fortune--2020-06-23--Google workers ask CEO to end company’s work with police

Legal protections for LGBTQ people at work are crucial , but it ’ s on employers to create a welcoming @

More than 1,600 Google employees demanded Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai end the sale of the company’s technology to law enforcement, in a move they say would provide action to buttress statements against police brutality.
The workers, in a signed letter to Pichai, cite a software contract with a police department in suburban New York and some of Google’s investments as conflicting with the Alphabet company’s opposition to racism and police misconduct. Last week, Pichai announced that the company is creating a $175 million package for Black businesses and job seekers in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the anti-racism protests that followed.
“We have a long way to go to address the full legacy of racism but to begin with — we should not be in the business of profiting from racist policing,” the Google employees’ letter said.
After the letter was published, Google released a statement that said the company wouldn’t agree to its demands. “We have longstanding terms of use for generally available computing platforms like Gmail, G Suite and Google Cloud Platform, and these products will remain available for governments and local authorities, including police departments, to use,” a spokeswoman said in an email.
“We’re committed to work that makes a meaningful difference to combat systemic racism, and our employees have made over 500 product suggestions in recent weeks, which we are reviewing,” the statement also said.
Some other major technology companies have recently backed away from partnerships with police. Amazon.com Inc. suspended the sale of its facial-recognition systems to law enforcement for a year, while Microsoft Corp. said it wouldn’t offer the technology until the government regulates it. Google stopped offering its off-the-shelf facial recognition services in 2018.
Google has trailed those two rivals in selling cloud technology to government agencies, but is trying to catch up. One contract with a police force Google has touted is with the department in Clarkstown, about 40 miles north of New York City, for the use of Gmail, Google Drive and other G Suite services.
In the letter to Pichai, the Google staff cite a 2017 lawsuit from the Black Lives Matter group against Clarkstown and its police department that officers “illegally surveilled” protesters there. Additionally, the Google staff called out investments from Gradient Ventures, one of the company’s investment arms, which were tied to work with the military and police.
In recent years, Google employee activism has shelved projects with the U.S. Defense Department and in China, as well as prompted new policies in the treatment of contract staff. However, Google hasn’t responded to employee demands from last summer to ban work with U.S. border patrol agencies.
“We want to be proud of the company we work for,” the newest letter reads.


fortune--2020-06-22--Legal protections for LGBTQ people at work are crucial, but it’s on employers to create a welcoming

Legal protections for LGBTQ people at work are crucial, but it’s on employers to create a welcoming environment

Treasury and SBA to disclose names of largest PPP loan recipients , but most borrowers would remain unnamed

When our firm signed on to an amicus brief in Bostock v. Clayton County and two other cases last summer, we were proud to stand alongside 205 major businesses in expressing the importance of workplace protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Last Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court decided 6-to-3 in favor of the plaintiffs in this case, which tested the applicability of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to these critical elements of individual identity and experience.
Certainly, we believed the case to be strong; as Justice Neil Gorsuch noted in the majority opinion, “The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”
Given a shift in the court’s ideological makeup, however, it would be inaccurate to suggest that we expected it to rule in favor of the plaintiffs. This shift was all the more reason, we believed, for businesses to stand firmly in support of what is best for employees, organizations, society, shareholders, and our firms: the removal of a critical barrier to the psychological safety required of productive and meaningful workplace cultures.
As a cisgender, gay CEO of a global leadership firm, I celebrate the notion that this psychological safety—the ability to bring one’s full self to bear healthily and appropriately without fear of retribution or other negative consequences—is a critical element of the best workplaces.
Of course, the mere notion that individuals are legally protected from workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity does not, in and of itself, enable psychological safety. Legal protection is a helpful but incomplete precursor to crafting truly hospitable environments for LGBTQ employees and others with historically marginalized identities.
Implicit in the notion of legal protection is the idea that an individual or community is at risk because of some critical aspect of who we are—or what others attribute to those individuals, based on stereotyping or inaccurate perceptions. For LGBTQ individuals, expressing the parts of ourselves that do not align with broader expectations of how we should look, behave, or love based on our assigned sex at birth has often resulted in derision, rejection, exclusion, violence, or just plain silence in the workplace.
But that expression of this essential element of our identities can no longer result in legal termination of employment in the U.S.
The court’s decision has opened the door for leaders to engage with these critical components of identity and culture in a much more sophisticated and powerful way. Rather than operating from a place of legal protection for themselves—that is, treating this latest ruling merely as occasion to conduct antidiscrimination trainings and other risk mitigation activities—employers have the opportunity to reconsider the benefits of identity-diverse workplaces.
Recognizing that the law confers protection on an identity group is humanizing and energizing. When we understand that the most important parts of our identities matter and must be protected at work, we internalize the idea that our work can be a source of the very basic human need for meaning and purpose. Taken in the context of other major events last week—the first broad, mainstream recognition of Juneteenth as a major marker of black American civil rights; a second Supreme Court decision prohibiting the elimination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program without reasoned explanation; continuing daily protests across the country for equity and justice for black Americans—the impetus for leaders and organizations to cultivate work settings that recognize and harness the power of difference has never been more profound.
Wherever any particular organization presently stands on its journey, there is room for growth, development, and evolution embedded in learnings from the Bostock ruling. For employers who are new to recognizing their lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer employees, acknowledging the importance of allowing individuals to bring their full selves to work is an important starting point.
For employers that already celebrate their LGBTQ team members and colleagues, fostering similar celebratory conditions, just treatment, and psychological safety for individuals and communities across a wider range of identity groups creates a reservoir of positive energy in the organization. And for all of us, every day in the workplace (be it physical or virtual) affords the opportunity to demonstrate the kind of meaningful interpersonal connection that affirms our individual and shared humanity—to the benefit of our lives, our organizations, and our communities.
Eric Pliner is CEO of YSC Consulting.


fortune--2020-06-22--Microsoft to close game-streaming service Mixer

Microsoft’s Xbox unit will shut down its Mixer video-game streaming service after failing to attract a large global user base and will recommend players and audiences shift to Facebook’s streaming site. The software maker also plans to partner with Facebook on Microsoft’s xCloud mobile game service, which will be widely available by the end of the summer.
Starting July 22, users who visit Mixer will be redirected to Facebook Gaming. The surprise move comes less than a year after Microsoft lured popular streamer Ninja — whose real name is Tyler Blevins — from Amazon.com’s Twitch, the leading game-streaming service. The deal was touted as setting off a battle for top gaming talent in the $152 billion video-game industry.
Mixer’s stars, including Ninja and Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek, are under no obligation to join Facebook Gaming. It was these top streamers who contributed to Microsoft’s realization that Mixer wasn’t working — some of them told the company they weren’t making enough money on the service, Xbox chief Phil Spencer said Monday in an interview.
“While we were proud of the community that we had built on Mixer, we weren’t achieving the scale goals that we had on our own,” he said, explaining the team decided earlier this year to exit the business and instead look for a partner. “We hear it from our streamers, in order for us to have a successful streaming platform for them we need to have a large audience of viewers that create the business opportunity for them.”
Microsoft got into the game-streaming industry in 2016 with the acquisition of Beam, two years after Amazon paid almost $1 billion for Twitch to reach the teens and young adults who were increasingly spending time watching other people play games, instead of playing themselves. Since then, the business has given birth to a competitive field of celebrity creators who play games for eight to 12 hours daily. Facebook Gaming, which began in 2018, took some market share from Twitch in 2019.
Microsoft’s deal to sign Ninja last summer set of an unprecedented wave of fighting to lock down video-game streamer and influencer talent — and with them, their audiences — among Mixer, Twitch, YouTube and Facebook. But Microsoft’s millions of dollars in spending on Mixer hasn’t resulted in significant user growth. Mixer is in fourth place among platforms tracked by market-research firms StreamElement and Arsenal.gg and had less than 1 percent of total streaming hours in April.
Facebook has spoken with Ninja and others, said Vivek Sharma, the social network’s vice president and head of gaming. Sharma said he is going to let them announce their own plans, although Facebook would love to welcome them. “These folks are like multimedia celebrities,” he said.
Ninja’s representative didn’t return a request for comment. The streamer himself tweeted that he has “some decisions to make.”
Under the partnership, Microsoft plans to work with Facebook on xCloud, a service for streaming video games to mobile devices that the company is testing with users now. The idea will be to allow gamers to click within a stream on Facebook in order to play or purchase a video game in xCloud, Spencer said. Spencer and Sharma declined to disclose terms of the deal.
One part of Mixer will stay at Microsoft — some of the video technology that enables consistent, speedy streams and some interactive features will move to Microsoft’s Teams videoconferencing software, Spencer said. That will help Teams as it hosts more large webinars and broadcast events rather than just smaller corporate conference calls. Though other Mixer employees will shift to work on products like xCloud, Spencer said he couldn’t rule out some job cuts.
Microsoft had already begun talking with Facebook about this move when the U.S. went into lockdown related to the Covid-19 outbreak in March. Still, user data for April underscores Microsoft’s struggle to make Mixer work. Even as more gamers were confined to their homes amid the global pandemic, Mixer’s 15% growth in hours watched in April from the prior month lagged behind gains at Twitch and Facebook, and fell far short of the 45% growth for the overall streaming sector, according to StreamElement. Other Microsoft gaming properties, such as Minecraft and the GamePass subscription service, saw larger increases linked to the pandemic stay-at-home orders.


