fortune--2020-07-20--8 workers on why they’re walking out in today’s Strike For Black Lives protest

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On Monday, workers across the U.S. are expected to walk off the job in a series of protests organizers are calling the Strike for Black Lives.
The action was coordinated by a coalition of labor groups and activists that includes the Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of Teachers, and United Farm Workers. The walkouts are scheduled to last eight minutes and 46 seconds, the length of time originally reported that police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck, leading to his death. Floyd’s killing has led to a resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, alongside nationwide anti-racism protests and calls to defund the police.
In at least 29 nationwide events, protesters today will be raising their voices for a wide-ranging list of demands: higher wages, better jobs, and the ability for more workers to form unions. They’re also calling on elected officials to reimagine the economy in a way that better serves Black communities, and on corporations to dismantle systematic racism, expand health care, and better provide workers with personal protective equipment.
While Black people make up about 13% of the U.S. population, they disproportionately work in roles impacted by the coronavirus pandemic: Black adults make up 23% of respiratory therapists, 27% of licensed nurses, nearly 27% of health care support positions, 20% of protective services jobs like correctional officers, and nearly 20% of food preparation and serving workers, such as fast food associates. The coronavirus pandemic has continued the long-standing health care disparity for Black Americans: Black people account for about one in four of COVID-19 deaths where the patient’s race is known. Meanwhile, coronavirus cases continue to surge across the country with no end in sight.
Protesters from around the country spoke to Fortune about why they are walking off the job today. Their responses have been edited for length and clarity:
Courtesy of Wellington Thomas
“I’m going on strike for Black lives because our hospital isn’t taking our demands seriously when it’s literally a matter of life or death. We know COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Black lives here in Chicago and across the country. Our hospitals and elected leaders need to recognize that. That means investing in those of us serving Black communities with higher wages, better benefits, and safer staffing so we can continue to provide the quality of care our patients deserve.”
—Wellington Thomas, 38
Emergency room technician at Loretto Hospital
Chicago
“I work at three different jobs, and I make $9 an hour. I should be making $11 per hour. I watch others come in and make more money than me even though I’ve been there for six years. As Black women, we fight so hard to take care of our families. I have a family of four. I know there are other families out there trying to make ends meet. If we come together, our voices will be heard. It’s very important to me because I want to be heard, and I want others’ voices to be heard.”
—Deatric Edie, 40
Associate at McDonald’s, Papa John’s, and Wendy’s
Fort Lauderdale
Courtesy of Carmen Laguer-Diaz
“I am a part-time faculty member at Valencia College. There is a big gap between the amount of people of color in full-time positions versus part-time positions. There is an even wider gap if we consider administration and leadership positions. Administration is currently pushing to move to more equitable hiring practices, which I do commend. These practices will help Valencia in the long run. But we also need to consider what is happening in the short term, especially in times like these, with COVID-19 and issues of racial inequity at the forefront of our everyday lives.
Part-time faculty need a voice and further recognition. There are little to no channels for part-time faculty to engage and know their voices are being heard. I was a temporary full-time professor, helped create a new club, and then had to have the difficult conversation with my students that I would not be able to provide them the same support, as I was going back to part-time work. I went back to part-time, and I could not let them flounder. So I took it upon myself to work extra for no pay. I have had to meet students at coffee shops, or crammed in adjunct resource rooms, interrupting other adjunct-student meetings. I have had to get to the classroom early or leave late because I have nowhere to meet with them if they need to meet in private. When they ask me about trying to find my office, I have to hold back my tears thinking of my car as my only office space. I have had to rely on the kindness of some of my colleagues in letting me store things in their office, so I don’t lug them across campus. We are a student-centered institution, but part-time faculty do not get paid or acknowledged for student engagement hours. We are a student-centered institution that serves a large BIPOC student population, with an underrepresentation of BIPOC full-time faculty and administration, and an overrepresentation of BIPOC part-time faculty and staff. The inequity is palpable, and it needs to change.”
