fortune--2020-04-23--Target’s April e-commerce has nearly quadrupled as crowd controls slam in-store sales

Target’s big investments in equipping stores to handle drive-up and in-store pickup of online orders continues to pay off in a big way during the coronavirus pandemic.
On Thursday, the discount retailer said digital sales so far in April have nearly quadrupled, rising 275%, taking some of the edge off a sharp decline in in-store sales caused by restrictions on the number of shoppers Target lets in now to enforce social distancing and protect store workers. In-store sales at stores open at least a year are down by a mid-teens percentage in April.
On some days, the volume of orders retrieved by customers driving up to assigned spots in a Target parking lot have been seven times that of a typical day, while in-store pickup has been twice as busy some days as Cyber Monday, traditionally the busiest day of the year in e-commerce.
“For years, we’ve worked toward using our stores as hubs, and today that is proving absolutely critical in managing record-breaking fulfillment volume,” Target chief executive Brian Cornell told reporters on a briefing.
As detailed in the current issue of Fortune, Target has spent billions on integrating its stores and its e-commerce in recent years, and the company is now reaping the benefits of those investments.
The slowdown in in-store business is largely the result of Target metering the number of people in stores, efforts also undertaken by everyone from Walmart to Home Depot to Whole Foods Market. In some jurisdictions, notably Vermont, essential retailers allowed to stay open for business, such as Target and Costco, have been barred from selling nonessential items such as clothing and toys.
In March, Target saw a surge in business, led by grocery and food sales that had risen 50%. That growth has been more muted in April as U.S. consumers have become more confident in the availability of groceries. But consumers have continued to focus spending on essentials and on merchandise related to shelter-in-place directives: Sales of home and kitchen goods rose, as did “hardline” products, which include appliances and electronics.
Yet, despite the absence of much competition from department stores and clothing chains, which are largely dark, sales of apparel and accessories like shoes and handbags have fallen 40%, a development that will pinch Target’s profits since those products have among the highest margins of any category. Target will report full quarterly earnings next month.
Cornell expressed sympathy for retailers unable to operate stores right now, but nonetheless thinks Target will permanently win some new customers as a result of the coronavirus crisis.
“I certainly expect us to continue to gain share in this environment and be a retailer that the guest is turning to during the pandemic,” he said.
More must-read retail coverage from Fortune:
—Retailers that are smartest about shopping tech will finish on top after the coronavirus
—What refunds are due to you? Here’s how industries are handling things
—How Starbucks is getting ready to reopen more U.S. stores
—How T.J. Maxx and Ross will (eventually) come out of the pandemic even stronger
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: The greatest designs of modern times
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-04-23--The coronavirus crisis is increasing overdue payments

14 % of women considered quitting their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic

This is the web version of CEO Daily. To get it delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning.
Keep an eye on your bank account. You may find cash moving out faster than it is moving in. Fortune’s Jeremy Kahn wrote yesterday about some interesting data tracked by Sidetrade, a Paris-based software company that uses A.I. to help businesses manage their cash. It looked at 28.5 million B2B transactions and found the amount of payments more than 10 days overdue has grown 56% in France, 52% in Spain and 82% in Italy since the WHO declared a pandemic on March 11.
Mark Sheldon, Sidetrade’s CTO, called the leap in unpaid bills “unprecedented.” Expect the same to happen elsewhere. You can read more in Jeremy’s story here.
Meanwhile, Pitney Bowes turns 100 years old today. The Stamford company, which started making postage meters in April 1920, enjoyed a stock boom at the end of the millennium, and has struggled since. It was number 354 on the Fortune 500 in 2000; last year, it was 659. But surviving for a century is itself no small feat.
More news below. And check out Phil Wahba’s story on how Home Depot and Lowe’s are managing the pandemic, which hit at their busiest time of the year.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
European trouble
IHS Markit's purchasing managers' index reading for France this month was a shocking 11.2—a Reuters poll showed expectations of 26.0; anything below 50 marks contraction. Equally shocking was Germany's April PMI of 17.1, where analysts had expected 31.0. Across the Eurozone, the April figure was a miserable 13.5 (the most pessimistic polled analyst expected 18.0). The reading for the U.K. was a dismal 12.9, and economists expect a quarterly GDP fall there in excess of 7%. Reuters
Cancellation test
Can buyers now walk away from M&A agreements struck before the coronavirus crisis hit? A good question, and for that reason all eyes will be on private-equity firm Sycamore Partners as it tries to scrap its deal to take over L Brands' Victoria's Secret chain. Sycamore has asked a court to let it out of the agreement, based on the fact that L Brands shuttered its U.S. stores in March, furloughing workers and skipping April rent payments—the PE firm says these were violations of the proposed transaction. L Brands' share price fell 15% on the news. Wall Street Journal
Vaccine trials
There are now six candidates for a COVID-19 vaccine undergoing testing, according to the World Health Organization. The WHO added three candidates to its list today. All are in Phase I or Phase II clinical trials; now let's see which make it to Phase III trials, regulatory review, and Phase IV trials. Experts say a successful vaccine is 12-18 months away at the very least. Fortune
Oil price
Oil prices have been recovering, with Brent up 7% to $21.80 and WTI up 10.2% to $15.20 at the time of writing. Analysts attribute the gains to President Trump's tweeted threats to Iran, in which he said the U.S. Navy would "shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea." But stoking up geopolitical tensions will only provide limited support for prices, some warn, given the current glut in the market. Financial Times
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Successful cities
How come Seattle and San Francisco have managed to weather the crisis better than many other U.S. cities? As Fortune's Adam Lashinsky and Erica Fry explained in an online discussion yesterday, much of the success is down to effective local government policies. In Seattle, for example, coordination with business leaders proved essential. Fortune
Airline bailouts
European airlines have applied for $13.8 billion in emergency government support since the start of the coronavirus crisis, but without environmental conditions attached. Across Europe, it is only Austria that has demanded that bailout cash must be linked to climate targets. Meanwhile, Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary insists his airline won't resume operations if it has to leave middle seats unfilled as a social-distancing measure. He said the measure would stop Ryanair making money, and was "kind of an idiotic idea that doesn't achieve anything anyway." Guardian
Zoom backlash
More big companies are shunning the Zoom videoconferencing app over security concerns, including Daimler, Ericsson, NXP Semiconductors and Bank of America. India has even initiated a public content to develop a secure homegrown alternative. Bloomberg reports on an internal Daimler memo that warns of "various security gaps and data protection problems." Daimler, Ericsson and NXP are all using Microsoft Teams instead. Fortune
Keeping momentum
Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson writes for Fortune that the way to ensure the world is never again caught off guard, as it was with the current coronavirus wave, is to maintain current research momentum—and to forget about a return to normalcy until we have a vaccine. Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-04-23--Zoom backlash intensifies as companies from Daimler to BofA institute bans and curbs over security c

Zoom backlash intensifies as companies from Daimler to BofA institute bans and curbs over security concerns

Some of the world’s largest companies have advised against the use of Zoom Video Communications Inc.’s conferencing app, fueling a growing backlash against a service that shot to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Daimler AG, Ericsson AB, NXP Semiconductors NV and Bank of America Corp. are among a wave of companies forbidding or warning employees against using Zoom because of concerns about its security, according to people familiar with their operations. They join corporations like Tesla Inc. and government agencies from Taiwan to Singapore that have banned the app’s use, though the city-state has since backtracked. India has deemed Zoom an unsafe platform and initiated a public contest to develop a secure homegrown video-chat alternative.
Zoom emerged during the global coronavirus lockdown as a home for everything from virtual cocktail hours to cabinet meetings and classroom learning. It passed the milestone of 300 million daily meeting participants this week, having never crossed 10 million before the start of this year. Its share price remains close to a record high achieved in March. However, cybersecurity researchers warn hackers can exploit flaws in the software to eavesdrop on meetings. Weak protection has given rise to the phenomenon of “Zoombombing,” where uninvited trolls gain access to a video conference to harass participants.
Daimler wrote “the software has various security gaps and data protection problems” in a memo to employees reviewed by Bloomberg News. The automaker, employer to close to 300,000 people globally, wasn’t a Zoom corporate customer before but is now explicitly prohibiting the video-calling app, pointing workers to Microsoft Teams as a more trustworthy alternative.
“Daimler prohibits the use of Zoom for corporate content until further notice,” company spokesman Christoph Sedlmayr said in an emailed statement.
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has focused on bolstering the security of his videoconferencing application with the goal of winning back customers who abandoned the company. Zoom is working on improving its encryption and argues that many of its problems stem from the fact the app was initially geared toward enterprise clients with their own IT security teams instead of the broad consumer app it’s become. Singapore’s government banned Zoom’s usage by schools but later lifted that moratorium after putting in place security safeguards.
NXP, a provider of wireless communications technology, uses Microsoft Corp.’s Teams internally and recently banned the use of Zoom with external parties, one person said, asking not to be identified discussing internal matters. Networking giant Ericsson also relies on Teams, previously Skype for Business, for remote meetings and now asks staff not to use Zoom. If clients or partners want to use the app, Ericsson staff will need to make sure the outside parties understand and are willing to accept the risks of using Zoom before proceeding with a meeting, said another person familiar with the measures.
An NXP spokesman declined to comment, while Ericsson said in an emailed statement it has internally approved apps and guidelines for meetings, without elaborating.
“A large number of global institutions ranging from the world’s largest financial services companies, to leading telecommunications providers, government agencies, universities and others have done exhaustive security reviews of our user, network and data center layers and confidently selected Zoom for complete deployment,” said a Zoom spokeswoman via email. “We are proud to be helping these customers maintain business continuity in this challenging and unprecedented time.”
Bank of America doesn’t typically use Zoom internally because it has other video conferencing tools, and in cases where clients seek to communicate via Zoom, bankers need to go through an approval process to use it, a person familiar with the situation said. Of the bank’s 208,000 employees, more than 175,000 are working from home, Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said at the company’s annual shareholder meeting Wednesday.
A Bank of America spokesperson declined to comment.
More must-read tech coverage from Fortune:
—As businesses adapt to remote work, tech isn’t their biggest problem
—Thermal-imaging tech is on the rise. Can it help fight the coronavirus?
—More surveillance and less privacy will be the new normal after the coronavirus
—AMD CEO Lisa Su on supercomputing and leading a global company through a pandemic
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: Best earbuds in 2020: Apple AirPods Pro Vs. Sony WF-1000XM3
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-04-23--Out of work, but not unemployed: how much Europe is paying its idled workers