fortune--2020-06-22--Virgin Galactic jumps on NASA deal for private space trips

Virgin Galactic surged after the company announced a deal with NASA to develop private trips to the International Space Station.
Such “private astronaut experiences” could range from citizen expeditions to government-enabled scientific research missions, the company said in a statement Monday. Under its agreement with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Virgin Galactic will identify candidates interested in buying trips to the ISS while also arranging transportation and other resources.
The NASA pact extends Virgin Galactic’s efforts to develop space tourism amid the rise of a new industry based on private-sector launches. While the agreement doesn’t call for the company to transport astronauts on its own vehicles, the collaboration with NASA expands Virgin Galactic’s capabilities and validates its know-how in areas such as astronaut training.
“The agreement opens doors to a wider range of opportunities for Virgin Galactic beyond its core focus, including scientific and commercial space expeditions,” Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a note to clients.
Virgin Galactic rose 14% to $17.11 at 3:28 p.m. in New York after advancing as much as 18% for the biggest intraday jump in two months. The shares have trended down since early May as billionaire Richard Branson pared his stake to raise cash for his ailing businesses in leisure and travel, including Virgin Atlantic Airways.
The Virgin Galactic deal demonstrates the U.S. government’s commitment to opening the space station to a broader set of users, Jonas said. Still, he said, the agreement isn’t likely to generate “material levels of revenue” for the company, which didn’t disclose the financial details.
‘Space Training’
NASA is seeing greater demand for use of the space station for scientific and technological research and development, international collaboration and commercial activity, Virgin Galactic said.
“We are excited to partner with NASA on this private orbital spaceflight program, which will not only allow us to use our spaceflight platform, but also offer our space training infrastructure to NASA and other agencies,” George Whitesides, Virgin Galactic’s chief executive officer, said in the statement.
Virgin is trying to develop a suborbital business of taking tourists into space on brief rides. Voyaging to the space station requires the ability to send rockets into orbit.
Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. ferried two NASA astronauts to the space station last month, as its Dragon spacecraft became the first commercially developed vehicle to lift people into orbit.
SpaceX’s bravado and reusable rockets have inspired other entrepreneurs. The competition could get fierce this decade as new spacecraft come to market from Blue Origin, the company founded and funded by Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, as well as from Northrop Grumman, United Launch Alliance and Sierra Nevada.


fortune--2020-06-22--Treasury and SBA to disclose names of largest PPP loan recipients, but most borrowers would remain u

Treasury and SBA to disclose names of largest PPP loan recipients, but most borrowers would remain unnamed

After weeks of mounting pressure from Congress, government oversight agencies, and outside groups, the Treasury and Small Business Administration agreed to disclose more detailed data on loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, including the names of businesses who received funds. But while the disclosures would account for nearly 75% of the funds used for the program, it wouldn’t include the majority of borrowers.
The agencies announced late Friday that the names of companies and nonprofits who received loans of more than $150,000 will be released, along with other information including addresses, demographic data, and jobs supported by the businesses. The loan amounts would be disclosed in ranges, not individual amounts, from $150,000 to $350,000, $350,000 to $1 million, $1 million to $2 million, $2 million to $5 million, and $5 million to $10 million. Loans in these ranges account for nearly 75% of the funds allocated thus far in the $660 billion program, per SBA data.
However, most of the recipients will remain unnamed based on the latest announcement, as over 86% of the roughly 4.6 million borrowers took loans under the $150,000 threshold.
The announcement comes after comments from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin before Congress on June 10 sparked backlash, when he declared the names and loan amounts of borrowers would not be provided, saying they are “proprietary” and in some cases “confidential.” Following the secretary’s comments, members of Congress demanded the agencies hand over loan-specific data to improve transparency of the taxpayer program, also admonishing the SBA for failing to provide government watchdogs like the Government Accountability Office (GAO) with information it needed to oversee the program. Some House Democrats also called for banks who lent through the program to provide information about their processes and loans for the PPP.
The SBA and Treasury’s announcement is a significant move in providing more transparency for the embattled program. At present, the only known borrowers of the funds have been those who voluntarily announced they received loans or had to disclose the loans as part of securities filings if the company was public.
The decision to release dollar ranges for the loans (instead of releasing individual loan amounts for borrowers over $150,000) came as small businesses voiced concerns about how disclosing the loans, which are based on payroll data, might hurt competition. Secretary Mnuchin said in a statement, “We are striking the appropriate balance of providing public transparency, while protecting the payroll and personal income information of small businesses, sole proprietors, and independent contractors.”
‘Far from full transparency’
However, for many, the policy shift is still insufficient. While those like Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, said the SBA and Treasury “took a step in the right direction” by announcing they will release information for nearly 75% of the funds used, “this is far from the full transparency that American taxpayers deserve,” he said in a statement Friday night. “Even when this data is released, Treasury and SBA will still be withholding the identity of nearly 4 million PPP recipients—that is more than 85% of all recipients, who collectively received more than $100 billion in taxpayer money.” Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also noted the announcement was a “good start,” but said Democrats will “continue to push for maximum transparency from the Trump administration, especially when it comes to CARES Act funds.”
On Monday, House Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.), Financial Services chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), and Small Business chairwoman Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement that the SBA and Treasury’s announcement provided a “minimum level of transparency” that “still fall[s] short of taxpayers’ expectations,” adding “only sharing data on disbursements above [$150,000] is utterly inadequate.”
Indeed, in lieu of names for loans under $150,000, only totals will be released, “aggregated by zip code, by industry, by business type, and by various demographic categories,” according to the SBA and Treasury announcement. The agencies did not specify when the data would be released. A spokesperson for the SBA did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
In the joint statement, the group doubled down, saying, “Our demands still stand. We want SBA and Treasury to provide us with the names of all recipients of PPP loans, the dollar amount of all loans received, and the names of all applicants that did not receive PPP loans.”
Outside advocacy groups like the Center for Responsible Lending, which has actively called on Congress to demand transparency from the program, are “cautiously optimistic” about Friday’s announcement, Tom Feltner, executive vice president and director of research at CRL, tells Fortune. However, he notes, “this does not solve the structural barriers that have left too many businesses out of this critical program.” Those barriers have, in part, prevented many businesses (especially black-owned businesses) from accessing funds, based on early data.
Meanwhile, transparency concerns have also surfaced over whether members of Congress would disclose if they or companies associated with them got funds through the program. At least four members of Congress from both parties confirmed they had close ties to or have benefited from companies that received PPP loans, Politico first reported. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), for one, said last week she is proposing legislation to “require full disclosure of every member of Congress who may be benefiting from the [Paycheck Protection Program].” On June 16, she wrote on Twitter: “Members of Congress should disclose if they are taking taxpayer money.”


fortune--2020-06-22--Gilead’s next COVID-19 treatment advancement could keep patients out of hospitals

Gilead won the first Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emergency authorization for a COVID-19 treatment in May. Now, the biotech giant says, it will soon begin clinical trials for a different version of the same experimental drug, remdesivir, which might make it easier to administer outside of a hospital or ICU wing.
In its current form, remdesivir has to be taken intravenously over the course of multiple days. A number of studies sponsored by Gilead and the federal government have shown that in severe COVID-19 patients, the antiviral can reduce how long patients have to stay in the hospital. That’s critical for patients since an inpatient hospital stay can be extremely expensive—even one that has been made shorter by remdesivir.
That’s one reason why Gilead’s latest move could be important for both the coronavirus’s effect on the health system and treating the disease in patients with less severe forms of COVID. The company announced Monday that it will soon begin trials to test out an inhaled version, rather than an IV, of remdesivir.
“An inhaled formulation would be given through a nebulizer, which could potentially allow for easier administration outside the hospital, at earlier stages of disease,” wrote Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day in an open letter. “That could have significant implications in helping to stem the tide of the pandemic.” Theoretically, the treatment could be done at a doctor’s office or even at a clinic right after testing positive.
As public health officials such as Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), have stated, remdesivir shouldn’t be considered a cure. It’s more of a stopgap measure that can buy the medical system time as more treatments and coronavirus vaccines are developed.
Studies have shown that intravenous remdesivir reduced patients’ recovery time by about four days. But the trials of inhaled remdesivir are aimed at expanding the population of COVID patients that can be treated, ideally treating patients before their symptoms worsen. “Our hope is that earlier intervention could help patients avoid hospitalization altogether,” says O’Day.