—Carmen Laguer-Díaz, 34
Part-time faculty member at Valencia College
Orlando
Courtesy of Dominique Thomas
“I am a Black climate organizer, and every day my existence is a form of radical resistance. I understand how climate is a race issue, and being siloed in a white-dominated movement means always making sure the work is centering Black leadership. During this current uprising, we have to be more radical, nimble, and unwavering in defense of Black lives. At 350.org, we understand that the work to dismantle racist systems, and systems of anti-Blackness and white supremacy is our work when tackling the climate crisis. As a climate movement, we must support the demand to divest from the police and fossil fuels, and reinvest in Black communities and a just recovery.”
—Dominique Thomas, 29
Organizer at 350.org
Harlem, New York
“Thirty-three of my coworkers went on strike in late May in the face of a COVID-19 outbreak at our store. McDonald’s failed to keep us safe. Instead of proper PPE, we were treated like animals and given doggy diapers to wear as masks. In total, 11 of us and eight of our family members tested positive for the virus.
Our strike came as the country saw a wave of uprisings in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and others. [Editor’s note: Chauvin, the officer who placed his knee on Floyd’s neck, has been charged with second-degree murder, but has yet to face trial. One of the officers involved in the killing of Taylor has been fired; none currently face criminal charges. The three men accused of killing Arbery have been indicted on murder charges, but have not yet gone to trial.] Our fights for justice are inextricably linked. I grew up believing in the promises of the United States, but I have seen how badly those promises have been broken, especially for my Black brothers and sisters. Until Black people can thrive, none of our communities can thrive. That’s why I am striking for Black Lives. I will be standing with working people from all backgrounds—Black and white, Latino and Asian, First Nations and immigrants—to demand justice and respect from our workplaces to the communities where we live. Systemic racism and greed have led to the loss of Black and brown lives through police violence and corporate negligence. We can stop this, but it will take working people fighting together to dismantle this unfair system.”
—Angely Rodriguez, 26
Associate at McDonald’s
Oakland
Courtesy of Demetrus Dugar
“I’ve been a security officer in Seattle for over 14 years. Security plays a crucial role securing hospitals, grocery stores, businesses—there to protect but also to help enforce social distancing practices and provide a familiar face. Before I became a security officer, I was in the police explorer program, and my interactions with police have mostly been positive. However, I know, as a Black man in America today, I’m only one wrong encounter away from dying because of the color of my skin. On top of that, when I come home from work, I worry I will spread COVID-19 to my family—my partner, my four daughters, including my 6-month-old. It took three long months during the pandemic before my company provided us with masks. That’s why I’m standing up. Essential workers—who are mostly Black and brown folks—deserve respect, a workplace free of racism and discrimination, PPE, hazard pay, and job protections. I’m joining with tens of thousands of workers across the country. I’ll be taking a knee for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the time it took for George Floyd to be murdered in broad daylight, by police.” [Editor’s note: The officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck has been charged with murder but has not yet gone to trial.]
—Demetrus Dugar, 35
Security officer
Seattle
Courtesy of Cassie Geremaia
“I am kneeling for eight minutes and 46 seconds in memory of George Floyd in support of the Strike for Black Lives. This day is important to me because I believe the oppressive systems that prevent Black people from living a safe life in our country are wrong. It is time for us to continue the fight to make our country a better place, and I am proud to stand in solidarity with my fellow workers across the country until we make this right. As a state worker, I know that when we come together in our union we make sure we stand behind every single member, no matter the color of their skin.”
—Cassie Geremaia, 32
Hospital cost analyst at the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing
Denver
“My life as a Black individual matters. I am a Black domestic worker in America. We have not been appreciated. I want everyone to know what a day without Black domestic workers feels like when we’re not in your homes, not in your offices. If you don’t support Black lives, it can impact the country. Just knowing that Black lives matter is the first step in getting justice.”
—Crystal Crawford, 34
Nanny for multiple families
Atlanta