In Germany, they call it “Kurzarbeit.” In France, it’s “Chômage partiel.” The Brits refer to the acronym, “CJRS”—short for “coronavirus job retention scheme.”
Together, these policy names form the backbone of Europe’s plan to keep unemployment here from spiking à l’américaine.
U.S. employers have already shed roughly 22 million jobs in the past month, with the pending Thursday jobless claims numbers suggesting it’s even worse than that. In Europe it’s a bit better—18 million workers across the continent have been furloughed, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing government statistics.
But there’s a big difference: In Europe, most of them are kept on the payroll, collecting a wage. The government—in essence, the taxpayer—is footing the bill.
Europe is betting the crisis will be of the short, sharp variety and that the wage subsidy will be a lifeline for employees and employers, one that keeps unemployment and levels of social unrest from spiking.
“Because of this subsidy, businesses can more easily hold on to their workers,” Florian Hense, an economist at the German bank Berenberg, wrote in an investor note yesterday. “Workers benefit because they do not get sacked and continue to receive a compensation which, while usually below their regular pay and capped at a maximum, exceeds the standard unemployment benefits.”
Europeans aren’t inventing these measures from scratch. Germany’s Kurzarbeit, for example, is widely credited with keeping German unemployment from skyrocketing during the 2008–09 global financial crisis.
According to Hense, German employment levels fell by just 1% during that crisis a dozen years ago even as real German GDP plunged 7%. In the U.S., the opposite effect was observed—U.S. GDP fell by 4%, but unemployment climbed 5.4%.
By Hense’s calculation, the wage-subsidy scheme saved about 1.5 million German jobs back then.
Hense anticipates something similar happening this time, as Europe uses the payouts to minimize the “risk of a protracted downturn caused by a more persistent shock to demand from high unemployment.”
The schemes vary by generosity and duration, country by country. But they are mostly based on Kurzarbeit. That is, Hense notes, they are “designed to cushion a sharp but temporary drop in demand. The schemes are comparatively generous in the Netherlands and less so in Italy and Spain.”
This is what the plans look like, ranked from most generous to least.
The Dutch will pay up to 90% or 9,538 euros ($10,371) of an employee’s gross monthly wages for a period of three months. Germany’s plan lasts a full 12 months, and pays two-thirds of net wages. That’s pretty generous.
In Italy, where wages are generally lower, the Italian government will cover up to 1,129 euros’ worth of gross wages.
The aid cannot come soon enough. The front page of La Repubblica ran a headline blaring: 10 million Italians are at risk of falling into poverty.
one in every six Italians https://t.co/KWqCbiiQig — Stephan Faris (@stephanfaris) April 23, 2020
More must-read finance coverage from Fortune:
—5 veteran investors on how to approach the coronavirus stock market
—These countries’ stock markets have been hit the hardest by the coronavirus
—China’s next coronavirus crisis: What happens after a country closes its economy
—This time, the banks were ready: How the Big Four prepared to survive the coronavirus
—How the American economy can recover from the coronavirus pandemic
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs
—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
Subscribe to Fortune’s Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


fortune--2020-04-23--Market gains fizzle ahead of today’s jobless data

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
Good morning, Bull Sheeters. Oil prices have recovered. Stocks though are mixed.
Let’s take a look at what’s moving markets.
Markets update
Asia
Asia is mostly in the green, led higher by Japan’s Nikkei . A rally on Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost steam in afternoon trade.
. A rally on Hong Kong’s lost steam in afternoon trade. We’re getting fresh reads on the economic impact of coronavirus: Japan revealed manufacturing activity fell by the most since 2009 . And Singapore is bracing for a big hit to GDP this year.
revealed activity fell by the most since . And is bracing for a big this year. Oil-reliant Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, plans to slash spending and borrow its way out of the crisis, suggesting it could raise as much as 220 billion riyals ($58 billion) in debt to plug the supertanker sized hole in its national budget.
Europe
European bourses are mixed. Milan , Paris and Madrid are clinging to gains while Frankfurt and London falter. The benchmark STOXX Europe 600 Index was up nearly a half-percent at the open, before slumping.
bourses are mixed. , and are clinging to gains while and falter. The benchmark was up nearly a half-percent at the open, before slumping. There’s another make-or-break EU summit scheduled today . Member states are still far apart on how to finance the recovery. The Italians want coronabonds, per favore. And the Germans? Nein!
. Member states are still far apart on how to finance the recovery. The Italians want coronabonds, per favore. And the Germans? Nein! While they dither, the ECB unveiled a plan aimed at protecting the bloc’s hardest hit economies. It reads as if they’ve lifted the text straight from the Fed’s rescue plan . It involves accepting junk debt as collateral for loans.
unveiled a plan aimed at protecting the bloc’s hardest hit economies. It reads as if they’ve lifted the text straight from the . It involves accepting for loans. We knew Q1 car sales would be bad, but this bad? German auto giant Daimler is looking at a near 70% plunge in quarterly sales, forcing it to scrap its full-year forecast. That’s a lot of Mercedes sitting idle in showrooms.
U.S.
The Dow , S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures point to a flat open after yesterday’s impressive gains.
, and futures point to a flat open after yesterday’s impressive gains. The markets took off in afternoon trade yesterday as Congress voted to send another giant stimulus package to the president’s desk.
to the president’s desk. It’s Thursday, so all eyes will be on the jobless claims numbers, set to be revealed before the market open. Economists forecast another 4 million will have applied for unemployment benefits in the past week, taking the tally to over 25 million in the past month.
Elsewhere
Gold is up, slightly.
is up, slightly. As is the dollar .
. Crude continues to bubble up, extending yesterday’s rally. WTI futures surpassed $15/barrel—cheap, but oil traders will take it. Brent, the global benchmark, is steady in the low twenties.
Trillion dollar question
Each Thursday throughout this crisis, economists examine the latest jobless claims numbers and then take a hard look at their GDP projections. Pandemic economics you might call it.
GDP growth and unemployment rates are closely tied. But how closely tied is open to some debate. Many economists work off an old model that adapts Okun’s law, named after the American economist Arthur Okun. I wrote about this in the latest issue of Fortune. I’m going to share a small part of that analysis here this morning:
Okun’s law goes something like this: for every 1% rise in the unemployment rate, you get a 2% fall in GDP. That might be too extreme a calculus these days as the CARES Act, for one, is meant to blunt the economic destruction of mass unemployment posed by the coronavirus in the short term.
And so Goldman Sachs has developed a modified Okun—the “half-Okun,” if you will—that suggests a 1:1 correlation between rising unemployment and falling GDP.
But even the half-Okun paints a frightening picture. With consensus GDP expectations suggesting a drop of more than 30%, that would portend Depression-era jobless numbers.
Drilling down on GDP now…Goldman forecast late last month a 34% drop in Q2 GDP (it wasn’t the only one putting a negative-30 handle on Q2), led by stunning drops in consumer spending and manufacturing, particularly in April. You can see where much of the pain will play out in today’s chart.
Since this initial calculation, Congress has passed more stimulus measures—four in total. So, the “positive effects from fiscal response” on the right side of the chart could be more pronounced, blunting the negative effects on spending on the left.
But that will be of small comfort to the millions who’ve filed for unemployment benefits in recent weeks.
Postscript
Is there an award for “lockdown heroes?” If so, I’d happily nominate 13-year-old Vittoria Oliveri and Carola Pessina (11) from Finale Ligure, in the north of Italy. Their tennis club posted a video of them playing rooftop tennis.
They’re absolutely crushing it!
The ATP Tour was so impressed they posted it to their Twitter feed. You can check out the action here.
I’ve been sneaking a peek to watch and rewatch their tremendous volley. Don’t mess with these two!
***
Have a nice day, everyone. Stay safe and sane. I’ll see you here tomorrow.
Correction and update, April 23, 2020: This post has been updated to correct the spelling of Okun’s Law.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
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Today's reads
The Yang gang returns. Former Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang is among those backing a project to distribute $1,000 each to 100,000 low-income families hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, Fortune’s David Z. Morris reports. Project 100, also supported by tech startups and charities, is a small-scale version of Yang’s flagship proposal during this year’s Democratic presidential contest for a “Freedom Dividend”, a universal basic income that would pay every American adult $1,000 a month in response to job losses caused by automation.
Who's pocketing PPP loans? Dozens of publicly traded companies have received funds from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), angering small businesses that were meant to be the beneficiaries of the coronavirus aid scheme, Fortune’s Chris Morris reports. A new study by Morgan Stanley (as reported by CNBC) finds at least 75 public companies pocketed $243 million from the program. Ay...
Crash-proof stocks. It’s madness for investors to embrace companies that are getting a short-term boost from the coronavirus pandemic but whose long-term future is bleak, says portfolio manager Adam Seessel. Investors should instead search for companies with a durable competitive advantage. There are dozens of Alphabet- and Amazon-like companies with long-term tailwinds that will emerge better and stronger on the pandemic’s other side, Seessel writes in Fortune.
Market candy
12%
That’s how much shares in Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) rose Wednesday after the burrito chain said first-quarter revenue was boosted by strong digital sales as coronavirus lockdown measures took hold. That's a lot of burritos.