fortune--2020-06-22--WWDC 2020: Here are all the big Apple announcements

Apple opened its annual Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday with a bevy of new features for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch users. And by the end of the two-hour presentation, the company also announced its long-rumored shift from Intel microprocessors in favor of homegrown chips for its Mac line of computers.
As WWDC is a conference for software developers, the people who write apps for the iPhone, Mac, and other Apple devices, the emphasis was on software. Apple unveiled new versions of the operating systems running on all its devices, including iOS 14 for iPhones and a new version of its MacOS software for laptops and desktops, called Big Sur.
Here are some key developments from WWDC 2020:
Meet your new iPhone home screen
Apple is revamping the software that runs on iPhones to make it easier to find app icons, with a new app library that automatically sorts programs by categories like fitness or social. Widgets, small displays of information like the weather or sports scores, which were previously shunted off to the side on the iPhone’s display, can now be intermingled with app icons on the home screen. And users can pick their own default apps for email and web browsing in case they have favorites other than Apple’s built-in apps.
Siri will be more discreet
Siri is getting a new look across all of Apple’s devices that will be less intrusive. Currently, when a user invokes Apple’s digital assistant, Siri covers the entire screen. In Apple’s new software, Siri will appear as just a small circle on top of whatever screen the user is already seeing.
Open says me
The iPhone will have the ability to act as a car key. Users just tap the phone near a sensor in the car’s door handle to unlock their vehicles and place the phone on a charging pad inside to allow the vehicle to be started. The feature will only work with the upcoming BMW 2021 5 Series this year and more cars next year, Apple said. The car key feature will be added to the current version of iOS as well as the new iOS 14, so users can access it sooner.
Airpod upgrade
For the first time, Apple executives talked at WWDC about upgrading the software that runs on its Airpod line of earbuds. The upgrade will allow Airpods to automatically shift the source of sounds from one device to another, say, from music playing on a laptop to answer a call on a phone, without the user having to switch the connection manually using Bluetooth controls. Apple’s Airpod Pro model will also get the ability to make sounds seem to come from different physical places, like a TV with surround sound. That can make movies and other material seem more lifelike.
Apple Watch takes a nap
Apple Watch is finally offering sleep tracking, or the ability to measure how long and how deeply a user is asleep, a feature that competitors have had for years. The watch will also try to automatically detect when users wash their hands and provide a prompt for people to wash their hands for the correct length of time.
Let the chips fall
Finally, as expected, Apple announced that it would shift from using Intel microprocessors to its own homegrown chips for its Mac lineup of laptop and desktop computers.
Apple said its new chips would be faster and use less power than the Intel chips it currently uses, but it didn’t give many specifics. The company said developers would be able to easily modify apps to run on the new chips and that it would include a software translator so even unmodified apps would be able to run in some fashion. Apple said Adobe and Microsoft had already created modified versions of their popular apps to run on the new chips. The company did not say when it would release its first devices for consumers and businesses that feature the new chips.


fortune--2020-06-22--Tariffs are battering American whiskey sales in Europe

American whiskey distillers have watched more than $300 million in export revenues evaporate in the two years since becoming entangled in a trade dispute between the Trump administration and the European Union, according to estimates in a new report.
Exports of American whiskey—mostly bourbon, Tennessee whiskey, and rye whiskey—to the EU have fallen 33% since the EU imposed a retaliatory tariff on those products on June 22, 2018, according to the report issued Monday by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.
The EU targeted American whiskey and other U.S. products in response to President Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on European steel and aluminum.
Those duties amount to a tax, which producers can either absorb in reduced profits, or pass along to customers through higher prices—and risk losing market share in highly competitive markets.
The new report shows that the tariffs “derailed a great American export success story,” said Chris Swonger, the council’s president and CEO.
“American distillers enjoyed two decades of unparalleled growth in the EU prior to the implementation of these retaliatory tariffs,” Swonger said. “This report makes clear that these tariffs took the wind out of the sails for American Whiskey exports to our top export market.”
Lexington, Ky.-based James E. Pepper Distillery is among the producers struggling to maintain a foothold in Europe. Before the tariffs hit, 10% of the company’s overall sales were in exports, mostly to the EU, and that part of the business was on pace to quickly double, said Amir Peay, the distillery’s owner.
Now, his distillery—whose signature bourbon and rye brand is James E. Pepper 1776—has lost about half its European business since the tariffs were imposed, Peay said. He absorbed the European tax to try to maintain the European ties he built, cutting into his profit margin.
He’s been able to recoup some of his EU losses by expanding his domestic business. But the lost opportunity in Europe has been painful, he said. He canceled a shipment of his distillery’s higher-end, more expensive whiskey to Europe, deciding “the risk was not worth it.”
“We have to be very cautious about shipping over too much inventory because we have to then pay all these taxes on it,” he said. “And it’s sitting in these warehouses longer. And the worst thing you can ever imagine is to one day just be stuck with all this inventory sitting in a warehouse that’s not moving.”
He had every reason to be bullish about EU business before the trade dispute.
From 1997 through June 2018, American Whiskey exports to the EU surged from $143 million to more than $750 million. The trend has turned in the other direction since the tariffs hit.
American whiskey exports to the EU fell from $757 million to $501 million—down $256 million, or 33%—between June 2018 and April 2020, the last month export data was available, the report said.
Despite the trade dispute, the EU still accounted for 52% of global American whiskey exports in 2019, the report said. But with only a 20% share in the EU’s whiskey market, American whiskey has lots of room for export growth to European countries, it said.
Globally, the U.S. exported $955 million of American whiskey in 2019, the council said.
The council is the national trade association representing producers and marketers of distilled spirits sold in the U.S. It renewed its call Monday for the U.S. and EU to resolve the trade dispute.
“With the destruction caused by the tariffs and the severe impact of COVID-19 on the hospitality industry, distillers have suffered enough,” Swonger said.


fortune--2020-06-22--Google’s annual ad sales are expected to decline for first time in 16 years

Google’s ad sales are expected to drop this year for the first time since going public in 2004, after a pullback by advertisers because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Google’s ad revenue this year will drop 5.3%, to $39.6 billion, down from $41.8 billion in 2019, according to research firm eMarketer. And while Google’s ad total is still expected to exceed those of rivals Amazon and Facebook, the company’s share of the U.S. digital ad market will drop to 29.4%, from 31.6% last year.
“This is a big deal,” said Nicole Perrin, eMarketer principal analyst. “We know there’s been a significant impact associated with the outbreak.”
The news comes as hotels and airlines, some of Google’s largest advertisers, struggle as people stay home due to the pandemic. Although travel has picked up in recent weeks, many travel-related companies are slashing their prices—a strategy that is intended to bring back customers but hurts profits.
While Google’s ad revenue is expected to decline, ad sales for Amazon and Facebook are expected to rise, though at slower rates than pre-pandemic predictions. Google Search, which is responsible for most of Google’s ad revenue, has a higher exposure to travel than Amazon and Facebook do, according to eMarketer. Google has also suffered from a slowdown in e-commerce ads, with Amazon reportedly pulling its ads from Google Search earlier this year. Although Google’s ad decline is expected to be temporary, some negative effects will last well after the pandemic, Perrin said.
Travel “won’t come back quite the same as it was [pre-pandemic],” she said. “They’re [advertisers] rethinking their former strategies.”
Google declined to comment for this story. But in April, Alphabet told analysts that its ad sales have declined during the pandemic. During its first-quarter earnings call with investors, Alphabet chief financial officer Ruth Porat warned about a “difficult quarter ahead” after shelter-in-place orders caused an “abrupt drop” in ad sales. By the end of March, revenues had declined by “a mid-teens percentage” compared to the same period a year earlier, she said.
Google had reported a 13% rise in first-quarter ad revenue, which totaled $41.2 billion, beating analysts’ expectations. But the company suggested the worst was yet to come, and, according to eMarketer’s predictions, the hit will be “significant.”
If so, it would represent the first time that Google has seen a drop in annual ad revenue since its initial public offering in 2004. Even during the Great Recession, the company managed to grow, though more slowly. “They had a smaller share of the ad market, so it had room to grow,” Perrin said.
Meanwhile, Amazon, which isn’t as exposed to travel, is expected to see a 23.5% rise in digital ad revenue, ending the year with $12.8 billion, according to eMarketer. Facebook, whose ad sales are being helped by fast-growing Instagram, is expected to see a rise of 4.9% in annual ad revenue, totaling $31.4 billion.
The three companies’ share of the U.S. digital ad market, estimated to be worth $134.7 billion at the end of 2020, is expected to grow by 0.2 percentage point, representing the smallest gain in a decade.


fortune--2020-06-22--How’s the economy? A new poll shows your answer depends on if you lean red or blue