fortune--2020-07-20--GE’s collapse continues to fascinate

GE’s collapse continues to fascinate

Why this health care startup felt launching early during a pandemic was the best business strategy

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Good morning.
There’s a new book out this week on the collapse of General Electric by two Wall Street Journal reporters, Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann. (Their Amazon page says the book is already the “#1 Best Seller in Industrial Manufacturing” –which made me wonder what #2 is!) The Journal included an excerpt from the story here this weekend, that focused on the company’s ill-fated effort to champion the “industrial internet” through GE Digital and its Predix software.
I interviewed then-CEO Jeff Immelt about the effort back in 2016, and found, as always, his articulation of the strategy to be compelling. He had lived through the disruption of the media business–GE then owned NBC Universal–by Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, and he didn’t want the same thing to happen to his industrial businesses. “If you think about it, 15%, almost 20%, of the S&P 500 are consumer Internet companies, and the existing consumer companies in those areas–media, retail, consumer banking–got none of that,” he said. “I was able to see that. And I passionately believe that if you are an industrial company, you can’t allow that to happen.”
But articulating a good idea and turning it into a good business are different things. On the second point, GE seems to have failed–mastering the marketing more than the software and money making. (Although my favorite piece of trivia from the book excerpt was a marketing fail: Top GE executives couldn’t agree at launch whether to pronounce the new product “Preed-dix” or “predicts.”)
Immelt proclaimed in 2015 that GE would be a “top 10 software company by 2020.” But that goal has been abandoned by his successors. Today, the company focuses the digital business on its own product lines, and no longer discloses financial results. CEO Larry Culp said earlier this year the digital business “was getting close to break-even.”
I haven’t read the book yet. But if you are looking for a magazine-length take on GE’s fall, I still think Geoffrey Colvin’s 2018 piece– “What the Hell Happened at GE?”–is the best. You can read it here.
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Strike for Black Lives
Today is the Strike for Black Lives, a protest organized by unions (here's United Farm Workers of America president Teresa Romero on her union's reason for getting involved.) But what's the protest all about? As Fortune's Jonathan Vanian explains, the strike is intended to highlight the economic plight of service workers, many of whom are people of color, during the coronavirus pandemic. And McDonald's is a major target. Fortune
EBay classifieds
EBay is reportedly in "advanced talks" to sell its classified ads business, in order to focus on its core marketplace business. The prospective buyer is Norway's Adevinta, which already deals in classifieds but would gain a much stronger foothold in Germany if it controlled the eBay Kleinanzeigen website (other eBay-owned classified-ads sites around the world include Gumtree and Kijiji.) Wall Street Journal
European stimulus
The marathon talks among EU leaders, who need to agree the terms of a massive stimulus package to help the bloc recover from the pandemic, are reportedly close to a resolution. The so-called "frugals"–the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark and Sweden–are said to be willing to accept $450 billion of the recovery fund coming in the form of grants rather than loans. The talks will continue this afternoon. Bloomberg
Vaccine signup
The U.K. has signed an agreement to purchase 30 million doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech. Preliminary testing data suggested positive results and the vaccine will soon be tested on 30,000 volunteers–it's one of 23 currently being evaluated. Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands have already signed up for 400 million doses of a potential AstraZeneca vaccine. Financial Times
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Russian vaccine
One reason it takes so long to develop a vaccine is testing–you don't want to be prematurely rolling out an experimental vaccine whose side-effects only become apparent after rigorous tests. Which makes it quite astonishing to read that many members of Russia's business and political elite have since April been getting shots developed by the state-run Gamaleya Institute in Moscow. The vaccine's phase 1 trial only wrapped up last week, and the results are not yet known. Bloomberg
Uighur allegations
Disquiet over alleged human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang province continue to grow. Confronted with drone footage of blindfolded minority Uighurs being led to trains there, Chinese ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming said he did not know what the video was showing. He also denied that China is carrying out widespread sterilization of Uighur women, as is reported to be the case. The U.K.'s shadow foreign secretary, Lisa Nandy, fears there is an ongoing genocide of the Muslim Uighurs. Guardian
Voters' stamps
The latest battleground in the upcoming U.S. election: Will postage be required for absentee ballot applications and the ballots, who will pay for it, and what happens to envelopes without stamps? Lawsuits are already flying, with voting-rights groups saying stamps are equivalent to an unconstitutional poll tax. Fortune
Chinese cinemas
China's cinemas–at least, those in "low-risk" areas, covering most of the country–can reopen their doors as of today. Restrictions include a 30% capacity cap and a halving of the number of movies each cinema can display. Everyone will have to wear masks, and movie-goers will have their temperature taken when they show up. Also, in a blow to a traditional revenue stream, no food or drink will be sold. BBC
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-07-20--Hong Kong had the coronavirus contained—but 3 missteps may have led to its third wave