fortune--2020-04-23--World Health Organization says 3 more coronavirus vaccines are in human trials

The World Health Organization on Thursday added three more candidates to its running list of coronavirus vaccines in human trials, bringing the total to six. The public health arm of the United Nations last published its tally on April 14.
The global medical community is racing with unprecedented speed and cooperation to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, which has so far infected 2.6 million globally, killed 183,000, and triggered mass lockdowns that are causing economic catastrophes. Even with the rapid fight against the deadly pathogen, experts say a cure is at least 12 to 18 months away, and even that timeline is considered optimistic.
The half-dozen vaccine candidates that are farthest along are in either Phase I or Phase II of clinical trials, which are aimed at evaluating whether a vaccine is safe and effective in humans. The clinical trial process has three additional stages: Phase III; regulatory review; and Phase IV.
Three of the most promising vaccines are under development in China, the first country to confront the COVID-19 virus.
The vaccine developed by CanSino Biological, headquartered in Tianjin, and the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology is in Phases I and II.
That effort is based on the technology CanSino developed in producing a vaccine for Ebola. The candidate developed by Sinovac is building off the Beijing-based company’s experience fighting China’s severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2004; it’s in Phase I.
The Beijing Institute of Biotechnology has partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products for China’s third leading vaccine candidate; it’s in Phase I as well.
A fourth promising vaccine, by Moderna and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the U.S., was the first to be tested on humans in mid-March, earlier than expected. Moderna and NIAID were able to quickly develop the vaccine, now in Phase I, because of prior work on other coronaviruses like SARS and Middle East respiratory syndrome, known as MERS.
Inovio Pharmaceuticals started the first human trials of its vaccine in early April. The small Pennsylvania-based biotech company is funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Its work on COVID-19 is building on previous efforts to combat HIV, HPV, Zika, and hepatitis B.
The University of Oxford in the U.K. is developing the sixth vaccine in human trials; it too is building on prior work against other coronaviruses like MERS. Sarah Gilbert, a professor leading the study, attributes the speedy timeline to ongoing research into “Disease X,” an unknown pathogen—with pandemic potential—her team had expected to pop up.
In addition to the six vaccines in human trials, the WHO identified 77 others that are in the earlier, preclinical evaluation stage—seven more than last time the agency updated its list.
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—These publicly traded companies took millions in PPP loan money
—How Home Depot and Lowe’s are preparing for their busy home improvement season during coronavirus uncertainty
—Which companies’ stocks will thrive after the coronavirus crash?
—Late payments soar, revealing extent of coronavirus pain on European companies
—5 veteran investors on how to approach the coronavirus stock market
—Forget “wet markets” and bats: For scientists, failing environmental policies have created a boom time for outbreaks
—Is A.I. better at diagnosing illnesses than doctors? Don’t believe all the hype
—PODCAST: COVID-19 might have upended the concept of the best companies of the year
—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.


fortune--2020-04-23--Las Vegas mayor calls for casinos to reopen and residents to be coronavirus ‘control group’

Nevada officials condemned comments Wednesday by Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman after she called for casinos and other nonessential businesses to reopen and suggested the city could serve as a test case to measure the impact during the coronavirus pandemic. One local official called her comments “reckless and dangerous” and another described them as an “embarrassment.”
Goodman, during a 25-minute interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN, said she wants everything back open, including casinos, restaurants and small businesses, and a return of conventions.
The politically independent mayor suggested that “viruses for years have been here” and said that she had suggested that the residents of Las Vegas become “a control group” to see how relaxing closures and restrictions would affect the city.
“I offered to be a control group and I was told by our statistician you can’t do that because people from all parts of southern Nevada come in to work in the city,” Goodman said. “We would love to be that placebo side so you have something to measure against.”
Goodman for weeks has spoken out against Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak’s orders shuttering casinos and nonessential businesses, calling it “total insanity” that’s “killing Las Vegas.”
Sisolak has repeatedly pushed back, saying that he understands the economic harm the order is causing but saving lives is more important.
The governor responded to Goodman in an interview on CNN Wednesday evening, in which he noted the state reported more deaths from the virus in the hours since the mayor’s television appearance.
“I will not allow the citizens of Nevada, our Nevadans, to be used as a control group, as a placebo, whatever she wants to call it,” Sisolak said.
“We want to welcome everybody back to Las Vegas,” he said. “We want to welcome them back to the lights on the Strip. But it’s not today and it’s not tomorrow.”
Goodman, 81, was elected in 2019 to serve a third and final term as mayor. She has no oversight of the casino-lined Las Vegas Strip because it is outside the city limits, though older downtown casinos near the Fremont Street district fall within its boundaries.
The mayor said Wednesday that while she wants casinos to reopen, she offered no guidance on how they could do so safely and maintain social distancing, saying, “That’s up to them to figure out,” and “I am not a private owner.”
She demurred when asked if she herself would enter a reopened casino, saying she has a family and doesn’t gamble and is very busy. She also dismissed a Chinese study cited by Cooper showing the spread of COVID-19 in a restaurant, saying, “This isn’t China, this is Las Vegas, Nevada.”
Las Vegas City Councilman Brian Knudsen said Goodman “does not speak for all of us,” and reopening now “is reckless and completely contrary to the overwhelming consensus of medical experts.”
U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, a Democrat who represents the Las Vegas Strip, said Goodman doesn’t represent the area “literally or figuratively” and the advice of scientists telling people to stay home should be heeded.
Justin Jones, a Democrat who sits on the Clark County Commission that oversees the Strip, called the mayor “an embarrassment.” His commission colleague Michael Naft called the mayor’s remarks “reckless and dangerous” and said lifting restrictions too soon would be a slap in the face of those who sacrificed.
The casino workers’ Culinary Union, which represents about 60,000 bartenders, cooks, housekeepers and other employees, said Goodman’s remarks were “outrageous considering essential frontline workers have been dealing with the consequences of this crisis firsthand.”
“Workplaces need to be safe and healthy — not a petri dish,” Geoconda Argüello-Kline, the union’s secretary-treasurer, said.
The union said 11 of its members so far have died of COVID-19.
Statewide, 187 people have died of the disease and more than 4,000 have tested positive. Most people with the virus experience symptoms such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. Older adults and people with existing health problems can face severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—These publicly traded companies took millions in PPP loan money
—How Home Depot and Lowe’s are preparing for their busy home improvement season during coronavirus uncertainty
—Which companies’ stocks will thrive after the coronavirus crash?
—Late payments soar, revealing extent of coronavirus pain on European companies
—5 veteran investors on how to approach the coronavirus stock market
—Forget “wet markets” and bats: For scientists, failing environmental policies have created a boom time for outbreaks
—Is A.I. better at diagnosing illnesses than doctors? Don’t believe all the hype
—PODCAST: COVID-19 might have upended the concept of the best companies of the year
—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.


fortune--2020-04-24--Amazon may have misled Congress, House Judiciary chair says

What to know if your small business is applying for Round 2 PPP loans from the SBA