Americans’ outlook on the national economy has improved somewhat from its lowest points during the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, but a new poll suggests Democrats and Republicans are living in alternate economic realities amid the sharpest recession in the nation’s history.
Eighty-five percent of Democrats call economic conditions “poor,” while 65% of Republicans describe them as “good” in a new survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Associated Press
This divide reflects the deep polarization ahead of the 2020 presidential election, as well as a series of indicators that point toward a weakened but recovering U.S. economy.
“The economy is in terrible shape and improving rapidly,” said Harvard University professor Jason Furman, formerly the top economist in the Obama White House. “Depending on which of the two halves you’re looking at, you’re going to have a very different interpretation of where we are.”
Americans can see reasons for hope as well as doubt. They face a host of uncertainties about the path of COVID-19, the fate of small businesses with fewer customers and the status of additional government aid.
Overall, 63% of the country says the economy is in poor shape, down somewhat from the 70% who felt that way in May. The change was driven by increasingly optimistic Republicans, only 43% of whom described the economy as good a month ago. Two-thirds of Republicans, but just 29% of Democrats, expect improvement over the next year.
Thelma Ross, 78, of Granby, Missouri, believes the economy will recover if President Donald Trump can defeat Democratic challenger Joe Biden, the former vice president.
“I think it’s going to come back, stronger than ever, if we get the right president in,” Ross said. “President Trump is a businessman.”
Yet she is concerned by the protests after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, an African American, and the calls to remove statues that celebrate the Confederacy and Christopher Columbus. Ross views division as harmful for any economic recovery.
Ross said of Trump: “I pray for divine revelation and divine guidance for that man because he needs that right now.”
The survey finds that African Americans and Hispanics are more likely than white Americans to say someone in their household has lost a job or other income. That inequality has added to the broader reckoning with structural racism amid nationwide protests over police brutality following Floyd’s death.
Associated Press
Overall, 66% of Hispanic Americans and 53% of Black Americans say they’ve experienced some form of household income loss, including layoffs, unpaid time off and cuts in hours or pay. Forty-two percent of white Americans say the same. Thirty-four percent of Hispanics, 29% of African Americans and 20% of white Americans said someone in their household has been laid off.
The poll finds signs that some of those layoffs are becoming permanent. Among all those who experienced a layoff in their household, 55% say the job definitely or probably will return — and 8% say it already has. Still, 36% said the job will most likely not come back, which is significantly higher than the 20% who said that in April.
The economy cratered in March and April as people sheltered in place in hopes of stopping the pandemic, and the unemployment rate spiked to at least 14.7%. Responses to government surveys suggested the true jobless rate may have been even higher. But it showed signs of reviving in May. Retail sales surged 17.7%, and 2.5 million jobs were added. The unemployment rate improved to 13.3%, a number that is still the second highest reading in records going back to 1948.
Leah Avery, 54, lost her job driving a school bus in suburban Dallas. She said she checks her email daily to find out how schools will reopen. She applied for unemployment benefits a month ago, but the request has been under review.
“It’s a struggle day by day for us to pay our bills, and I know others are going through the same thing,” she said.
The job loss has only added to her stress. Her aunt died from COVID-19, and she needs to take care of her elderly mother and her husband, who has dialysis appointments three days a week. It’s a full-time job with no pay, she said.
“I just have these moments where it makes me cry,” she said. “You don’t know this day from the next day what is going to happen.”
The nearly $3 trillion in approved federal aid has shielded many people from the pain of the downturn. About two-thirds of Americans still call their personal financial situations good.
A bipartisan group of economists proposed an additional $1 trillion to $2 trillion of aid to sustain any recovery, including targeted funds for state and local governments, subsidized loans for small businesses, more generous unemployment benefits and aid for low-wage workers.
“It should be thought of as an investment in the economy,” said Melissa Kearney, a University of Maryland economics professor who helped lead the effort. The proposals are based on ideas shown to boost growth and provide traction for a recovery that is still in its early and fragile stages.
Broxton Sanders, 20, has been selling mattresses while on break from studies at the University of South Alabama. He’s a rising junior majoring in political science, and he would like to one day oversee a hospital for military veterans. He noticed that mattress sales picked up during Memorial Day weekend, but there are days now with few, if any, shoppers.
“The economy definitely could be better,” Sanders said. “I’ll be honest, I think we’ve seen the worst of it. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t fall off kilter at any second.”


fortune--2020-06-22--Peloton stock races higher on bullish calls of ‘holiday-like’ demand

Working out during the pandemic certainly seems to be working out for Peloton.
The indoor fitness company that produces stationary bikes, treadmills, and social-media-famous fitness classes (and instructors) is enjoying quite a run. The company’s stock is up over 80% year to date, while the S&P still lags about 5% for the year. And some on the Street are bullish the fitness company may still have room to ride.
Analysts at Stifel just raised Peloton’s price target from $55 to $62—a Street high—on bullishness that Peloton would continue to benefit from “shifting consumer behavior, gym closures/social contact avoidance, and steady demand from word-of-mouth.” In fact, those tailwinds “have the potential to fuel multiple quarters of holiday-like demand in our view, while also pulling forward the margin expansion path by two to three years in our expectations,” analysts wrote. Peloton’s stock popped over 7% in midday trading Monday. The new price target implies an over 13% rally in the stock.
The company has become a pandemic staple for some fitness enthusiasts amid shelter-in-place orders, despite the steep price tag (a bike goes for about $2,245). The fitness company topped 1 million connected-fitness subscribers recently (the company extended its free trial of its digital subscription from one to three months in March), and although many consumers are likely tightening their belts amid the economic uncertainty, Peloton’s fastest-growing demographic for product sales earns under $75,000 per household.
Meanwhile, analysts are optimistic about the likely lower-than-expected churn rate for Peloton’s connected fitness subscriptions, and note its app has seen a boost in international markets lately too, with “exceptional strength” in the U.K. And Stifel analysts are predicting “seasonal upside,” increasing total revenue estimates to –16% (quarter over quarter) for the September quarter (still up 100% year over year), ahead of the Street forecasts of –25%.
However, Peloton isn’t riding the wave of at-home fitness trends alone. Competition is also heating up in the socially distanced workout space, as those like Hydrow, an at-home rowing startup, and Tempo, an at-home weights training startup, gain traction. As the pandemic has forced many fitness enthusiasts out of their gyms and into their homes, the demand for (pricey) at-home equipment and classes seems to have increased. Hydrow, whose machines retail at $2,199, says sales have risen 400% in April compared with January, while sources recently told Fortune that Tempo (whose system costs $1,995) raised some $60 million in funding (yet to close).
And those like Hydrow are aiming to challenge Peloton’s success directly. “I think there will be four or five winners,” Hydrow CEO Bruce Smith recently told Fortune of the at-home fitness space.
What’s more, as states reopen, gyms are reopening with them. Most gyms are operating at reduced capacity, but it’s likely fitness enthusiasts won’t want to work out alone forever. Still, analysts at Stifel see the downsizing of big gym brands (like Gold’s Gym and 24 Hour Fitness, which also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy) as another positive driver for Peloton.
In addition to raising the price target, analysts at Stifel also raised the next 12 months’ subscriber and delivery estimates, anticipating 4% higher revenues.


fortune--2020-06-22--Apple debuts Translate app at WWDC 2020

Apple debuts Translate app at WWDC 2020

Apple introduced a new app that can automatically translate between 11 languages, including French, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic.
The iPhone maker debuted the new Translate app, akin to the 14-year-old Google Translate, on Monday during the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), a virtual event this year because of concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.
Yael Garten, Apple’s director of Siri data science and engineering, described Apple Translate as “easy to use for conversation.”
The app displays translations on the iPhone’s screen of what the speakers say, with the help of Apple’s Siri digital assistant. A conversation between an English speaker and Spanish speaker, for example, would be displayed in text on different parts of the screen.
Apple’s new app is powered by “on-device machine learning,” meaning that it translates directly on iPhones instead of sending data to Apple’s data centers. Garten said that on-device translation is better for “accuracy and privacy” because no user data leaves the smartphone during the translation process.
In contrast, Google Translate relies on cloud data centers for translation. But the search giant also offers an “offline” mode, which can be used without Internet access and limits data collection.
Apple executives emphasized data privacy at multiple points during its event in an attempt to distinguish it from competitors like Google and Facebook, which have come under fire for lax data collection policies.
Apple Translate is one of several new features the company introduced as part of its iOS 14 update for the iPhone. Other languages the app translates include English, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Russian.


fortune--2020-06-22--Joel Schumacher, director of ‘St. Elmo’s Fire,’ ‘The Lost Boys,’ and two Batman movies, dies at 80

Joel Schumacher, the flamboyant journeyman director who dressed New York department store windows before shepherding the Brat Pack to the big screen in “St. Elmo’s Fire” and steering the Batman franchise into its most baroque territory in “Batman Forever” and “Batman & Robin,” has died. He was 80.
A representative for Schumacher said the filmmaker died Monday in New York after a year-long battle with cancer.
Schumacher became one of the preeminent genre filmmakers of the 1990s after the success of “St. Elmo’s Fire,” with Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy, and of the vampire horror comedy “The Lost Boys.”
After films including “Flatliners” and “A Time to Kill,” Schumacher inherited the DC universe from Tim Burton. His garish take on Batman resulted in two of the the franchise’s most cartoonish movies in 1995’s “Batman Forever” and 1997’s “Batman & Robin.”
Schumacher also directed the thrillers “Tigerland” and “Phone Booth,” as well as “The Phantom of the Opera.”


fortune--2020-06-22--New York’s MTA is on track to run out of cash by August, chairman says

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority will run out of money in August if the U.S. Senate does not approve the economic stimulus measure that would provide about $3.9 billion to the agency, Chairman Patrick Foye said.
“We’re in a dire financial situation,” Foye said during a Bloomberg Television interview Monday, as the city prepared to enter a second phase of reopening, with about 300,000 more workers expected to occupy offices, open air restaurants and small businesses such as barber shops. “It is absolutely critical that the MTA receive that money.”
The $3 trillion measure passed by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives would provide about $1 trillion to state and local governments being battered by the shutdowns. The amount the MTA would receive could carry it through the rest of the year, Foye said.
Earlier this year, the system received $3.8 billion with the enactment of the $2 trillion stimulus package in March.
Agency officials expect to need the remainder of its available funds to cover losses in July, said spokesman Tim Minton. Those funds will be distributed to the agency in August.
The transit agency, critical to a region that contributes about 8% of the U.S. economy, runs the city’s buses and subways, regional commuter rail systems and several bridges and tunnels. Its revenue since the Covid-19 lockdown began in March plummeted along with a 90% drop in subway and bus ridership, while costs increased as crews disinfect its train cars and stations daily, Foye said.


