, tuberculosis, HIV infections are on the rise. Efforts to delay child marriage and keep children in school are faltering. And deaths from malnutrition and preventable disease are creeping up. “In short, a pandemic of disease, illiteracy and extreme poverty is following on the heels of this coronavirus pandemic—and it is hitting children hardest,” he writes. What’s to be done?
New York Times
The pandemic—and the inequities it reveals—is galvanizing Hispanic voters A new report from Telemundo, working with Buzzfeed News, surveyed more than registered 1,300 Latinx voters aged 18 to 34 about their views and civic participation. It’s all fascinating but one finding jumped out at me: some 85% of respondents said that issues of inequity and systemic barriers are most likely to motivate them to vote. And while half claim to be the same political affiliation as their parents, they describe themselves as more informed, vocal and likely to vote.
Young Latinos: A Generation of Change
On background
Employing a housekeeper or nanny? Here are some best practices courtesy of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, to help you better find and support the assistance you need while keeping everyone safe.
NDWA
The demand for low wage workers created a shared Latinx immigrant identity This fascinating piece from JSTOR explores the experiences of immigrant laborers starting from the mid-twentieth century and finds that the shared common experience of bigotry forged a necessary alliance most often between Mexican and Puerto Rican workers. The piece surfaces the work of historian Lilia Fernández, who found that discrimination persisted even when the US government is responsible for importing the workers to begin with. “U.S. imperialism, modernization and industrialization campaigns, agricultural displacement, environmental catastrophe, and government policies made Mexico and Puerto Rico ripe candidates for exporting workers,” she says.
JSTOR Daily
raceAhead is edited by Aric Jenkins.
Today's mood board


fortune--2020-09-18--This fintech is now more valuable than Robinhood

Move over, Robinhood—Chime is now the most valuable U.S.-based consumer fintech.
According to CNBC, Chime, a so-called neobank that offers branchless banking services to customers, is now worth $14.5 billion, besting the price tag of massive retail trading platform Robinhood at around $11.2 billion, as of mid August, per PitchBook data. Business Insider also reported about the possible new valuation earlier this week.
Chime locked in its new valuation via a Series F funding round to the tune of $485 million from investors including Coatue, ICONIQ, Tiger Global, Whale Rock Capital, General Atlantic, Access Technology Ventures, Dragoneer, and DST Global, per CNBC.
The fintech has seen massive growth over its seven-year life. Chime first reached one million users in 2018, and has since added millions of customers, although the company has not said how many users it currently has in total. Chime provides banking services through a mobile app including no-fee accounts, debit cards, paycheck advances, and no overdraft fees. Over the course of the pandemic, savings balances reached all-time highs, CEO Chris Britt told Fortune back in May.
Britt told CNBC the challenger bank will be poised for an IPO within the next 12 months. And it’s up in the air whether Chime will go the way of others before it and opt for a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, to go public. “I probably get calls from two SPACS a week to see if we’re interested in getting into the markets quickly,” Britt told CNBC. “The reality is we have a number of initiatives we want to complete over the next 12 months to put us in a position to be market-ready.”
The challenger bank’s rapid growth has not been without challenges, however. As Fortune reported, back in October of 2019 Chime suffered a multi-day outage that left many customers unable to access their money. Following the outage, Britt told Fortune in December the fintech had increased capacity and stress testing of its infrastructure amid “heightened awareness to performing them in a more rigorous way given the size and the pace of growth that we have.”


fortune--2020-09-18--What corporate America’s top CMOs have learned about marketing in a pandemic