Amazon.com may have misled Congress when a company lawyer testified last year that the online retailer doesn’t use data it collects on sales to favor its own products over third-party sellers, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler said a story in the Wall Street Journal Thursday that reported Amazon used data from sellers to develop competing products raised “deep concerns.”
“Amazon has had opportunities to correct the record on its business practices,” the New York Democrat said in a statement. “It is deeply concerning that, beginning with the hearing last year, they may have misled Congress rather than be fully forthcoming on this matter.”
The Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel has been investigating whether Amazon and other U.S. technology giants are harming competition. The chairman of that panel, Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, suggested last year that Amazon lawyer Nate Sutton may not have been truthful in his appearance before the subcommittee.
Amazon said it hadn’t been “intentionally misleading” in its congressional testimony.
“We strictly prohibit employees from using non-public, seller-specific data to determine which private label products to launch,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “While we don’t believe these claims made by the Wall Street Journal are accurate, we take these allegations very seriously and have launched an internal investigation.”
Independent merchants on Amazon’s platform have long complained that the company’s AmazonBasics line copies popular products they sell. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has investigated the company’s practices and interviewed third-party sellers to see if it’s using its market power to hurt competition, Bloomberg reported in September.
“This is yet another example of the sworn testimony of Amazon’s witness being directly contradicted by investigative reporting,” Cicilline said Thursday in a statement. He said that, at worst, Sutton may “may have lied to Congress.”
More must-read tech coverage from Fortune:
—How a pharmacy delivery startup has capitalized on the coronavirus pandemic
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fortune--2020-04-24--Why the coronavirus crisis makes moral leadership more important than ever

The coronavirus pandemic has created a moral crisis, in which we face profound dilemmas and painful tradeoffs—even the ultimate tradeoff between saving lives and returning to normalcy. Only one kind of leadership can successfully respond to a moral crisis: moral leadership. It’s especially in times of crisis that people naturally look to authority for truthful answers, wise guidance, courageous action, and hope.
This crisis has made clear that very few people can quickly and profoundly affect very many, very far away. Powerful technological, social, environmental, economic, and, especially now, biological forces have dramatically reshaped the world in such a way that we rise and fall together.
The pandemic is also accelerating a fusing of spheres of society, the economy, and our personal lives that were once viewed and maintained as separate, even if misguidedly so. Given the central and permeating role business plays in all spheres, the imperative for moral leadership here is especially great. Social, religious, political, geopolitical, environmental, human, ethical, and even existential issues that were once considered tangential to doing business are now inescapably central on its agenda.
In this fused world, the business of business can no longer just be business. Everything is now personal; the business of business is therefore society. Mission and margin, profit and principle, success and significance are now inextricably linked. In the fused world, how we behave, how we operate, how we govern, and how we relate to people and communities matters more than ever. Going forward, businesses are going to compete on trust, on responsibility, and on creating and maintaining deep relationships with their stakeholders rooted in shared truths and values.
If this sounds very unlike business as usual, it is. The pandemic has brought to the surface an emerging contest between two animating ideologies of business and capitalism itself. This contest is between the heretofore prevailing ideology of shareholder primacy—where the obligation of a business is primarily to create value for its shareholders—and the ideology of stakeholder capitalism—where the community at large, employees, customers, suppliers, and shareholders are valued as essential and coequal constituents of the corporation.
Even the more enlightened version of shareholder primacy, which allows for responsible corporate citizenship and longer-term approaches to value creation, still sees good behavior only as a means toward shareholder ends. Whereas in stakeholder capitalism, nobody is a means to anybody’s ends. Stakeholder capitalism was the official theme of Davos 2020. Last year, the Business Roundtable officially changed its purpose statement to stakeholder over shareholder primacy—and managed to get 181 CEOs from some of the world’s largest corporations to commit to this profound shift.
But let’s call stakeholder primacy by its proper name: moral capitalism, most faithful to the original vision of capitalism expounded by the moral philosopher Adam Smith when he wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776. In moral capitalism, you can’t create shared value without shared values. The focus is not about doing the next thing right, but rather doing the next right thing.
The COVID-19 pandemic is the first great test of the embrace of stakeholder capitalism by the business community—and whether their actions will live up to their leaders’ proclamations. What’s certain is that there’s going to be an accounting both during and after the crisis as to who took the right actions, who sacrificed, and who truly put people ahead of profits.
JUST Capital is tracking the coronavirus responses of America’s largest 100 corporations. Some leaders will fail the test outright. They are putting profits ahead of people, even though it might mean being called out swiftly and publicly. Others will sincerely do the right thing, but not necessarily for the right reasons. While their efforts are valuable and appreciated, ultimately they won’t gain sustainable traction in the fused world because they continue to apply the conventional thinking of shareholder primacy, instead of going all-in with the organizational transformation required to meet the higher standards and reap the enduring rewards of moral leadership.
Moral leadership is not about moralizing or being an activist (even though this could be an aspect of it for some). More simply, moral leadership means putting people at the center of major decisions, seeing them in their full humanity with their own aspirations and concerns. In the past I’ve written in Fortune about the four pillars of moral leadership, and they apply even more urgently to our present crisis: Be driven by purpose; inspire and elevate others; be animated by values and principles such as courage and patience; and keep building moral muscle by wrestling with questions of right and wrong, fairness and justice, what serves others and what doesn’t.
Leaders who pass the great test will use the pandemic not just for admirable humanitarian assistance, but to strengthen or transform their organizations as fully human endeavors. Given the tragic nature of today’s crisis and its aftermath, moral leaders will embrace both a grave duty to respond and an unprecedented opportunity to transform.
To start, these leaders will engage in the hallmark of moral leadership: pausing. But instead of the forced pause so much of the world is in, moral leaders see the pause as a beginning. They’ll use this opportunity to reflect deeply on the implications of the reshaped world and on what their business stands for and aspires to going forward, to reconnect with their deepest values and beliefs, to rethink how they’ve operated and made money, and to reimagine a better and more sustainable path ahead.
What started as a meaningful pause will then become a pivot, with one foot grounded in one’s beliefs, convictions, and values, and the other pointing in a new direction that adapts to our reshaped world. Combining moral imagination with what business does best—innovating at scale—means the eventual aftermath of this terrible crisis could be genuine human progress and prosperity.
Dov Seidman is author of the book How and founder and chairman of both LRN and the HOW Institute for Society.
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—To fight tomorrow’s pandemic, we need to think like the military today
—Prescription drug costs are spiraling, but price controls are the wrong solution
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—Why the U.S. needs a new corporate bailout structure—one that doesn’t rely on loans
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—WATCH: CEO of Canada’s biggest bank on the keys to leading through the coronavirus
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fortune--2020-04-23--Why Universal beat Warner Bros. for the Lego movie franchise

It’s not every day that an iconic and lucrative block of intellectual property is up for grabs, but Lego was—and Universal Pictures jumped at the opportunity.
The studio announced Thursday that it has completed a five-year exclusive film partnership deal with the Lego Group, the Danish parent company of the popular building-block toy, paving the way for a new slate of films based on IP that made former Lego partner Warner Bros. more than $1 billion at the global box office. The news was first reported Thursday afternoon by Deadline.
Returns on the Lego film franchise have been in decline. The first of the four Warner Bros. movies, 2014’s The Lego Movie, got off to a roaring start, netting $468 million worldwide and rave reviews on a budget of $60 million. Its follow-up, The Lego Batman Movie, starring Will Arnett in the titular role, also impressed with nearly $312 million in earnings worldwide. But viewer fatigue seemed to set in by the third film, The Lego Ninjago Movie, which earned just $123 million globally on a budget of $80 million.
It didn’t stop there. When The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part arrived in theaters in early 2019, critics called the sequel a “franchise-ending box office failure.” Despite strong reviews, it earned $192 million worldwide. In comparison Smallfoot—another animated, family-oriented Warner Bros. title, based on an unpublished children’s book rather than a global toy empire—generated $214 million globally (on a budget of $19 million less than that of Lego Movie 2) a year earlier. As box office expert Scott Mendelson wrote in Forbes: “When the IP is performing weaker than comparative non-IP content, that means that the IP is potentially acting as a deterrent. At this point, Lego is hurting WB’s animation brand.”
So why did Universal go gunning for Lego after its deal with Warner Bros. expired? A billion dollars in global box office sales is nothing to sneeze at, but Universal sees a golden opportunity to inject fresh energy into the Lego film franchise with its own intellectual property—IP that has made billions at the box office on its own merits. Lego Jurassic Park, anyone? How about Lego Despicable Me? Lego Kung Fu Panda? A whole realm of mashups and spinoffs and altogether new Lego ideas await at a time when successful intellectual property remains one of the most effective draws for getting audiences to go to the movies—streaming competition and coronavirus complications be damned.
“The Lego System in Play gives people the ability to build worlds and create stories that they carry throughout every phase of their lives,” said Donna Langley, chairman of Universal’s filmed entertainment group, in a statement. “To partner with such an iconic brand that remains relevant and is constantly evolving allows for creativity in storytelling.”
Lego Group head of entertainment Jill Wilfert hammered out the deal with Langley. “Universal’s commitment to unique storytelling from diverse voices makes the studio the perfect partner as the LEGO Group enters this new phase of filmmaking,” she said in a statement.
Warner Bros. isn’t completely out of the Lego picture—the four existing Lego films and their characters remain with the studio, according to Deadline. (Warner Bros. did not respond to a Fortune request for confirmation or comment.) But the silver-screen success of the Lego franchise is now in Universal’s hands.
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—Netflix reveals record subscriptions during the coronavirus pandemic
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fortune--2020-04-23--Nursing homes plead for more coronavirus testing as ‘bodies keep piling up’