In late June, Hong Kong’s coronavirus outbreak seemed largely under control. Few new cases were recorded daily, and it had reached three weeks with no new local cases, the city’s longest streak to date. Amid the relative containment of COVID-19, bars, cinemas, schools, and Disneyland reopened, and commuters—nearly all of whom wore face masks—stood shoulder-to-shoulder on crowded trains.
Hong Kong was celebrated for its coronavirus response, heralded as a region that had gotten it right.
Then local cases started to spike in a vicious and ongoing third wave of infection. Hong Kong has recorded more than 500 new cases—nearly a third of its 1,886-case total—in the past two weeks. On Sunday, authorities reported 108 new infections, a record daily high. Eighty-three of the new cases were locally transmitted, meaning the source of infection came from within Hong Kong, rather than being imported from outside by someone traveling to the region. The city’s staggeringly low coronavirus death count has ticked up too; from four as of mid-June to 12 on Sunday.
“I think the situation is really critical, and there is no sign the situation is being brought under control,” Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam told reporters on Sunday.
Hong Kong Disneyland is closed again; so are schools, bars, clubs, cinemas, gyms, beauty parlors, and karaoke and mah-jongg establishments. Rather than a coronavirus success story, Hong Kong now is a prime example of how small slipups in containment strategy can give the coronavirus room to advance and curb the best-laid plans of rebounding economies.
Experts point to three factors that might have led to the city’s new onslaught of infections:
1. At-home quarantine
In an effort to tame its first and second waves of COVID-19, Hong Kong closed its border to nonresidents on March 25, and on April 8 made on-arrival coronavirus testing mandatory for all incoming travelers. Almost everyone arriving in Hong Kong is also subject to a 14-day quarantine.
Residents of Hong Kong are allowed to quarantine in their own homes, but the people they live with are not subject to quarantine and can move freely—a loophole that some experts consider one of the possible sources of the new wave of infection.
One woman became infected in early July from family members who had returned from the U.S. and were quarantining at home with her. That woman later infected another person.
On Sunday, the government announced a new rule that people returning to Hong Kong from seven high-risk countries—Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, and South Africa—must spend the on-arrival quarantine in government-approved hotels rather than at home, and must provide a health certificate showing they tested negative for coronavirus before coming to Hong Kong.
2. Quarantine exemptions
Hong Kong was also generous with quarantine exemptions. Certain groups have been excluded entirely from the city’s quarantine rules, including 11,730 sea crew members who’ve arrived in Hong Kong since February to board ships to other destinations. In early July, nine sea crew members who stayed in Hong Kong for one to three days tested positive for coronavirus.
Drivers transporting goods across the mainland China–Hong Kong border, airline crews, and foreign consular staff were exempt from quarantine too. People in these groups are tested on arrival and required to wear masks and report their temperature daily to the health department, but they do not need to self-isolate.
The government on Sunday released a statement refuting criticisms of the quarantine exemptions and calling claims that the exemptions caused the current wave of cases “a misunderstanding.” It said sea crew members must now undergo coronavirus tests and yield a negative result within 48 hours of travel to Hong Kong.
The government said the exemptions are “essential to maintain the necessary operation of society and the economy and to ensure and uninterrupted supply of daily necessities.”
3. Limited social distancing
What’s more, densely populated Hong Kong never imposed a full lockdown on the scale of those seen in the U.S., Europe, and mainland China.
In early April, the government ordered the city’s bars, clubs, beauty parlors, and gyms to close, but restaurants stayed open. The government’s decision last week to order restaurants to close every day between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m. is the tightest restriction so far on eateries. Dine-in service is still available for breakfast and lunchtime.
On July 15, in response to the ongoing wave, public gatherings were capped at four people. The limit had previously been four, then eight before jumping to 50 in June.
Of Sunday’s 83 locally transmitted new cases, 48 could not be traced to a known source. Some of the infected people had visited restaurants, markets, and parks every day.
Hong Kong’s early success in managing the coronavirus outbreak was especially impressive given its proximity and cross-border links to mainland China, where the virus first appeared, and the high-density living arrangements of its 7.5 million residents. Its current case total—under 2,000—remains exceptionally low compared with cities of similar size. New York City, for instance, has a population of 8.3 million, and has recorded 226,000 coronavirus cases and 22,872 deaths. Even so, the resurgence of the virus in Hong Kong and the return of a semi-locked-down state is an abrupt regression for a city that had largely returned to “normal.”