A big part of being a chief marketing officer has long been carefully crafting your company’s messaging—and then laying out a plan to communicate those ideas over the months and years to come.
Then came the pandemic.
When COVID-19 hit marketers—like the rest of us—had to throw their best-laid plans out the window and react to the demands of the moment. Reflecting on the early days of the pandemic during a Fortune Most Powerful Women virtual professional council for CMOs on Thursday, Salesforce EVP and CMO Stephanie Buscemi recalls, “We said, ‘Let’s look at everything we have planned and ask ourselves: Is this going to be relevant for these customers right now?’ A lot of it wasn’t.”
Salesforce’s solution, she says, was to “pivot”—a term that was used at least half a dozen times during the hour-long conversation—by asking customers what they did need and what they found relevant as they faced the onslaught of the virus. And when the company learned that customers were looking for products that would help them with things like contract tracing and employee response, Salesforce worked to provide them, despite the fact that such solutions fell outside of what the CRM giant typically focuses on.
The need to step outside of the usual comfort zone was a theme that ran throughout the meeting. In the case of Univision, that meant being responsive to what the company’s audience needed from a programming perspective, be it the news, news, news of the spring to the turn toward escapism that followed, said Jessica Rodriguez, president and COO, UCI Networks, and CMO, Univision. That included airing a regular 10 p.m. rom com—an unheard of programming choice. “It ended up spending all summer as the No.1 show [in that time slot], regardless of language,” she says.
For the NBA, the stretch into new territory required the league to ask how it could best serve fans when its very reason for being—playing basketball—was temporarily off the table. Recognizing that its players have “huge voices,” the NBA aimed to amplify them as they spoke out about COVID and Black Lives Matter, says the league’s EVP and CMO Kate Jhaveri. (She also nodded to the need for fans to find an “escape”—one reason the Michael Jordan documentary Last Dance ended up airing earlier than previously planned.)
The question of whether companies will continue these new, more spontaneous ways of operating or return to more established patterns remains open. But the executives agreed that their companies have learned from this unprecedented period of disruption. Talking about McDonald’s shift away from daily promotions, U.S. CMO Morgan Flatley, said: “We’re being conscious of doing something more long-term and sustainable—we found a brand voice that I think we had lost.”
While the pandemic required CMOs to be in the moment, the marketers said that decisions companies have made over the past half year about how to engage with their customers will have long-term consequences.
“Your communities are going to remember what you did and how you served them [in this moment],” says Rodriguez. “And that’s the only thing that matters right now.”


fortune--2020-09-18--4 key things TikTok users should know as Trump’s ban looms on Sunday

TikTok’s app will no longer be available to download in the U.S. following a Trump administration ban that starts this weekend.
The ban, which the U.S. Commerce Department attributes to national concerns, will affect the Chinese-owned video service starting at midnight on Sept. 20. If TikTok fails to fix its alleged security holes, or, in practice, fails to cut a deal to sell its business to a U.S. buyer, the government said it would pull the plug entirely on TikTok’s U.S. operations.
The Trump administration’s decision on Friday places a dark cloud over a hugely popular app with 100 million U.S. users. In just a few years, the service has grown into an international digital powerhouse that is home to videos of dance competitions, sing-alongs, and adorable puppies.
TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance, previously had until Sept. 20 to sell its business, President Trump said. He has voiced concerns about the amount of data TikTok and other Chinese apps collect from U.S. users and the potential for the Chinese government to obtain that data.
Here’s everything that TikTok users need to know about what will happen to their app.
Will users still be able to use TikTok after Sunday?
The TikTok ban, at least immediately, only prohibits new downloads of the app in the U.S. Users who have downloaded the app before the deadline will still be able to use it on Sunday and beyond. But its availability could ultimately change if TikTok does not meet the U.S. government’s demands to secure user data on its service, at which time it would have to completely shutter on Nov. 12.
Will users still be able to get updates?
No, users in the U.S. will not be able to update their TikTok app beginning Sept. 20, including security updates, which raises concerns that the ban may make the app more vulnerable to hackers.
What happens on Nov. 12?
The federal government will impose a more comprehensive ban on Nov. 12 if TikTok fails to meet its demands. It would prevent Internet hosting or data center companies from providing service to TikTok, the Department of Commerce said on Friday, making it impossible for TikTok to operate in the U.S. The order also prevents network providers like AT&T and Verizon from allowing TikTok to use their networks.
Finally, TikTok is prohibited from operating in the U.S., even if repackaged under a different app or run on a different type of service using the same code.
What if TikTok and the U.S. reach a deal by Nov. 12?
If TikTok is able to appease Trump by Nov. 12, all restrictions will be lifted. This means that new users will again be able to download the app while all users will be able to download software updates.


fortune--2020-09-18--Ransomware attack on a hospital may be first ever to cause a death