After two months and more than 10,000 deaths that have made the nation’s nursing homes some of the most terrifying places to be during the coronavirus crisis, most of them still don’t have access to enough tests to help control outbreaks among their frail, elderly residents.
Neither the federal government nor the leader in nursing home deaths, New York, has mandated testing for all residents and staff. An industry group says only about a third of the nation’s 15,000 nursing homes have ready access to tests that can help isolate the sick and stop the spread. And homes that do manage to get a hold of tests often rely on luck and contacts.
“It just shows that the longer that states lapse in universal testing of all residents and staff, we’re going to see these kinds of stories for a very long time,” said Brian Lee of the advocacy group Families for Better Care. “Once it’s in, there’s no stopping it and by the time you’re aware with testing, too many people have it. And bodies keep piling up.”
That became clear in some of the nation’s biggest nursing home outbreaks. After a home in New York City’s Brooklyn borough reported 55 coronavirus deaths last week, its CEO acknowledged it was based entirely on symptoms and educated guesses the dead had COVID-19 because they were unable to actually test any of the residents or staff.
At a nursing home in suburban Richmond, Va., that has so far seen 49 deaths, the medical director said testing of all residents was delayed nearly two weeks because of a shortage of testing supplies and bureaucratic requirements. By the time they did, the spread was out of control, with 92 residents positive.
Mark Parkinson, CEO of the American Health Care Association, which represents long-term care facilities, says “only a very small percentage” of residents and staff have been tested because the federal and state governments have not made nursing homes the top priority.
“We feel like we’ve been ignored,” Parkinson said. “Certainly now that the emphasis has gone away from hospitals to where the real battle is taking place in nursing homes, we should be at a priority level one.”
Two-thirds of U.S. nursing homes still don’t have “easy access to test kits” and are struggling to obtain sufficient resources, said Chris Laxton, executive director of The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
“Those nursing home leaders who have developed good relationships with their local hospitals and health departments seem to have better luck,” said Laxton, whose organization represents more than 50,000 long-term care professionals. “Those that are not at the table must fend for themselves.”
Public health officials have long argued that current measures like temperature checks aren’t sufficient. They can’t stop workers with the virus who aren’t showing signs from walking in the front door, and they don’t catch such asymptomatic carriers among residents either. What is needed is rigorous and frequent testing—”sentinel surveillance,” White House virus chief Deborah Birx calls it—to find these hidden carriers, isolate them, and stop the spread.
The U.S. is currently testing roughly 150,000 people daily, for a total of 4.5 million results reported, according to data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project. Public health experts say that needs to be much higher. “We need likely millions of tests a day,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.
The federal Health & Human Services Department told The Associated Press that ”there are plenty of tests and capability for all” priority categories and that all should be tested. The agency also noted one of President Donald Trump’s briefings this week in which he underscored the states’ role in coordinating testing.
Only one governor, West Virginia’s Jim Justice, appears to be mandating testing for all nursing homes without conditions. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan ordered tests at all 26 nursing in the city, using new kits that can spew out results in 15 minutes. Massachusetts abruptly halted a program to send test kits directly to nursing homes this week after 4,000 of them turned out to be faulty. New Hampshire teamed with an urgent-care company to test care workers. Several states including Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Tennessee, and Wisconsin have dispatched National Guard testing strike teams.
“It’s a snapshot,” New Hampshire Health Care Association President Brendan Williams said of the national piecemeal approach. “We need a motion picture.”
While the federal government promised this week to start tracking and publicly releasing nursing home infections and deaths, which could help identify hotspots, that work was only beginning. In the meantime, The AP’s own tally from state health departments and media reports put the count at 10,217 deaths from outbreaks in nursing homes and long-term care facilities nationwide. About a third of those are in New York.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has described COVID-19 in nursing homes as “fire through dry grass,” said he would ideally like to see any resident, staffer or visitor seeking to enter a nursing home take a rapid test that would come back in 20 minutes. But, he said, “that’s millions of tests.”
Dr. Roy Goldberg, medical director of a nursing home in New York City’s Bronx borough that this past week reported 45 deaths, said his facility still can’t test asymptomatic patients because of shortages that have limited testing to those showing fever or a cough.
“This isn’t what anyone signed up for,” Goldberg said. “It just breaks my heart that the long-term care industry is going to end up being totally scapegoated on this.”
Amid the tragedies have emerged hopeful cases in which early and aggressive testing has made huge difference.
After the first of two deaths at a Sheboygan, Wis., nursing home and other residents and staffers started falling ill, administrator Colinda Nappa got on the phone and pleaded with state officials: “I got to know what is going on.”
A 65-member National Guard testing unit soon showed up, donned head-to-toe protective suits, and quickly tested nearly 100 residents and 150 staffers.
In all, 19 residents and staffers tested positive and all are either now housed in a special section of the building or quarantined at home. There have been no more deaths.
In the Seattle area, which had the nation’s first major nursing home outbreak that eventually claimed 43 lives, health officials are targeting their testing efforts on homes that have shown little sign of the disease.
Their plans for testing at 19 such facilities are aimed at trying to head off hotspots by quickly identifying and containing cases. In conjunction with ramped-up capacity for tracing contacts of patients, it’s considered an important prerequisite to reopening he economy.
This past week, medical professionals led by the University of Washington’s Dr. Thuan Ong went room by room through a nursing home in a highly orchestrated ballet of swabbing and bagging. In all, 115 residents were tested and results came back the next day as all negative—a development that drew cheers from the facility’s staff.
“One of the greatest values,” Ong said, “is to catch it before it spreads.”
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—Bill Gates explains how to beat the coronavirus pandemic
—Elective surgeries—mostly paused due to the pandemic—are critical to hospital finances
—World Health Organization says 3 more coronavirus vaccines are in human trials
—Late payments soar, revealing extent of coronavirus pain on European companies
—14% of women considered quitting their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic
—Forget “wet markets” and bats: For scientists, failing environmental policies have created a boom time for outbreaks
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Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.


fortune--2020-04-23--What to know if your small business is applying for Round 2 PPP loans from the SBA