fortune--2020-06-22--Trump told Treasury secretary, ‘Go after Bitcoin,’ according to John Bolton’s new book

President Donald Trump bellowed at Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to pursue the popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin rather than stick his nose into trade matters, according to former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Bolton makes the allegation in his new book, The Room Where It Happened, which delivers numerous accounts of high-level White House meetings, and is set for release on Tuesday.
Trump’s comments about Bitcoin come in a section of the book, viewed by Fortune, in which Bolton describes his frustrations with what he views as the President’s slapdash approach to policymaking vis-à-vis China. More specifically, Bolton describes a heated encounter when Trump allegedly became frustrated with Mnuchin’s attempt to exert influence over trade tactics. The relevant excerpt reads as follows:
“Not only was his outsized role institutionally unusual, Mnuchin’s pro-China, zeal-for-the-deal approach was substantively dangerous. From time to time, even Trump saw this. At one Roosevelt Room session, on May 22, Trump all but yelled at Mnuchin, ‘Don’t be a trade negotiator. Go after Bitcoin [for fraud].’”
In response, Mnuchin allegedly told Trump in a near-yell, “If you don’t want me on trade, fine, your economic team will execute whatever you want.”
The Bolton book does not provide further context for the Bitcoin reference, which is the only time the cryptocurrency is mentioned. Neither the White House nor the Treasury Department immediately replied to a request for comment.
The President’s alleged instruction to “go after” Bitcoin is consistent, however, with his earlier expressions of hostility to cryptocurrency. In July of 2019, for instance, Trump tweeted that he is “not a fan” of virtual currencies, claiming they are “not money.” He also denounced cryptocurrency for facilitating the drug trade and other illegal activities, and blasted Facebook’s proposed digital currency project, Libra.
Despite the President’s skepticism toward Bitcoin, some of his allies have been more open to it. These include Stephen Moore, a former campaign adviser and Trump’s aborted pick to join the Federal Reserve, who last October announced plans to launch a cryptocurrency.
John Bolton’s account of Mnuchin and Bitcoin was first reported by the Washington Examiner.
More must-read finance coverage from Fortune:


fortune--2020-06-22--The Golden Globes are moving to Feb. 28, 2021

The Golden Globes is refusing to let the pandemic get in the way of its party.
The ceremony will be held Feb. 28, 2021, in Beverly Hills with previously announced hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association said Monday.
The date, as with that of other awards, had been delayed amid the coronavirus disruption. But with the Academy Awards having staked out April 25 last week, the Globes jumped on the February date the Oscars had previously held.
The Golden Globes, set in a hotel ballroom that’s arranged more like an oversized dinner party with drinks than a formal ceremony, positions itself as the freewheeling start to awards season. Exactly which movies and TV shows will be eligible for honors remains to be seen, given the virus-caused delay in production and movie theater screenings that’s only now easing.
Organizers said they will provide guidance on eligibility, the voting period and the timing of the nominations announcement but didn’t specify when. The ceremony will air on NBC.


fortune--2020-06-22--The Coronavirus Economy: The beauty app connecting salons and barbershops with independent stylists

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After months of lockdown, one of the top priorities for many people as restrictions are lifted might have been deemed inessential before but is increasingly becoming more essential for others.
That would be getting a haircut.
And while reopening salons and barbershops should be easier than opening restaurants and bars in terms of accommodating social distancing and PPE requirements, many hairstylists have lost their jobs and income in the interim period and will be looking for new clients and places to work.
Fortune spoke with Tye and Courtney Caldwell, cofounders of ShearShare—a mobile app connecting stylists with salons enabling them to lease chairs nearby for the day, week, or occasion—for a new series, The Coronavirus Economy, about how the outbreak has affected their business, how hairstylists can rebound after the shutdown, and how they have been handling the fraught past few months, both emotionally and financially.
Tye (left) and Courtney Caldwell, cofounders of ShearShare, a mobile app connecting stylists with salons, enabling them to lease chairs nearby for the day, week, or occasion. Courtesy of ShearShare
The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Fortune: What inspired the launch of ShearShare?
Tye: Like all great businesses, ShearShare was first created because we were trying to solve our own problem. Today, we’re fueling industry recovery across 625 cities, but it didn’t start out that way. I’ve been a licensed barber and stylist for nearly three decades, earned my doctorate in professional barbering and cosmetology, have owned an award-winning salon and barbershop for more than 26 years, and wrote a bestselling book about how to maintain long-term success in our industry called Mentored by Failure. I recognized the change back in 2012 and saw a shift unlike anything I had seen before. Almost overnight, our industry started to become more and more independent, with stylists almost demanding economic mobility and wanting to manage and grow their small businesses on their own terms. With the advent of social media and technology, today 70% of licensed professionals are independent contractors; we are the second largest industry for freelancers and are expected to grow faster than the average for all other occupations over the next eight years.
But back in 2012, I didn’t know I’d be helping to grow local economies and get people back to work. I just took a phone call from a stylist who wanted to rent one of my empty suites by the day. She was moving across town and leaving the majority of her clientele behind and couldn’t afford to lose them. If I would allow her to do daily booth rental, she could still keep food on the table. I was unsure and quite reluctant but kept an open mind. After that first experience renting out my space unconventionally, she asked if I could help her get into a few more locations around town, really leaning in on the fact that my knowledge of both sides of the market (from being both a licensed professional and a salon owner) could help her when contacting other owners.
Fast-forward three years, and my wife and I were manually matching stylists to empty salon space as the word spread. One day we were spending more time fielding calls from stylists than working our regular jobs and decided to search for an app that did what we were doing, so that we could recommend that company the next time our phones rang. When we couldn’t find anything online, that became our proverbial “aha moment.” It was that same day that we decided to pioneer ShearShare, the first salon and barbershop space rental app.
When local and state governments started to shutdown nonessential businesses in March, there wasn’t much wiggle room for hair salons, stylists, barbers, and other beauty businesses. As a company that works with these companies and professionals directly, how has this affected your own business?
Courtney: It affected us greatly, but our industry has been here before. We’ve lived through Ebola, the 2008 recession, Y2K, and other economic downturns. What will always stand true for the beauty and barbering community—whether we live in a new coronavirus economy or not—is that we are an evergreen industry that bounces back. As a matter of fact, the last time the U.S. economy experienced a recession, salons and spas actually added 75,000 jobs during the same period. We knew things would eventually come back online but just didn’t know how long states would mandate closures. Because we’ve lived through hard times before and have come out stronger on the other side, we’re now sharing that encouragement with our community so that stylists can get back to work with confidence.
ShearShare was founded in 2015. How does a shutdown of this nature affect the future of the business, from product development to raising capital?
Tye: You feel it for sure, but we continued pushing along and pressing forward. We didn’t lay off or furlough any employees; instead, we focused on the product and doubled down on providing education for the small businesses we serve—business education that actually moved the needle, like helping more than 100 stylists and ShearShare hosts get approved for [Paycheck Protection Program] funds after they had been denied. Product-wise, we decided to take advantage of the time we had by re-prioritizing our road map and continuing to build out and enhance the platform. Because our team did the hard work during what we call “the COVID quarter,” we released more than 10 new features that help salons and barbershops transition aspects of their businesses online. So if states issue stay-at-home orders again or local economies have to hit pause later this fall, our ShearSharers will have options that make them money on our app.
Courtney: We knew investors were being careful about deploying capital, resources, attention, etc., because the truth is that some portfolio companies may not exist post-COVID-19. That’s a cold hard fact. However, we made it a point to triage the business early on with our investment partners and be prescriptive in our asks, which gave us the opportunity to keep those lines of communication open for when things returned to some sense of normalcy and we could continue conversations.
Now that select cities and states are starting to reopen, how is ShearShare adjusting to whatever the new normal might be? Are there enough precautions and guidelines in place that consumers can feel safe about meeting with stylists again?
Tye: Most people don’t realize that more than half of our training is actually devoted to sanitation precautions. As a licensed cosmetologist and barber myself, it’s important to share that each state’s respective licensing and regulations body mandates that these safety measures be learned in order to pass your cosmetology or barber license exam. We, as professionals, understand the safety precautions needed to protect the client—steps like mandatory wearing of gloves before and after each new client; washing hands between appointments; changing client capes after each service; thoroughly sanitizing chairs and tools between clients; providing hand sanitizer in visible locations, etc. ShearShare provided not just information by state but also drafted client health statement templates, reopen strategies, Barbicide sanitation certifications—anything to add to the extra layer of education for the customer to see—because all of this gives the consumer a better level of comfort and ease when coming back to the salon and barbershop. Because our team is from the industry, we realize that we are the community, so we feel extremely indebted.
During the coronavirus lockdown, we provided a slew of content that met the very real needs of our fellow professionals: topics like how to apply for EIDL [Economic Injury Disaster Loan] funds; how to come up with revenue-generating ideas while at home during ’rona; how to reopen with care and prep for a new normal; why a banking relationship is important to have after you get back to business; how to rethink pricing in a post-COVID-19 world; new safety and sanitary precautions, etc. Of course, we knew the pandemic would have a major effect on the beauty industry in the short term, but I don’t think we foresaw how much of a change that would be. We just released a report that highlights the current state of our industry after COVID-19, and given the current climate, stylists are choosing to work much more differently than they had before the pandemic—the how, when, and where marking the biggest transitions.
Courtney: For our tech business specifically, the new normal involves a surprising uptick in states where ShearShare wasn’t as active before March, so that’s been a very positive signal, especially because we’re doing our part to help local economies recover. Stylists are using ShearShare to increase their economic mobility, they’re booking locations closer to home, and they’re choosing workspaces that fit their unique needs. And despite the pandemic, we have more listings now than before.
Over the past month, there has been a much stronger and more concerted effort on social media to encourage consumers to support black-owned businesses. At the same time, there is the worry that while this might offer a much-needed sales bump during an economic downturn, nonblack consumers will not commit to this effort in the long term. What can other members of the business community do to amplify and sustain support for black-owned businesses?
Tye: Get to know the black businesses in your neighborhood and the black business owners. This creates legitimate cohesiveness within the community at large and encourages a stronger local ecosystem. Black-owned businesses have always been pillars in their respective communities, whether they are in a black neighborhood or a diverse community. As a black business-owner myself, I know that we over-index in nearly every spending category; and it’s my opinion that if a business is providing a great product or service, that business will be supported regardless, because people vote with their dollars.
Especially during this time, however, it would behoove us to actively amplify and give our energies to show support in any way possible, because supporting black-owned businesses is supporting businesses. And we can do that through word of mouth, online recommendations, sending donations, through social media conversations like the ones happening at the @pullupforchange page on Instagram, or anything that drives business forward. Small businesses are and forever will be the backbone of the U.S. economy.