fortune--2020-07-20--A new battleground emerges in the 2020 election: the cost and hassle of stamps

Even if it weren’t for her disability and fear of catching COVID-19, Delinda Bryant said getting the necessary postage to cast a ballot this year will be a struggle.
Bryant, 63, doesn’t have $10 for a book of stamps, a printer to make them at home or a working car.
“My car needs its transmission fixed, but my utilities are so high I can’t afford it,” the south Georgia woman said in testimony for a federal voting rights lawsuit. “Ten dollars for a book of stamps is a hardship.”
As more states embrace mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic, the often overlooked detail of postage has emerged as a partisan dividing line.
Questions over whether postage will be required for absentee ballot applications and the actual ballots, who pays for it and what happens to envelopes without stamps are the subject of lawsuits and statehouse political brawls.
Lawsuits filed in Florida by the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, in Georgia by Black Voters Matter and elsewhere argue that stamps constitute a monetary requirement akin to an illegal poll tax. Voting-rights groups say stamp requirements are another impediment that hits lower-income and minority communities hardest.
“Charging money for the right to vote is unconstitutional, whether it’s a penny or a dollar,” said Sean Young, legal director of the ACLU of Georgia, which is representing Black Voters Matter. “Many voters lack internet access. Many voters lack a credit card, which is required to buy stamps online. One voter did not receive his book of stamps for two weeks after he ordered it.”
The postage debate has become vehement in Ohio, where the state elections chief, a Republican, has asked for the authority to pre-pay postage on absentee ballot applications and the ballots themselves. So far, the GOP-led Legislature has resisted.
Opponents of the proposal by Secretary of State Frank LaRose argue that pre-paying postage could lead to more mail-in ballots being requested than used. Voters who requested a mail-in ballot but for whatever reason — choose to vote in person on Election Day will have to cast a provisional ballot so local election boards can be sure they did not vote twice. About 20% of provisional ballots are typically rejected.
During floor debate in June, state Rep. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, said it’s also an added expense in a year the virus has ravaged government budgets. It would cost the state $1.5 million on top of the $1.5 million Ohio already is paying to mail ballot applications for November’s presidential election.
“So it would be expensive at a time when we’re facing economic depression, economic problems throughout the state,” he said. “And this is not the time to be needlessly spending money.”
Democrats and voting-rights advocates disagree.
“We always hear the same rhetoric,” said Aklima Khondoker, Georgia state director of All Voting is Local. “It’s too expensive, it’s going to lead to fraud, it’s an administration issue.’ No, it’s not. It’s racism.”
She said postage requirements disproportionately affect people of color, who are less likely to have the income, transportation or time to obtain stamps.
The postage debate has extended this year to include young voters, who have little experience sending and receiving paper mail and visiting post offices. As part of its lawsuit, the Georgia ACLU submitted statements from young voters who had never used a stamp.
Another complication with requiring stamps is knowing how much postage to use.
Election boards are required by federal postal regulations to include in a voter’s packet exactly how much postage is required to return their ballot. Some states, however, require a copy of a valid ID, verification of college enrollment status or notary documentation, and that can add an unknown amount of weight to the ballot, which requires more postage.
Marti Johnson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service, said the post office delivers every piece of election mail to its destination — with or without adequate postage.
“We are proactively working with state and local election officials on mailing requirements, including postage payment,” she said in a statement. “In cases where a ballot enters the mailstream without the proper amount of postage, the Postal Service will collect postage from the appropriate Board of Elections.”
Advocates argue that most voters, and particularly voters who fear being disenfranchised, aren’t likely to mail a ballot without postage and trust the system to deliver it.
But Khondoker, of All Voting is Local, said the exact amount required is beside the point.
“The stamp issue is not about two adhesive pieces of paper that we put on an envelope,” she said. “It’s about what it means to families and individuals. It’s about an additional sacrifice they have to make to exercise a right that’s fundamental to our democracy, one they’re guaranteed in the Constitution.”
Not all court rulings have gone in advocates’ favor.
In Florida last month, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle rejected a motion by liberal groups that would have required free postage for mail-in ballots on the grounds that stamps represent a poll tax. Hinkle compared stamps to the costs voters incur when driving or riding the bus to the polls.
“Postage charged by the United States Postal Service — like the fee charged by any courier or the bus fare for getting to the polls to vote in person — is not a tax,” Hinkle wrote.
Facing a similar legal argument in South Carolina, the state’s Election Commission recently went the other way. It agreed as part of a stipulation to provide prepaid absentee ballots for the November election “regardless of the number of voters deemed qualified to vote by absentee ballot.”