German authorities have opened a “negligent homicide” investigation related to a ransomware attack that struck a hospital in Düsseldorf on Sept. 10, according to local press reports.
The cyberattack caused network outages that forced the clinic to reroute patients in need of emergency care elsewhere. One 78-year-old woman who required immediate attention for an aneurysm died after being sent to another city, reports Bild, a German newspaper.
Christoph Hebbecker, who heads a cybercrime unit at the public prosecutor’s office in Cologne, said Friday that the inquiry was “justified,” though the circumstances of the woman’s death are still being investigated, reports Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, another German newspaper. The homicide probe adds to investigations of blackmail and computer hacking already underway.
Some cybersecurity experts have suggested that the fatality could be the first recorded death linked to a ransomware attack. The hospital and public prosecutor’s office did not immediately return Fortune’s request for comment.
Holding health care hostage
When an ambulance conveying the patient approached the University Hospital of Düsseldorf on the night of Sept. 11, it was redirected to a health care facility in Wuppertal, a city 20 miles east.
“The treatment that was arranged at Düsseldorf University Hospital was not possible there due to a hacker attack,” said Wolf-Tilman Baumert, spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office in Wuppertal, as quoted in Bild. The change of destination is said to have delayed the patient’s receipt of medical attention, critically, by an hour.
The woman died shortly thereafter. “The deceased has already been autopsied as part of a death investigation,” Baumert said.
Police are said to have contacted the hackers, who left behind a blackmail note, and persuaded them to supply a digital key that would decrypt the hospital’s 30 infected computer servers. The attackers allegedly did not know they had targeted an emergency clinic, German officials said.
The hackers sabotaged the hospital’s IT network through a known flaw in Citrix, provider of a VPN tool, said Arne Schönbohm, president of the Federal Office for Information Security, Germany’s national cybersecurity agency. The agency was called in to help get the hospital back online.
A Citrix software update had been available for IT administrators to patch their systems since January. “We warned of the vulnerability back in January and pointed out the consequences of its exploitation,” Schönbohm said in a statement. “I can only urge you not to ignore or postpone such warnings but to take appropriate action immediately.”
Hackers could have subverted IT systems vulnerable to the Citrix security hole prior to the updated software’s release in January. That means hackers could still have access to supposedly patched networks.
The German cybersecurity agency said that any organizations that use the products Citrix Gateway (formerly NetScalerGateway) and Citrix Application Delivery Controller should look for possible signs of compromise, or consult with external cybersecurity professionals for an audit.
First ransomware death?
If the ransomware attack did indeed lead to a patient’s death, however indirectly, the incident could go down in history as a first of its kind.
Ciaran Martin, former chief executive of the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre, told BBC that the incident was unprecedented. “If confirmed, this tragedy would be the first known case of a death directly linked to a cyberattack,” he said.
Cybercriminals frequently exploit vulnerabilities in commercial software to seize control of victims’ machines. In a ransomware attack, the bandits typically demand an extortion payment, usually denominated in a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin.
Hospitals have been hit by an increasing number of ransomware attacks in recent years. Though law enforcement agencies advise people not to pay such ransoms, since they encourage more crime, sometimes, in the interest of reclaiming control of computer systems, people do—especially in the medical field, where lives may be on the line.
“Unfortunately, it was both entirely foreseeable and inevitable that a ransomware attack would eventually result in the loss of life,” Brett Callow, a threat analyst at Emisoft, a cybersecurity firm that tracks ransomware attacks, told Fortune.
“This tragic incident should be a wake-up call,” Callow said.
Investigating the death
It’s unclear to what extent the hackers are to blame for the fatality.
“A lot is still vague about it, and it looks like the hospital may have been negligent as well,” says Dmitri Alperovitch, cofounder and executive chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a nonprofit think tank focusing on national security.
The hospital could have better defended itself by applying the available Citrix patch months earlier and keeping better tabs on its network, for instance. “It’s still pretty unclear as the reporting is very shallow,” said Alperovitch, who is also a cofounder of CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm.
Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University, urged circumspection too. “It’s important not to blow this incident out of proportion, as it may not be as unique as people think,” Rid told Fortune.
“The causality is not clear either,” Rid continued. “Whether the patient would have died without the ransomware incident first, we just don’t know.”
International organizations such as the United Nations have called for nation states and cybercriminals to uphold a “digital ceasefire” amid the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic. While some reports have suggested that the hackers, in this case, never intended to knock out a medical clinic—German officials said the hospital might have been infected accidentally—it would seem no armistice is being honored.
The hospital is still attempting to recover its IT systems. “As things stand today, we expect that we will be able to resume emergency care…within the next week,” said Frank Schneider, the clinic’s medical director, in a statement.


fortune--2020-09-18--Queen Elizabeth II strips Harvey Weinstein of his honorary award