fortune--2020-06-22--Why the future of financial markets is in the cloud

Think of critical infrastructure, and sectors such as telecommunications, agriculture, and construction likely come to mind, as physical assets such as networks, farms, roads, and bridges keep economies humming. But the financial services industry is also among this cohort, according to the Department of Homeland Security. As such, the onus is on the sector to invest in the future well-being of our economy. After all, well-functioning markets connect companies and people to the capital, information, and technology they need to foster innovation, generate more jobs, and drive GDP growth worldwide.
Market infrastructure is the backbone that hosts the life cycle of every transaction. It was tested in March when, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, volatility surged and volumes on Nasdaq’s markets reached historic peaks of more than 60 billion messages each day. That’s more than twice any previous record.
Nasdaq’s market technology, which powers more than 100 other marketplaces worldwide, serves us well. However, a few realities and trends combined with recent extreme volatility underscore our belief that the future of the markets lies in the cloud.
The writing on the wall
Many trading firms co-locate their servers in exchanges’ local data centers to achieve the lowest network latency possible. However, that access comes with a tradeoff: Since physical space is at a premium, the co-located infrastructure isn’t suitable for storing large volumes of data or running analytics, making it less than ideal for those workloads. The elasticity of the cloud could address this issue.
Managed services in the cloud are engineered to be compliant, performant, secure, and scalable. Outsourcing to a cloud-based managed service provider can reduce firms’ capital burden and allow them to focus resources on their core expertise and create differentiated offerings with a quick time to market.
Meanwhile, fintech firms born in the cloud with lean, disruptive business models have gained traction. Some platforms and solutions are competing directly with the incumbents in the capital markets. Interestingly, large marketplaces and broker-dealers have begun partnering with fintech startups selectively as a way to innovate fast and with less risk.
Additionally, most capital markets staff are working from home during the COVID-19 global pandemic, and this will likely continue until companies can bring employees back to the office safely. In our new normal, the cloud can help support remote teams and operations for an extended period of time.
The writing is on the wall. More than ever, the capital markets will need to be dynamic, consistent and future-focused if we want to drive the economy forward. Shifting on-premises operations to the cloud will allow us to leverage evolving industry trends, launch new offerings quickly, improve service, as well as manage costs, risks, and unexpected volume spikes.
Admittedly, there is still work to be done. The entire ecosystem needs to prepare for a new operational paradigm. We also need to jump some engineering hurdles around determinism (in other words, providing a consistent and predictable response time profile for transaction processing), latency, and fairness before equities transactions can be matched in the cloud, but these problems are solvable.
A new operational paradigm
Startup and smaller marketplaces perceive that buying servers and doing workloads on-premises is an old way of running a business, and a less complex access solution in the cloud is their preferred deployment option. They aim for a lean IT setup, with minimal capital expenditures and optimal operational expenses. A pay-per-use arrangement allows them to move into production quickly with predictable expenses as they grow.
For example, ATG (AB Trav och Galopp), a Swedish gaming operator, is running pool betting using Nasdaq’s Longitude in the cloud, enabling efficient operations at scale. The U.K.-based Football Index is using cloud-deployed matching technology from Nasdaq.
Well-established marketplaces may want to try out new offerings in the cloud as well. Instead of going through their internal IT procurement and deployment cycle, they can deploy products and services in the cloud as a proof of concept and decide later if they want to go on-prem or remain in the cloud.
Moving the capital markets infrastructure to the cloud allows for the democratization of markets. Given the elasticity of the cloud, services that have been limited in availability, such as co-location, become seemingly unlimited. Leveraging the dynamic infrastructure and APIs, marketplaces and firms can benefit from increased agility, an even higher level of security than on-premises, and access to disruptive technologies including machine learning and A.I. to enable innovation.
Compute power can be expanded and collapsed based on market conditions, removing the need to have large amounts of capital tied up in data centers provisioned for peak load and capacity. This is a huge advantage when it comes to coping with periodic surges in market activity and black swan events.
A work in progress
Most elastic use cases in financial services are data-related, especially in regulatory reporting and business intelligence. However, clearing, risk management, surveillance, and back office applications are also being deployed in the cloud nowadays.
The major cloud providers have prioritized the elimination of technical, geographic, and regulatory obstacles that previously stood in the way of wider adoption by the capital markets. Simultaneously, they have invested heavily in innovation and geographic footprint expansion, and marketplaces are starting to take advantage of it.
Nasdaq has been utilizing the cloud for more than 10 years, and many of our technology-based products and services are deployed in the cloud. Our biggest transition will be migrating our markets. In five years, we expect to have multiple Nasdaq markets running in the cloud, and in 10 years they will likely all be in the cloud. In addition to making this shift for the Nasdaq markets we operate, we’re making our Market Technology commercial offerings available in the cloud, and we plan to work with our clients to help them move when they’re ready.
The investment trend and innovation in the cloud is here to stay and has further accelerated during the global pandemic. The time has come to concentrate on building the critical market infrastructure in the cloud. It will allow us to work smarter and manage better for the future prosperity of our industry and economy, and for the greater good of society.
Brad Peterson is executive vice president and chief technology and information officer at Nasdaq. Lars Ottersgård is EVP and head of market technology at Nasdaq.


fortune--2020-06-22--Tesla sets a new date for ‘Battery Day’ showcase of its new technology and production line

Update, July 13: Tesla has now officially scheduled Battery Day for September 22, 2020. As expected, it will be an in-person event at Tesla’s Fremont, California factory.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Sunday announced that the electric-car maker’s long-anticipated “Battery Day” event has been tentatively scheduled for Sept. 15, 2020. Musk has been promising the event for more than a year. It is expected to reveal significant advances in battery and battery production technology from Tesla and its partners.
The event has been delayed several times. Musk has previously said on Twitter that it is important for the event to be held in person, rather than virtually, a dicey proposition during the coronavirus pandemic. In his announcement Sunday, Musk said the event would include a tour of Tesla’s new battery cell “production system” in Fremont, Calif. Musk also clarified that despite previous plans, the event will not cover Tesla’s anticipated Plaid powertrain update.
Tesla seems likely to showcase at least two advantages of its evolving battery technology: cost and durability.
The automaker has long partnered with Panasonic to produce its batteries, but it has been working to establish in-house battery production, with a focus on scaling to reduce costs. A battery’s cost per kilowatt-hour of storage capacity is a key competitive factor in the electric vehicle market. More storage translates to higher range, a major consideration for prospective buyers of electric vehicles. But batteries are also the key determinant in the total cost of an electric passenger vehicle and whether it is price-competitive with a gas-burning car.
Tesla may also reveal more about its partnership with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), which supplies what are known as lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. As reported by Reuters, the batteries eliminate expensive cobalt from their chemistry. The batteries can also reportedly last for more than 1 million miles of use and recharging, about three times as long as the current Model 3’s lithium-ion batteries. That would substantially reduce long-term operating costs.
Like most Tesla plans, Battery Day has been delayed multiple times—though for reasons well outside of Tesla’s control. At an April 2019 event showcasing the company’s self-driving tech, Musk said a similar event focused on battery and powertrain would take place in “about six months,” suggesting February or March of 2020. That was later pushed to April, then July—and now September—at least in part because of the coronavirus pandemic and the risks of gathering many people at a public event.
But Musk was clear that the Sept. 15 date is still tentative. The event could be derailed by the coronavirus yet again: Cases across the United States have been trending upward for two weeks now, and there is some concern that fall 2020 could see a renewal of widespread shelter-in-place orders.


fortune--2020-06-22--A cruise-free summer: Carnival and its rivals extend cruising suspension through September