fortune--2020-07-20--Russia’s effort to beat the West to a COVID-19 vaccine relies on unorthodox approach

A top Russian official said his country could roll out a vaccine against COVID-19 as soon as September, while denying accusations that hackers working for the country’s intelligence agency tried to steal sensitive data from rival researchers in the U.K., U.S. and Canada.
“Russia may be one of the first to produce a vaccine against the backdrop of the billions that are being invested in the U.S. and all the pharma companies working on it,” said Kirill Dmitriev, the chief executive of the government-backed Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which is financing one of the the country’s efforts to devise a vaccine. “It’s a little bit of a shocking story.”
President Vladimir Putin has made finding a vaccine a top priority. Russia has recorded more than 750,000 COVID-19 cases, making it the fourth most-affected country in the world. In Russia’s race to be the first to find a vaccine against COVID-19, it’s taking an approach that would be shunned in other countries, claiming it will know in just three months of trials whether its leading candidate works. If Russia proclaims success in the hunt for a vaccine before other candidates, it could create a world of dueling vaccines and geopolitical battles over who gets supplies.
Dmitriev’s comments came after the U.K., U.S. and Canada said hackers working with the group APT29, part of Russian military intelligence, had used malware to try to seize vaccine research. Dmitriev said Russia had no need to steal information from rival vaccine developers because it had already signed a deal with AstraZeneca Plc to manufacture the University of Oxford’s COVID-19 vaccine at R-Pharm, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Russia. He said AstraZeneca is transferring the entire technological process and all ingredients for the full reproduction of the vaccine in Russia.
“Everything that is needed to produce the British vaccine has already been transferred to R-Pharm,” he said. “AstraZeneca has already signed commitments to transfer all production of the British vaccine to R-Pharm.”
AstraZeneca said in a statement that Russia will become one of the hubs for production and supply of the vaccine to international markets, with plans to export doses to more than 30 countries including in the Middle East, the Balkan region and CIS countries. Under their agreement, the vaccine vector was transferred to Russia where R-Pharm will produce the finished doses.
Some Western experts remain skeptical that Russia has the expertise to produce its own vaccine by September.
“We don’t think that’s realistic,” said Peter Shapiro, a pharmaceutical analyst at the research firm GlobalData, cautioning that Russia, like other countries, could approve the vaccine for political reasons. “The regulatory hurdles in Russia are low.”
Nor is it likely that such a vaccine, if indeed approved in Russia, would find favor in the West, Shaprio said.
“We don’t see a history of innovative vaccines being developed in Russia that win approval” in major markets like the U.S., Japan and Western Europe, he said. “Russia is not a major producer of export quality drugs or biologics.”
Global Battle
The U.S., Western Europe and China have all set up research programs and supply chains for COVID-19 vaccine production. While the negotiations with AstraZeneca offer Russia the chance for doses of the Oxford vaccine if it proves successful, the global battle to secure supplies could leave Russia struggling to access other potentially successful vaccines, increasing pressure to advance its own program.
Dmitriev said he’s so confident in Russia’s leading vaccine candidate that he’s taken it himself and had his whole family vaccinated, including his parents, who are in their seventies. The vaccine, financed by RDIF and developed by the state-backed Gamaleya Institute in Moscow, has completed a phase 1 trial in 50 people, all of whom are members of the Russian military. The institute hasn’t published results.
The vaccine is one of 26 experimental shots in development in Russia, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said on July 15. Gamaleya’s candidate is a viral vector vaccine based on a human adenovirus — a common cold virus — fused with the spike protein of SARS CoV-2 to stimulate an immune response. It is similar to a vaccine China’s CanSino Biologics intends to move into trials in Canada, one of the countries targeted by Russian hackers. Initial results from CanSino’s trial showed the vaccine had a diminished effect in some people who had a pre-existing immunity to the adenovirus.
Dmitriev said researchers in Russia are testing two different types of adenovirus vectors in order to reduce the chances of pre-existing immunity reducing the vaccine’s effectiveness. That vaccine will start phase 3 trials in thousands of people on Aug. 3 in Russia as well as in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Dmitriev said. Russia could make 30 million doses domestically in 2020, and 170 million abroad, with five countries expressing interest in producing the vaccine and others willing to produce it, he said.
Besides manufacturing vaccines for AstraZeneca, R-Pharm will make the country’s own vaccine at its production sites in Russia. Alium Pharmaceutical Holding, based in Moscow and owned by billionaire Vladimir Evtushenkov’s Sistema PJFSC, has also agreed to manufacture doses of Russia’s leading vaccine candidate, Dmitriev said.
Unusual Move
Russia’s rapid approach to vaccine development differs from Western Europe and the U.S., where researchers typically run phase 3 trials for months to show safety and effectiveness. In another unusual move, Dmitriev said the vaccine has been given to “a significant” number of volunteers, both as part of and outside the formal trial. The director of the Gamaleya Institute said he and some of his staff tried the vaccine on themselves before the official trials started, RIA Novosti reported in May. Analysts have questioned Russia’s rushed unorthodox approach.
“The current situation with the vaccine looks like a race and sufficient clinic testing hasn’t been done,” said Sergey Shulyak, chief executive officer at Moscow-based consulting company DSM Group.
Russia, however, does have a track record developing vaccines using adenoviruses. It devised an Ebola vaccine using similar technology which is licensed in Russia for emergency use and which is expected to be deployes soon in the Congo. And Russia has been increasingly active in promoting its vaccine-making expertise in Africa. The Russian government together with United Company RUSAL opened the Russian-Guinean Research Center for Epidemiology and Prevention of Infectious Diseases in 2014 in Guinea.