Why the coronavirus crisis makes moral leadership more important than ever

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Small businesses are getting a second shot at receiving Paycheck Protection Program loans after the House passed an additional $310 billion in funds for the program on Thursday. President Trump is expected to sign the bill into law Thursday evening.
Funds from the first $349 billion ran out in record time (just 13 days), and banks and lenders have been learning as they go how to efficiently get money out the door. Now, with the PPP replenished, lenders say they’ve been preparing to get right back to work.
The big thing they’re all waiting on is the SBA’s processing system, E-Tran, to reopen and allow them to send applications through for approval. The SBA said in a statement that it “will resume accepting PPP loan applications on Monday, April 27 at 10:30 a.m. ET from approved lenders.”
Those like Sunrise Banks, a Minnesota-based regional bank, were able to process about $160 million in loans, across over 600 loans, before funds were cut short the first time. The bank’s CEO David Reiling tells Fortune they have about 3,000 applications backlogged, and are planning to tackle those the moment funds are approved and E-Tran is up and running again. The bank’s average loan size was about $260,000.
One thing the regional bank is doing differently for round two, says Reiling, is creating a new online application process, and inviting pending applicants to reapply through the system. “By having them go through this online process it really is an easy way for people to tidy up the application, get it accurate, and be able to flow through a lot faster,” he says. It will also help the bank weed out those who applied to multiple banks for the loan and may have already receive funding, he says.
Others like Republic Bank, based in Philadelphia and covering areas in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, have already processed $500 million worth of loans that have assigned SBA numbers or have been funded, with another $350 million in the queue awaiting the new funds. The bank’s plan of attack, chairman Vernon Hill tells Fortune, is to immediately load processed applications into the SBA system, and then move on to a smaller group who are continuing to apply now and being loaded into the bank’s system. “We’ve been backed up for weeks, so you’re going to get a flood” as round two opens, he says.
Seattle-based Washington Federal bank, meanwhile, has approved and funded roughly 2,000 applications before funds ran out from the first $349 billion. Now, Brent Beardall, the bank’s CEO, tells Fortune they’re ready to jump right back in and keep funding—but will start with the nearly 1,500 applications in their system’s queue before processing “in waves” the nearly 2,000 applications in the bank’s waitlist. “Whether that’s 500 people or 1,000 every 10 hours, we’ll see how it goes,” Beardall says. “Our hope and expectation is the technology has improved, both on the side of the banks and the SBA.”
Of note, fintechs are hoping to get in on this next round of lending, after being largely shut out from the first $349 billion due to a slow approval system to become SBA-approved lenders. Ryan Metcalf, head of U.S. regulatory affairs for Funding Circle, a U.K.-based fintech lender, tells Fortune the fintech has continued to pre-process thousands of loans to be ready for round two. But under current guidelines, Matcalf says the fintech will likely be referring applications to approved banks. “We have those lined up because it’s our Plan C and we don’t want small businesses to wait any more than they have to, so we’re going to make sure they get an equal shot at the funds,” he says.
However, some big banks like JPMorgan Chase are already alerting applicants to go elsewhere if they want to receive loans this time around, CNBC reported. The bank emailed thousands of customers late Wednesday that funds might run out before customers in Stage 1 of the process (the furthest behind of four stages the bank created) got funding. “We wanted to give you this information, so that you can decide if you would like to try applying with another lender,” the bank said.
How small businesses should apply for the PPP this time around
For those who didn’t apply for the PPP loan the first time around, the reality is, it may be more challenging to get a loan. Republic Banks’ Hill says “We tell them they might be late, but go ahead and apply and we’ll try to get it through.” The key is to put your business in the queue, bankers say.
But for those who are going to be applying now, lenders have a few tips on how to approach round two.
Sunrise Banks’ Reiling suggests first and foremost to go to your existing bank and ask them if they are still accepting new applications. For Sunrise Banks, “We’ve been trying to communicate and bend over backwards to make sure that all our customers are applying, and there will be a few stragglers, so the idea is have them check with their primary financial institution first, and then seek somebody else who is accepting,” Reiling says.
Now that many lenders have had a chance to work through kinks or inefficiencies in their programs, those like Reiling and Beardall are armed with info for PPP loan hopefuls: Make sure you have the essentials ready—your payroll figures, your rent and utility costs, but also think strategically. Due to the payroll or rehiring requirements to make the PPP loan forgivable, small businesses need to maintain payroll or rehire employees before June 30. In that sense, Reiling advises thinking about, “‘Am I bringing employees back on? Do I have to increase my headcount? What does my payroll look like now, what does it need to look like within a certain period of time?’ So be prepared to hire people.”
While it is likely the money from round two will run out before everyone in the banks’ backlogs and new applicants are funded, the key point to drive home, lenders say: “The more prepared our applicants are, the quicker they go through the process and the more applications we can process,” notes Washington Federal’s Beardall. “If [you are] a small business, you get in line—pick your bank and get in line and start working through it.”
How long will it last?
It’s difficult to predict how long the new funding will last this time around. Some bankers predict as little as one to two days, while others think 10 days or longer might be more realistic.
The consensus from lenders is that this time around is likely to be much smoother—but faster. “When this was launched [a few] weeks ago, it was kind of the Wild West for everybody—the banks and the SBA. That process has been refined,” says Beardall. But still, with all the backlogged applications, it’s clear to most, if not all banks: funds will probably dry up before they get around to everyone.
Adds Republic Bank’s Hill: “Are they all going to get funded? I don’t know.”
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Update, April 24: This article has been updated with a statement from the Small Business Administration.
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fortune--2020-04-23--The 3-pronged approach to defeating the coronavirus

Good afternoon, readers.
We learned this morning that about 26 million Americans have lost their jobs amid the coronavirus crisis. Real unemployment now stands at more than 20%. The U.S. has crossed 850,000 confirmed cases (those we know of so far) and is creeping up on 50,000 confirmed deaths—the most in the world.
As we explored at length in this story, the reasons for this failure are widespread and complicated. There will have to be an ultimate accounting for that. In the meantime, however, the priority is digging the nation out of this catastrophic public health and economic hole. So, how do we do that?
I explored the multi-pronged approach we’ll have to take in order to tackle this insidious and sometimes inscrutable pathogen in the latest print issue of Fortune.
In conversations with dozens of experts across the medical industry, here’s what became clear: We need to test; we need to treat; and we need to create vaccines for long-term protection.
That may seem obvious after months of quarantine, but the logistics are a lot more complicated. And that’s where the biopharma industry truly has a chance to shine and show whether or not it can lead in the midst of the chaos.
In short, adequate—and accurate—testing can help slowly re-open the economy and mitigate risk; the development of effective treatments can lower the burden on the health care system and hospitals; and a longer-term vaccine, should one emerge (and that’s an open question), can provide global peace of mind.
All of that is a heavy lift. The (very qualitative) good news is: At least a number of firms seem to be stepping up. “There’s an incredible sense of urgency,” George Scangos, the former chief of Biogen and current CEO of Vir Biotechnology, a company working on both COVID-19 treatments and vaccines, tells me. “The number of companies that want to contribute regardless of whether you make a lot of money is incredible.”
We’ll see if those aspirations can ultimately salvage what this scourge has wrought.
Read on for the day’s news, and see you next week.
Sy Mukherjee
sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy
DIGITAL HEALTH
A milestone in STI testing tech. Boston-based biotech Binx Health has a box—one that could address a silent epidemic which affects some 376 million people across the globe every year by providing a point-of-care system for STIs. "A fully integrated, automated, and maintenance-free molecular testing platform, [Binx's] Io lets users drop fluid samples, either self-collected by a patient or taken by a clinician, onto a cartridge sans prep: Insert the cartridge into a slot, follow on-screen instructions, then get lab-level results within an unprecedented 30 minutes," Mark Hay writes for Fortune. (Fortune)
American Well expands telehealth offerings in the midst of coronavirus pandemic. Amwell, an arm of telehealth giant American Well, says it's ramping up telehealth support for doctors who run practices with fewer than 100 providers in their network. With COVID-19 cases flooding hospitals, telemedicine has become an essential tool for patients who may not be able to access their caregivers—and a potential lifeline for relatively smaller practices which have seen their revenues plunge.
INDICATIONS
Biogen's Alzheimer's drug comments draw scrutiny. The Biogen Alzheimer's drug drama is still barreling forward. There's been a whole lot of controversy over the experimental treatment, aducanumab, as I've discussed before. The latest twist is that Biogen is delaying its timeline for submitting the drug to the Food and Drug Administration for approval after assuring stakeholders it was proceeding with agency's collaboration. That may very well be true—and Biogen execs are claiming this is just a temporary holdup that's in part due to challenges provided by the coronavirus pandemic. But it throws another twist into an already convoluted clinical saga for what could eventually become the first-ever treatment approved for the underlying cause of Alzheimer's.
Gilead's latest coronavirus antiviral update presents a twist. Gilead's remdesivir has been touted as the most promising option to date (at least that we know of) to tackle COVID-19. But with great hope comes great hype—and sometimes, great confusion. Gilead's chief medical officer Merdad Parsey said on Thursday that initial data on human trials of remdesivir in China which were published on the World Health Organization's (WHO's) website were prematurely posted. "This information has since been removed, as the study investigators did not provide permission for the publication of the results," said Parsey in a statement emailed from Gilead. The firm still believes its treatment will be effective. (Fortune)
THE BIG PICTURE
The 'elective' surgery hit to hospitals. You'd think that hospitals are making big money during the COVID-19 outbreak. You'd be wrong. I dove into the finances of so-called "elective" surgeries—many of which aren't really optional at all, despite the terminology—and why hospital systems are under such tremendous pressure in these current times. (Fortune)
Bill Gates on how to defeat the coronavirus pandemic. My colleague and Fortune editor-in-chief Clifton Leaf sums up Bill Gates' gigantic memo on defeating the coronavirus. As Cliff puts it, the document is strikingly optimistic. Here's one telling quote: "During World War II, an amazing amount of innovation including radar, reliable torpedoes, and code-breaking helped end the war faster," wrote Gates. "This will be the same with the pandemic." (Fortune)
REQUIRED READING
More surveillance and less privacy will be the new normal after the coronavirus, by David Meyer
Real unemployment rate soars past 20%, by Lance Lambert
The world's 25 greatest leaders are the heroes of the pandemic, by Fortune Staff
Sign up for other Fortune newsletters.


fortune--2020-04-23--Instacart to hire 250,000 more workers amid soaring demand during the coronavirus pandemic