Cities and states across the nation may be slowly reopening from their pandemic-related shutdowns, but cruise ships will remain closed for business this summer.
Carnival Corp., the world’s largest cruise operator, said Monday that it was canceling all trips on its Carnival Cruise Line brand through Sept. 30. The company had previously said it would try to resume some cruise operations on Aug. 1.
Carnival’s announcement comes a weekend after the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), an industry trade group representing the major cruise companies, said its members would not be sailing before at least Sept. 15. Another one of those members, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, had already announced a suspension in its operations through the end of September.
Cruise operators, including Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian, have been operating under a “no sail” order from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The order, which the CDC has already extended once, is currently in effect through July 24.
“Although we had hoped that cruise activity could resume as soon as possible after that date, it is increasingly clear that more time will be needed to resolve barriers to resumption in the United States,” the CLIA said in its statement announcing its members’ voluntary decision to remain closed to passengers through at least mid-September.
Carnival last week signaled that it was bracing for the possibility of more—and costly—delays in bringing passengers back to its ships, after the global onset of COVID-19 shut down the industry in March. The company on Thursday reported second-quarter losses of $4.4 billion, and said it expected to burn an additional $650 million per month for the rest of 2020.


fortune--2020-06-22--Struggling e-scooter companies hope for a new beginning after the pandemic

Before the coronavirus outbreak, the future for scooter rental companies was murky at best. They grappled with the high costs of managing thousands of scooters tossed on city sidewalks and government regulations that limited where their services could operate.
But as more cities emerge from pandemic-related lockdowns and people look for safer alternatives to public transit and carpools, many scooter companies expect a smoother ride. It’s a new beginning, sort of.
“Lime will be stronger post this crisis,” said Joe Kraus, president of scooter rental Lime. “People are rethinking their rides, rethinking how they want to get around cities.”
Lime and several of its rivals say they’ve started seeing increases in rides, first-time riders, or the length of trips in recent months. They’re also benefiting from looser regulations and plans by a number of cities to create lanes for electronic bikes and scooters.
But scooter rental businesses still have some fundamental issues to solve—namely, can they stop hemorrhaging money? When the pandemic hit, and many cities implemented shelter-in-place orders, the big losses they were piling on got even bigger after companies paused service in many cities and lost most of their customers.
In January, before the shelter-in-place orders, Lime had laid off about 100 employees and exited 12 cities to reduce its losses. Following the outbreak, the company laid off 80 more workers. In a somewhat similar pattern, Bird cut more than 450 employees since last year. Meanwhile, Lyft pulled its e-scooter operations out of six cities last year, eliminating 20 jobs in the process.
Ryan Citron, an analyst at research and consulting firm Guidehouse Insights, said though the pandemic may change how people get around, it doesn’t appear to have solved the bigger challenge scooter companies face: becoming profitable. They must still pay fees to operate in many cities, spend big money on recharging scooters, and offer deep discounts to lure new riders.
“I’m less rosy than the companies themselves, as far as the future is concerned,” said Citron. “The sticking point is on the economics side. Just because cities are more open to scooters doesn’t mean [companies are] going to be economically successful.”
Euwyn Poon, president of Spin, another scooter company, has a more optimistic view based on the data he’s seeing about ridership. The average duration of trips in a single month increased to nearly 22 minutes in May, up from 15 minutes during the same period last year. And as its business ramps up from the pandemic—Spin has resumed operations in 25 of the 70 cities it previously served—the company expects the trend to continue.
“What that told us was people were using scooters for more functional purposes…to replace longer distance trips they would’ve taken on shared rides,” Poon said. “People were counting on it as a way to get around.”
Bird, which is operating in 50 of the 100 cities it served before the pandemic, is seeing a similar increase in time spent on rides. It also said it’s retaining more new customers than it did before the coronavirus. And since March 1, around the time some of the first domestic lockdowns were being considered, Bird has signed agreements to operate in 11 new cities, including Fort Lauderdale, Roanoke, and Tulsa.
But the biggest change that may help Bird’s business is that cities are relaxing rules to encourage the use of bikes and scooters. For example, London switched a test of scooter services it had planned to start a year earlier, while Milan, Paris, and Berlin all committed to creating temporary or potentially permanent bike lanes that can also be used by people riding scooters.
“[Cities are] realizing the benefits in ways they haven’t before,” said Rebecca Hahn, chief corporate social responsibility officer at Bird. “That accelerates adoption. It broadens our audience.”
Lime said the money it makes on each scooter per trip is up 30% from this time last year, reflecting the increase in the amount of time people rent its scooters. It’s also seen the number of new riders grow week over week since restarting service beginning in mid-April, doubling in cities including Dallas, Munich, and Paris, and quadrupling in Washington, D.C., but still below pre-pandemic levels.
Lime recently acquired Uber’s scooter and bike business, Jump, after Uber, under pressure to reduce its huge losses, started cutting back on money-losing ventures. Lime expects to become profitable, minus certain expenses, next year.
While scooter companies took a financial hit following the coronavirus outbreak, several say they’re hopeful about the future. “The way change happens is there are decades when nothing happens, and then there are weeks when decades happen,” Kraus of Lime said. “We’re in that moment” for bikes and scooters.


fortune--2020-06-22--Robinhood gives $250,000 to suicide prevention, vows platform changes after young trader’s death

The popular trading app Robinhood announced it is making changes to its user interface following the death of Alex Kearns, a 20-year-old student who described a massive trading debt in a suicide note earlier this month.
In the note, Kearns reportedly railed about the ease by which Robinhood’s platform allows amateur investors to amass leverage, and cited a negative trading balance of over $730,000 he believed he had incurred.
The tragedy came to light after Kearns’s cousin-in-law, a Chicago financial analyst named Bill Brewster, tweeted about the death. Brewster also posted a Robinhood screenshot that shows the massive negative balance.
That display of negative $730,165.72 does not, however, appear to reflect Kearns’s actual debt. Instead, as Brewster and Forbes have noted, the figure likely reflected the fact that Kearns was engaged in a type of complicated options trading. What may have happened is that one part of his trade had settled, while the other leg of the trade had not yet done so, leading to a temporary negative cash balance that adjusts once the second trade goes through.
While Kearns’s death appears to be the result of a tragic misunderstanding, Brewster still blasted Robinhood for permitting amateur investors to wade unprepared into the complicated waters of derivative trading. Some on Twitter, meanwhile, faulted Robinhood for displaying “notional exposure” at all.
All of this has provided new fodder for critics of Robinhood’s interface, who allege the app engages in “gamification” to encourage a casino mentality among inexperienced investors. Those critics include Brewster, who decried the images of confetti the app displays when users make a trade.
Robinhood has declined to discuss the specifics of Kearns’s account, citing privacy concerns. But on Friday afternoon, the company’s co-CEOs put out a blog post, saying they are “personally devastated by this tragedy.”
The blog post also stated Robinhood was examining how it offers “option flows involving multi-leg exercise and assignment,” and that it was contemplating eligibility requirements for those who wished to use exotic trading strategies. The post added that Robinhood will make changes to its interface, including for how customer buying power is displayed.
The co-CEOs, Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, also announced Robinhood is making a $250,000 donation to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Kearns’s death comes amid a new surge in popularity for Robinhood, which has become the go-to stock-buying brand for millions of mostly millennial investors. In recent months, the company has seen an uptick in trading coinciding with the pandemic, and pulled in a massive $280 million Series F investment to fund its global expansion.
Robinhood’s rapid growth, which has disrupted the larger brokerage industry, has come with several high-profile stumbles. These include troubles with regulators over the botched rollout of a savings product, massive outages, and earlier glitches with its margin trading feature.


fortune--2020-06-22--Live Nation announces a drive-in concert series for July

Tour promoter Live Nation has announced its first-ever drive-in concerts series in the U.S. for July, months after the live music industry has been on lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The entertainment company on Monday announced “Live from the Drive-In” — a set of nine shows to take place July 10-12 in Nashville, Tennessee; Maryland Heights, Missouri; and Noblesville, Indiana.
Grammy-winning singer Brad Paisley will headline shows in all three cities, while fellow country artists Darius Rucker and Jon Pardi will also perform in Nashville at Nissan Stadium. Nelly will perform in Maryland Heights, near St. Louis.
Concertgoers will be able to drive into the parking lots of the amphitheaters — a maximum of four people per car — and will have two empty parking lot spaces in between each vehicle so fans can watch and party from their designated individual tailgating zones. Attendees are encouraged to bring food, drinks and chairs, setting up around their cars to view the performers from the stage and also from the large LED screens.
All venue staff are required to wear masks, and Live Nation requests that attendees wear masks upon arrival, where there will be contact-less ticket scanning through their windows. Masks are not required once fans are in their designated tailgate areas, and Live Nation is not requiring that fans wear gloves.
Tom See, president of Live Nation Venues-US Concerts, said the company spent months working to find a safe, enjoyable way to put on live shows during the pandemic.
“We’re really dialed in with partnerships with (the) local jurisdictions (and) we’ve been meeting with them for months, just talking about how we can provide a great, comfortable experience to fans with social distancing at the forefront in whatever phase they’re about to enter. Because of those relationships and that communication going back and forth, we’ve been successful in getting that green light,” See said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“It was really important to us not to just do one and be done. It wouldn’t be Live Nation. It wouldn’t be the concert industry leader. We wanted to make a bigger statement.”
Nelly, who is celebrating the 20th anniversary of his debut album “Country Grammar,” and Pink Floyd tribute band El Monstero are both from St. Louis and will perform at The Hollywood Casino Amphitheater. Pardi and rock band Yacht Rock Revue will headline at the Ruoff Music Center near Indianapolis.
Tickets will go on sale for the general public on Friday. See said ticket prices will fluctuate by market, but they can be as low as $125, which is roughly $31 per person if the maximum number of four attendees per car attend.
“I’m very excited to do this because I wanted to make sure, if we were going to do anything like this, that they had the important stuff worked out,” Paisley said in an interview with the AP. “My goal would be not to spread this virus to one person. There should be no spread from this. That’s key. I just don’t think it’s worth doing shows if we’re putting people at risk.”
“The idea that we’re outdoors is a great thing,” Paisley added. “I just think it’s a fun way to watch a concert anyway. It’d be fun if there wasn’t a virus.”
For the Missouri show, See said they have a capacity to fit 1,000 cars while incorporating social distancing guidelines. Grills and BBQ pits are not permitted, but concertgoers can bring pre-cooked food and drinks, including alcohol. Live Nation encourages that groups assign a designated driver.
A menu of hot food items and nonalcoholic will be available for purchase, Live Nation said. People can place orders online and the items will be delivered to their designated tailgate zone.
Fans will only be able to leave their pods to access single restrooms, which See said will be cleaned regularly throughout the show. Attendees are encouraged to wear masks when leaving for restrooms.
“They don’t have to walk too far to be able to use the facility,” he said.
“The traditional drive in, I get it, you’re stuck in your car, and you’re going to get it through an FM transmitter. That’s not happening with these shows,” See said.
“We’re giving you what’s about the size of a double-car garage to where you’re going to be able to park your car, get out of your car, and have a great tailgating hang for you and your friends, and listen to music through proper professional PA and amazing audio and video display. It’s really a different aspect of drive-in and live. It’s highly experiential.”