Britain on Friday stripped disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of an honor recognizing his contribution to the U.K. film industry.
Weinstein, 68, was given the honor in 2004. The 68-year-old former Hollywood producer was convicted earlier this year of rape and sexual assault against two women and sentenced to 23 years in prison.
Accusations by dozens of women in 2017 led to the end of his career and helped spur #MeToo — a global movement demanding that powerful men be held accountable for their sexual misconduct.
“The Queen has directed that the appointment of Harvey Weinstein to be an Honorary Commander of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, dated January 19 2004, shall be cancelled and annulled and that his name shall be erased from the Register of the said Order,” according to a notice in The Gazette, the U.K.’s official public record.
The forfeiture committee can remove a honor, with the approval of the queen.
Once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, Weinstein’s credits include “The English Patient,” “Good Will Hunting,” and “Shakespeare In Love.”


fortune--2020-09-18--Lululemon still plans to open more stores even as the pandemic ravages the retail landscape

The pandemic may have wiped out demand for apparel and driven many remaining customers online, but that isn’t stopping Lululemon Athletica Inc. from eyeing new brick-and-mortar stores across the U.S.
Unlike some overstretched competitors, the upscale purveyor of yoga pants is still at an early stage of growth, according to Chief Executive Officer Calvin McDonald. In a recent video interview, he laid out the company’s case for expansion amid the tumult, saying that Lululemon’s stores are small and profitable, while serving as an anchor for the brand’s loyal customers.
“We may adjust slightly, but there’s still enough room for growth,” said McDonald, who took over the Vancouver-based company two years ago.
Lululemon, known for its $98 yoga pants and $58 tank tops, has benefited from enduring demand for comfortable clothes during the COVID-19 crisis, even as most apparel categories have struggled. The company’s online sales have soared, buoying the chain while it was forced to close stores for several weeks.
While productivity hasn’t fully recovered in reopened stores, sending shares down recently, the company is taking a long-term view with landlords. Lululemon has paid full rent throughout the crisis—a contrast to brands like Gap Inc. that suspended some payments. McDonald said he hopes the move pays off as some retailers are forced out of prime spots.
“We are a growth retailer that works well for landlords,” he said. “When opportunity in great locations come up I think that goodwill will pay dividends for us.”
Lululemon’s shares climbed 31% this year through Thursday.
Global growth
The company has about 500 stores worldwide, with 370 in North America. While most new locations are opening overseas, especially in China, Lululemon hasn’t stopped expanding in the U.S.
Lululemon has tried to build a community of followers and repeat customers with free classes, sports events and support for local “ambassadors”—athletes and yoga practitioners known as yogis. That aspect is essential to the store-expansion strategy, McDonald said: “If our physical existed only to transact, I would think differently.”
Recent experiments also justify more space, he said. They include experiential stores, which debuted in Chicago last year, with gym and cafe features. There’s a paid membership program that comes with exclusive classes. The company also plans to start selling Mirror, an exercise device streaming on-demand workouts that Lululemon recently acquired, at some U.S. locations this year.
There are new apparel products coming as well. Lululemon has devoted more square footage to men’s outfits as part of a goal to double revenue in that category by 2023. And within 12 to 18 months, the brand will unveil its own footwear line, according to McDonald. The foray into the highly competitive space is not accounted for in the company’s five-year financial targets.
“We’re going to take a test-and-learn approach,” said McDonald, who was a top executive at LVMH’s beauty chain Sephora before joining Lululemon.


fortune--2020-09-18--Biden says raising taxes is a first-day priority, but experts don’t see that happening