Grocery-delivery service Instacart wants to hire an additional 250,000 workers to help meet soaring demand during the coronavirus pandemic.
The company said Thursday it would add workers in the six locations with the most orders: California, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., and Toronto.
The news comes as more consumers switch to having groceries delivered to their homes to avoid being exposed to the coronavirus and having to wait in long grocery lines. Last week, Instacart said it handled five times as many orders as it had over the same period last year.
In March, in response to the rising demand, Instacart hired 300,000 additional contract shoppers, bringing its total contract workforce to more than 500,000. With the latest hiring push, Instacart’s workforce would surge to 750,000.
“Instacart has become an essential service for millions of families relying on us to help deliver their groceries and household goods in the wake of COVID-19,” Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta said in a statement.
On Thursday, Instacart also introduced a feature in its app that asks workers daily if they’re feeling any symptoms that could be related to the coronavirus. If the workers confirm they are healthy, they can continue working. If not, they are instructed to contact their physician and are logged out of the app for the day. Workers also can now request free safety kits, which include a mask and hand sanitizer, from Instacart through the app.
The enhanced app comes as many workers continue to voice concerns for their safety and complain that many customers are enticing them with big tips to fill their orders, only to reduce those tip amounts later.
In addition to wellness checks, Instacart said on Thursday that it’s extending a policy to provide up to 14 days of pay to employees and contract workers who are diagnosed with the virus or who are placed in mandatory isolation by authorities. The policy will now be in effect for the duration of the pandemic, instead of expiring on May 8.
Similarly, the company said it would extend bonuses of $25 to $200 that it gives shoppers, depending on the number of hours they work, for the duration of the crisis.
More must-read tech coverage from Fortune:
—How a pharmacy delivery startup has capitalized on the coronavirus pandemic
—SBA website leaks personal data of 8,000 small-business loan applicants
—Is A.I. better at diagnosing illnesses than doctors? Don’t believe all the hype
—What Seattle and San Francisco can teach us about mitigating the scourge of COVID-19
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs
—WATCH: Best earbuds in 2020: Apple AirPods Pro vs. the Sony WF-1000XM3
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-04-23--Apple Music is now available on Samsung Smart TVs. Here’s how to get it

Apple Music is now available on some Samsung televisions, marking another recent example of the iPhone-maker offering its services on rival devices.
Samsung said Thursday that people can now access Apple’s streaming music service through Samsung’s Smart TV models that were manufactured from 2018 to 2020. People must first download the Apple Music app from Samsung’s Smart TV app store, similar to how they would access other streaming services like Spotify and Tidal.
Samsung said that Smart TV owners who sign up for Apple Music can get three months of free access. Apple Music costs $9.99 monthly, $4.99 for students, and $14.99 for families of up to six people.
Before today, Apple Music was not available on rival companies’ Internet-connected televisions. Instead, people who wanted to listen to Apple Music from their TVs had to use the Apple TV digital media player device.
Apple has increasingly made its apps and services available for devices made by other companies as it tries to increase growth in its services business. In 2017, for instance, longtime rival Microsoft said Apple’s iTunes music player would be available via the Windows online app store, particularly noteworthy considering the long rivalry between the two tech giants.
Apple’s TV streaming service, Apple TV, is already available on certain Samsung TVs. Whether Apple Music will debut on TVs other than Samsung’s is unclear.
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fortune--2020-04-23--Gas for $0.88 cents a gallon? How a week of turmoil in the oil futures market is playing out at the

Gas for $0.88 cents a gallon? How a week of turmoil in the oil futures market is playing out at the pump

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This week the price of crude—a resource so valued that nations have waged wars over it—went under $0 for the first time in history.
On Monday, the WTI contract was sitting at a record low of minus $39/barrel. It has since rebounded to around $18/barrel as of noon Thursday, but that is still far below its February levels of around $50/barrel.
It all comes down to supply and demand. And without as many people commuting to work or flying, we just don’t need as much oil and gas.
Here are a few answers to the most common questions about this unprecedented plunge in oil prices.
How can oil prices go negative?
As the global economy demands less crude, the places to store it are filling up. Traders buy WTI—which stands for “West Texas Intermediate” and is a grade of crude oil used as a global benchmark—futures contracts all the time without actually having the capacity or means to take ownership of crude when it comes due. Even average joes can buy these contracts—you’d just want to sell before you’re obligated to take delivery of the crude. But with limited oil storing capacity and the delivery dates nearing on the May contracts, these traders started to sell at a loss on Monday since they couldn’t find buyers or physically store the oil.
“We’re going to see less paper traders and more physical traders. A lot of paper traders got burnt,” says Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.
What’s the deal with companies running out of room to store oil?
There is only so much space to store crude. It takes years to build up capacity and requires meeting strenuous government regulations. And the world wasn’t prepared for a scenario like a pandemic where hard brakes are applied to the global economy.
What will happen when there is no more storage at all?
“Countries will stop producing if no one will take it. And once there is no where to store it, I don’t see any other option [than them halting production],” De Haan says.
In the long-term the balance between supply and demand will work itself out, however, WTI could temporarily go negative again before that point.
Will prices go down to zero at the pump?
No, gas stations aren’t going to pay you to take their gasoline. However, prices will continue to fall. In fact, Gasbuddy told Fortune on Tuesday there were six gas stations in Michigan where unleaded gas was going for $0.88 cents per gallon.
“We’re expecting to see prices to continue to decline,” says Devin Gladden, a spokesperson for AAA. Even if crude goes negative again, there are other cost including transportation and gas station margins that would keep prices above $0 at the pump. But the current national gasoline price of $1.79 could soon fall under $1.50.
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fortune--2020-04-23--Chris Hemsworth calls ‘Extraction’ the ‘most exhausting’ shoot of his career