fortune--2020-06-22--He ran Google’s advertising arm. Now he’s building a search engine that cuts out ads

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Consumers and employees alike have joined the great revolt against big tech companies that once prided themselves on an ethical culture, calling out everything from lacking privacy practices to tech’s role in politics.
Perhaps in the ultimate rebellion against his former employer, Sridhar Ramaswamy, once head of Google’s $115 billion advertising arm, has founded a new search engine that neither shows ads nor profits from user data, Ramaswamy told the New York Times.
Disillusioned by the company’s drive for growth (which at times prioritized ads above, say, the best possible search option, he says) and disturbed by news reports that Google had profited off of YouTube videos of children in scenarios that appealed to pedophiles, Ramaswamy said he decided the ad-model “had limitations.”
Neeva—his new search engine that looks through the web, personal files, and emails—aims to make money off of subscriptions instead. Notably, the company is not building a completely new piece of technology, and search will be powered by Microsoft’s Bing, with other information also coming from existing providers. On that pitch of a centralized, paid search platform, the company has raised some $37.5 million from Greylock and Sequoia Capital—yes that Sequoia, the one that once backed Google.
The road will be long and arduous, however. Even while consumers grouse and rail against the likes of Alphabet and Facebook for offering free services at the expense of personal information, those tech giants still remain dominant. Other search engine competitors have sought to enter the battle arena wielding the lance of privacy, but haven’t threatened Google: DuckDuckGo, which shows ads but does not track users, commands a 1.4% share of the U.S. search market while Google handles 88%.
There’s also another trend in this story: As tech employees grow disillusioned with their companies and the pandemic leaves thousands unemployed, it wouldn’t be surprising to see more former workers spin out to create their own companies—and perhaps mount their own challenges against their one-time employers.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Checkout.com, a London-based payment solution provider, raised $150 million in Series B funding, valuing it at $5.5 billion. Coatue led the round and was joined by investors including Insight Partners, DST Global, Blossom Capital, and Singapore’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, GIC.
- Synqa, a Bangkok-based payments startup, raised $80 million. Investors include Siam Commercial Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui, and Toyota. Read more.
- Surrozen Inc., a South San Francisco, Calif.-based biotech seeking to develop antibodies targeting specific tissues, raised $50 million in funding. Investors included The Column Group, Hartford Healthcare Trust, Horizons Ventures, and Euclidian Capital.
- 3DBio, a New York-based bioprinting company, raised $20 million. Investors include BlueSeed Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments, Western Technology Investment and Barer & Son Capital.
- Moneyfellows, an Egyptian fintech, raised $4 million in Series A funding. Partech and Sawari Ventures were the investors.
- Energicity Corp, a Freetown, Sierra Leone-based developer and operator of microgrid utilities in West Africa, raised $3.3 million in seed funding. Ecosystem Integrity Fund led the round.
- Agamon, a London-based health-care A.I. startup, raised $3 million in seed funding. MMC Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including InHealth Ventures, Seedcamp, and Bayer G4A.
- Deep01, a Taiwanese startup that develops software to help doctors interpret CT brain scans, raised $2.7 million in funding. ASUSTek led the round. Read more.
- Afia, an Austin-based maker of frozen Mediterranean food, raised $1 million in funding from Unorthodox Ventures.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- AE Industrial Partners acquired a majority stake in NuWave Solutions, a Washington D.C.-based provider of data management and analytics to the federal government. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Bain Capital and Cyrus Capital Partners have offered final bids for Virgin Australia Holdings, Australia’s second-biggest airline. Read more.
- Epic Brokers and Consultants, a retail broker backed by Oak Hill Capital, and JenCap Holdings, a New York-based speciality insurance distribution platform backed by Carlyle, combined to form Galway insurance Holdings. JenCap also acquired Quaker Special Risk, an insurance wholesaler.
- NSC Technologies, a portfolio company of White Wolf Capital, acquired Anistar Technologies, a Tampa, Fla.-based national staffing company. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Private equity investors including Advent International, Rhone, SK Capital Partners, and Triton Partners, are showing interest in Altuglas International, the Colombes, France-based plexiglass business of Arkema SA, per Bloomberg. A deal could fetch 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion). Read more.
OTHERS
- Toshiba Corp. plans to sell a 40.2% stake in Kioxia Holdings, a flash memory chips firm, and return a majority of the net proceeds to shareholders. Read more.
- Mediawan (EPA: MDW) agreed to buy Lagardere Studios, a distributor of audiovisual content in Europe and France, from Lagardere in a deal worth around 100 million euros ($112 million). Read more.
BREAKUPS, HANGUPS, AND BANKRUPTCIES
- CEC Entertainment, the company behind restaurant chain Chuck E. Cheese backed by Apollo Global Management, is in talks to secure $100 million in funding to keep it out of bankruptcy, per the Wall Street Journal. Potential buyers also include New York grocery magnate John Catsimatidis. Read more.
- Hertz, the Boca Raton, Fla.-based car rental company, scrapped plans to sell $500 million in new shares during its bankruptcy proceedings. Read more.
- AAC Holdings Inc., the parent of American Addiction Centers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Read more.
IPOS
Yum China Holdings, the New York-listed restaurant operator of brands including KFC and Taco Bell in China, has filed confidentially for a Hong Kong listing that could raise about $2 billion, per Bloomberg citing sources. Read more.
- Hyliion, an Austin, Texas-based electrified vehicle company, will go public via a merger with a SPAC, Tortoise Acquisition Corp. The company will remain on the NYSE as “HYLN.” The transaction includes a $325 million PIPE deal and values the company at $1.5 billion.
- Akouos, a Boston-based biotech developing gene therapies for inner ear disorders, plans to raise $125 million via an offering of 8.3 million shares priced between $14 to $16. 5AM Ventures (21.6% pre-offering), New Enterprise Associates (18.6%), and Pivotal bioVenture Partners (7.5%) back the firm. It plans to list on the Nasdaq as “AKUS.” Read more.
- Fusion Pharmaceuticals, a Canadian biotech developing medicines for solid tumors, plans to raise $125 million via an offering of 8.4 million shares priced between $14 to $16. HealthCap (12.6% pre-offering), Adams Street Partners (12.3%), and Varian Medical Systems (11.3%) back the firm. It plans to list on the Nasdaq as “FUSN.” Read more.
- Trean Insurance Group, a Wayzata, Minn.-based specialty insurer, filed to raise $100 million. The company posted revenue of $102.5 million in 2019 and income of $31.3 million. Altaris Funds and The Baker Family Trust back the firm. It plans to list on the Nasdaq as “TIG.” Read more.
- PolyPid, an Israel-based maker of drugs that prevent surgical site infections, plans to raise $50 million in an offering of 3.1 million shares priced between $15 to $17 apiece. Existing shareholders plan to buy some $27 million in shares in the offering. Morris Kahn (13.8% pre-offering) backs the firm. It plans to list on the Nasdaq as “PYPD.” Read more.
- Shift Technologies Inc., a San Francisco-based online retailer for used cars, is in talks to merge with Insurance Acquisition Corp., a blank-check company backed by Cohen and Company, per Bloomberg citing sources. Shift is aiming for a valuation of over $500 million per a source. Read more.
F+FS
- Ares Management closed Ares Special Opportunities Fund with $3.5 billion of commitments.
- Epidarex Capital, an Edinburgh-based life science venture firm, closed Epidarex Capital III UK at £102.1 million (126.7 million).
- Endicott Growth Equity Partners, an information-services focused investor, raised $95 million for its debut fund. Read more.
PEOPLE
- Volvo Group Venture Capital named Martin Witt as head of the group. Volvo Group also named him vice president.