With less than 50 days until the election, Democratic nominee Joe Biden has perfected his stump speech, the oft-repeated top-line promises he makes to Americans across the country. Light on detail and heavy on personality, this speech is supposed to quickly tell still-undecided voters what Biden is all about and convince them that he’s who they need to lead them for the next four to eight years. So what has Biden decided to focus on? Raising taxes.
The former vice president has promised on many occasions that his “day one” action should he step into the Oval Office would be to increase the corporate tax rate and then quickly follow up with an increase for high-earners. “And folks, on day one, I will move to eliminate Trump’s tax cuts,” he said as he accepted the official nomination from the Democratic party in late July.
If enacted, Biden’s tax proposals would bring in an additional $3.375 trillion in revenue between 2021 and 2030, according to a recent analysis by the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn-Wharton Budget Model. The largest part of that increase would come from corporations. Biden has proposed raising the corporate rate from 21% to 28%, adding a 15% book tax on corporations with $100 million or greater in income, and increasing taxes on income earned by foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms from 10.5% to 21%.
The analysis finds that under the Biden tax plan, households with incomes of $400,000 per year or less would not see their taxes increase directly.
Households with incomes above $400,000 could see their after-tax income decrease by about 17.7%. That drop comes from repealing tax cuts included in President Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and by adding new Social Security taxes for high earners.
The proposition of increasing tax rates on corporations and high-income earners appeals not only to a progressive group that previously supported Sen. Bernie Sanders and whom Biden is hoping to court, but to the vast majority of Americans. The most recent Gallup polling (from 2019) finds that nearly 70% of all respondents thought corporations paid too little in taxes, and more than 60% of Americans thought that upper-income people paid too little.
Though the Trump campaign is attempting to reframe Biden’s tax plan as one that would potentially hurt middle-class Americans, less than 2% of U.S. households report incomes above $400,000.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Budget estimates that middle- and low-income earners may indirectly shoulder some of the burden placed on corporations through cost increases on households ranging from 0.2% to 0.6%, but there does seem to be an appetite for what Biden is proposing. The true problem is whether or not he’ll be able to follow through.
The President has very little control over tax policy aside from exerting influence over Congress, the body that holds the purse strings.
The President does not have the authority to raise taxes through executive order, and while there may be some workarounds to lower taxes (President Trump has claimed he has the authority to reduce capital gains taxes by indexing those profits to inflation, for example), they are questionable and would almost certainly be challenged by Congress. Any action taken by a Biden administration would have to presuppose that Democrats gain control of the Senate and retain control of the House, and even then, nothing is guaranteed, said Mark Mazur, director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
“The popular opinion among voters is that corporations and high-income individuals aren’t paying their fair share, but there’s not so much of an appetite amongst members of Congress to do anything about that,” he said. “They don’t necessarily reflect what you’re seeing across the country, especially in the Senate.”
Biden may be able to push smaller changes to the tax code through. Tax credits for childcare, solar investment, and electric vehicles could be packaged together without much fuss, according to Mazur. But repealing sections of the TCJA or raising income caps on Social Security taxes become tricky. “You’re going to have to pair those with things people find attractive to get them passed,” he said.
The push for a new tax package could be easily shifted to the back burner by more pressing issues related to COVID-19 as well, said Mazur, who pointed to the Obama White House’s initial delay of the Affordable Care Act in order to address economic recovery in 2008.
“The incoming administration is going to take stock of the economy and see what their priorities will be, but raising taxes likely won’t be the top priority,” he said. “If the coronavirus pandemic is still the top-tier issue and if the economy is more in the doldrums, they would look to a stimulus package and wouldn’t focus on raising taxes.”
What Mazur could see happening is Biden proposing tax increases to pay for another stimulus package, but those would likely have delayed effective dates and wouldn’t take place until January 2022—a first-year priority, but not likely a first-day priority.


fortune--2020-09-18--NBC threatens to black out its channels on Roku due to a dispute over Peacock

NBCUniversal plans to black out more than 11 channels on Roku Inc.’s streaming platform Saturday morning, escalating a standoff with the company over its refusal to carry a new video app, Peacock.
NBC’s Peacock and AT&T Inc.’s HBO Max have been unable to secure spots on Roku and Amazon.com Inc.’s Fire TV since launching their streaming services earlier this year.
Roku is demanding, among other things, a cut of the advertising inventory on those apps to sell on its own. Comcast Corp.’s NBC and WarnerMedia, the AT&T division that runs HBO Max, are rejecting that push because they want to make money from ads on their streaming services.
In a statement Friday, NBC said Roku’s “unreasonable demands ultimately hurt both their consumers and their consumer equipment partners to whom they’ve promised access to all apps in the marketplace.”
Roku used similar wording in a statement. “Comcast is removing the channels in order to try to force Roku to distribute its new Peacock service on unreasonable terms,” a spokesperson said.
Roku shares fell as much as 2.7% to $160.29 in New York trading. The stock is up 20% this year.
The standoffs are a sign of how Roku, which has about 40 million active users, is flexing its muscles as the largest platform for aggregating streaming services.
Roku and Amazon together control about 70% of the U.S. streaming-device market, limiting the growth of any video apps that aren’t available on them.
More than 15 million users have signed up for Peacock, which launched nationwide July 15.
In an interview with Bloomberg News this week, AT&T Chief Executive Officer John Stankey said he is “optimistic” that one of HBO Max’s disputes with either Roku or Amazon “will resolve itself in relatively short order.”