Extraction reunites Chris Hemsworth with two of his close Marvel collaborators, but the high-stakes, higher-octane action-thriller—streaming on Netflix this Friday—won’t be easily mistaken for a Thor follow-up.
In the Sam Hargrave–directed film, Hemsworth plays soldier-turned-mercenary Tyler Rake, a lethal weapon of a man who’s been psychologically blunted since a past tragedy. With nothing left to lose, he accepts a suicide mission to rescue a kidnapped boy (Rudhraksh Jaiswal), the son of an imprisoned crime boss, from the drug lord holding him captive in Bangladesh. But even as Rake wages a one-man war against a criminal underworld’s worth of corrupt cops and killers, he senses that getting the boy out alive may be his last shot at redemption.
Between its haunted protagonist and a triple-digit body count (not to mention a distinct lack of capes), Extraction finds Hemsworth operating in a grittier, more grounded vein, alongside longtime Marvel stunt coordinator Hargrave and Avengers: Endgame director Joe Russo (who wrote the script and produced). Dirt-caked, blood-soaked, and punishingly intense, it’s a particularly far cry from the sprawling, CGI-enabled spectacle of later, larger Avengers movies.
For Hemsworth, part of Extraction’s original appeal was to bring him back down to human size after years of playing a nigh invincible superhero on-screen, demanding a grueling physicality that more special effects–driven pictures had not.
“I didn’t want to just do a straight-up action film,” Hemsworth tells Fortune, speaking alongside Hargrave via a joint Zoom call last week. “I wanted to do action unlike anything I’d ever done before, which this required. It was a level of complexity and exhaustion that was very new.”
The actor, 36, speaks from his native Australia, where he’s enjoying some unexpected downtime while quarantined at home with his wife and three children. “It’s been a busy last 10 years for me,” he says, chuckling slightly at his own understatement. “To be able to stay in one place and have some quality family time has been extremely positive.”
Hemsworth as Tyler Rake in “Extraction,” which lands on Netflix April 24. Jasin Boland—via Netflix
Particularly after Extraction, one can’t fault him for taking it easy. Though Hargrave has described it as “an art-house action film,” rooted in character as much as carnage, Extraction hits its marks harder than any other genre exercise you’re likely to see this year, owing in part to the director’s background in stunt work.
From its opening cliff dive to an extended shootout on a bridge that gives Extraction its heart-in-mouth finale, the film is a kinetic blur of action overload, inclined toward long takes and minimal editing. “The way Sam shoots, [we had] continuous shots where we were unable to cut to another angle or camera,” says Hemsworth. “If there was a mistake, we had to do it all again. That was incredible.”
From an action standpoint, Extraction’s pièce de résistance comes in the form of a bravura, nearly 12-minute “oner”—a series of long shots subtly stitched together so as to appear seamless—at the film’s halfway mark. As Rake struggles to escape heavily armed pursuers in Dhaka, he and the boy flee—first by car, then on foot—down densely crowded city roads, gradually battling up to the roof of one apartment building, then leaping to another, before making their way back down to street level. Throughout this sequence—as their escape vehicle charges under bridges, as masked mercenaries kick down doors, and as Rake lays waste to scores of opponents using every weapon at his disposal—the camera fastidiously tracks Rake, even following him after he jumps off a building. Think Birdman, with biceps.
“Sam’s there, holding the camera, strapped to the front of a car, rolling down stairs, or jumping off buildings with us,” explains Hemsworth. “That has a unique quality I haven’t seen on-screen before.”
On set, Hargrave would often rely on his extensive training as a stunt performer to execute camera stunts he wouldn’t have felt comfortable putting others at risk to pull off. But none of the stunts that audiences see in Extraction were extraneous. The director says his main focus was on plotting action that would authentically heighten his film’s drama.
“We’re not the first people to do long takes, but the point of it is to transport the audience in real time through this interaction,” explains Hargrave, speaking from Los Angeles. “You’re seeing the decision-making, the struggles that happen moment to moment, and you’re seeing Chris react in real time to the situation.”
Later, he adds: “As crazy and fun as these action set pieces could be, we wanted to make sure we weren’t losing the story or character. You always have to have action driven by or moving forward the story and character. That was of high importance to us throughout the process.”
Hargrave (left), on set with Hemsworth, relies on his own stunt training when directing. Jasin Boland—via Netflix
Before Hargrave, there was certainly Hollywood precedent for stunt coordinators vaulting above the line into the director’s chair. Just look at the John Wick franchise, now held up as a watershed moment for American action cinema; the first film’s directors, David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, had previously choreographed fight sequences and pulled off difficult stunts on everything from 300 to Captain America: Civil War.
For filmmakers less versed in action, shooting fight scenes can prove tricky and time-consuming; in one interview, Stahelski called it an exercise in “hiding imperfections” for those who don’t know the terrain. Circa 2014, what stood out most in John Wick—and certainly across its increasingly ambitious sequels (helmed solely by Stahelski)—was the clean and balletic fight choreography, bullets and fists flying with rhythm and purpose, every movement perfectly timed and placed. To audiences overly accustomed to shaky, frenetically edited action, John Wick’s visual elegance—especially paired with its dazzling, neon-hued cinematography—proved enthralling.
With Extraction, Hargrave hoped to similarly harness his background in stunt coordination to deliver a superior class of action movie. He has previously collaborated with Stahelski and Leitch, frequently through their 87eleven action design company, and spent years honing his craft on the sets of Marvel movies. After first starting out as Chris Evans’s stunt double in The Avengers and two Captain America sequels, The Winter Soldier and Civil War, Hargrave rose through the ranks at Marvel, beginning to design stunts himself and taking on a senior leadership position by the time filming commenced in 2017 on Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, both of which he directed some second-unit for.
Russo adapted Extraction, previously known under the name Dhaka, from his own graphic novel, Ciudad, coauthored with comic-book scribe Ande Parks a decade ago. At that point, it had been set in Paraguay, but a subsequent draft shifted the setting to Bangladesh. Hargrave first read the script back when Stahelski was primed to direct it, but he was approached by Russo years later, as cameras rolled on Infinity War.
In his work on the Marvel movies, Hargrave had earned a reputation for always grasping why a certain action beat was happening, in addition to knowing exactly how to execute it. “Even just off-set and in between setup, just talking to Sam, I got to understand him as a really intelligent individual with a real sensitivity to story,” says Hemsworth. “It’s a real fascination with Sam, to dig into any topic. That, when making a film, is so essential.”
“You’re seeing the decision-making, the struggles that happen moment to moment, and you’re seeing Chris react in real time to the situation,” says Hargrave of the action in “Extraction.” Jasin Boland—via Netflix
For his part, Hargrave felt confident he could make the jump to directing. “I’ve been very fortunate to come up under some great mentors, like Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, as well as [Joe and Anthony Russo],” he says. “It’s always been hammered home how important it is to have character-driven action, and never just action for the sake of action.”
In fact, Hargrave says, he was so focused on isolating the emotional truth of Extraction that his star sometimes had to gently guide him back to the stunts. “I was so excited about the new challenge of directing actors on this massive scale, during dramatic scenes,” admits Hargrave. “And Chris said, ‘Don’t forget why you’re here. Action is your background, so let’s remember that, through all these action sequences, that’s where we can infuse the story and keep the momentum going, so the dramatic sequences then have more weight.’”
Hemsworth interjects to explain further: “I’d worked with [directors] before who’d come from different backgrounds—visual effects, editing, writing—and I felt like there was always an attempt to say, ‘I know I can do that, so I need to prove these other elements.’ And that was the discussion, because we wanted to make sure we were focusing on those elements while making sure we filled it with the most insane action that no one else on the planet could do except him.”
Shooting on location across India and Thailand helped everyone acclimate to Extraction’s authentic aesthetic. “So often, in action scenes, it’s a green screen,” says Hemsworth. “You’re having to imagine everything going on around you, someone has a big fan for the wind, and so on. The vast majority of your imagination goes, ‘Eh, you know, I’m phoning this in, because this is fake.’”
Across Extraction’s three-month shoot, as temperatures soared and Hemsworth pushed himself to complete the most ambitious stunts of his career, failure of imagination didn’t exactly pose a problem. “We were running and fighting in 45 degrees Celsius,” recalls the actor. “The exhaustion you talk about was as honest and real as I’ve ever felt. It was the most exhausting shoot I’ve ever done.”
Hemsworth and Hargrave had worked closely together for years on Marvel productions, and they’ve developed an easy camaraderie that’s palpable even across the estranged gallery view of a continent-spanning Zoom call.
“We were both babies, just cutting our teeth on these characters at that point in the Marvel universe, me from the stunt side and him from the action side,” reflects Hargrave on when the pair first connected, back in 2011. “We hit it off [filming The Avengers] and then came back together on Infinity War and Endgame; and seeing the growth in him in that time period as a person and an actor was just amazing.”
Even in the relatively bloodless, family-friendly arena of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Hemsworth’s Thor had a tougher time of it than most. Across his own trilogy and four Avengers outings (almost a decade of Hemsworth’s life), the God of Thunder saw both his parents die, witnessed the long-prophesied destruction of his home-world, and shortly thereafter failed to stop big bad Thanos from wiping out half his people, a close ally, and his brother—this followed a few days later by half of all life in the universe, after Thor’s botched effort to kill the megalomaniacal titan.
Hemsworth’s growth as an actor “was very clear upon seeing his handling of the character of this new Thor, as introduced in Thor: Ragnarok,” says Hargrave. “There was a vulnerability and a dark humor he brought that was very much in the DNA of Tyler Rake.”
That Hargrave and Hemsworth have become friends, sharing among other interests a no-nonsense approach to film production, only elevated their collaboration on Extraction. “He’s just a great human being,” says Hargrave. “You spend so much time on a film set with these people, 15 hours a day plus rehearsals, so such a big part of it for me is that you need to surround yourself with positive people with a good outlook on the world.”
Adds Hemsworth: “You can chew up so much real estate with people trying to lead and take the film in different directions, and I find sometimes the majority of the time gets wasted trying to realign everyone and have them go in the same direction. Everyone was excited about what we were making, and we were able to each day get there, get to work, shoot through 12- to 15-hour days, and do that for three months while still having a good time.”
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fortune--2020-04-23--Gilead shares tumble on reports that the Chinese trial of its coronavirus drug was not successful

Gilead Sciences shares plunged after reports that its experimental drug being tested in Covid-19 patients failed to show a positive result in a Chinese trial.
The drug company and a scientist involved in the trial disputed that characterization, however.
According to reports from the Financial Times and Stat, the drug, called remdesivir, didn’t make a significant difference in the amount of time it took patients to improve, or their likelihood of death. A summary of the trial results was posted and quickly removed by the World Health Organization, according to the publications.
Gilead shares were down 4.3% to $77.82 at 1:09 p.m. in New York.
The summary posted by Stat shows results from 237 patients in the trial. Use of the drug wasn’t associated with patients getting better, faster. And 13.9% of patients getting the drug died, versus 12.8% getting standard care, according to the summary.
Frederick Hayden, an infectious disease expert at the University of Virginia School of Medicine who helped the Chinese doctors conduct the study, disputed the characterization that the study had failed.
“That is not correct,” Hayden said in an interview, when asked whether the results showed remdesivir had flopped. “My interpretation of them is not consistent with that headline.”
Gilead, in a statement, said that the summary mischaracterizes the results of the study, which was stopped early after not enough patients could be found. A study with low enrollment can lead to results that are less conclusive.
Hayden said there was a mistake in the original manuscript and that it had since been revised. He said that the study was under review at a journal, which he would not identify, and that the authors were still waiting for page proofs. He declined further comment or elaborate until the study was published.
Gilead’s stock has been whipsawed by incremental reports on the drug, as investors grasp for any sign of data that the company’s compound could be an effective therapy for Covid-19 patients. Last week, the shares surged 9.7% on April 17 after a report that the drug appeared to have helped a group of Chicago patients who were part of a separate, wider trial.
Gilead, in its statement, said that “trends in the data suggest a potential benefit for remdesivir, particularly among patients treated early in disease.” The company said that the full data are being submitted for review and publication.
The study in question was one of two main trials in China of remdesivir, and looked at patients with severe cases of Covid-19. This group was considered one of the hardest to treat with antiviral drugs, as by the time the disease becomes advanced there may already be significant lung damage. In addition, the immune system may spin out of control in some patients with advanced disease, a process that antivirals like the Gilead drug won’t help with.
The study ran into enrollment difficulties as the epidemic in China slowed down and wasn’t able to get anywhere near the number of patients it had aimed for. This meant the study was likely to show an inconclusive result, unless the drug was massively beneficial or massively harmful.
The authors of the study provided a draft document to the WHO, which had asked for information to be shared early, and it was inadvertently posted on a research-sharing platform, according to Tarik Jasarevic, a WHO spokesman. The study is undergoing peer review and the WHO is awaiting a final version before making any comments. The document was removed from the site as soon as the mistake was noticed, the spokesman said.
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