fortune--2020-07-20--Malls are dying, but Nordstrom has no intention of being dragged down with them

Will there be a second stimulus check and extension of the extra $ 600 in unemployment benefits ?
What to @ @ @ @ @

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For the typical shopper, Nordstrom is all but synonymous with the mall. Yes, probably a glitzy mall in a fancy neighborhood, but still: the mall.
And indeed, Nordstrom’s mall-based department stores are how the Seattle-based retailer made its name. But in recent years, Nordstrom has broadened its business, building a massive e-commerce machine that now represents about one-third of sales, and expanding its discount Rack chain to reduce its reliance on its department stores and to get a bigger chunk of the exploding off-price market.
The upshot? Those elegant flagship stores, still mostly housed in malls, generated just 38% of company sales last year. And the impact of the COVID-19 crisis will only hasten the shift away from the high-end, in-store experience.
“It’s really an acceleration of pre-COVID trends,” Erik Nordstrom, chief executive and the great-grandson of the retailer’s founder, tells Fortune. “We really don’t think of ourselves as a mall-based department store.”
Like most retailers selling nonessentials, Nordstrom’s business got clobbered by extended store closures during the lockdowns: In the first quarter, Nordstrom revenue fell 40% to $2 billion, despite a decent performance by its digital arm, which actually grew. The crisis is forcing Nordstrom to rethink the role of its stores in its overall business; the company recently announced it was closing 16 of its 116 department store locations, the first large-scale store closing campaign in its 119-year history.
The closures come as a spike in new coronavirus infections in large swaths of the country is putting Nordstrom and other retailers on edge. “We thought the recovery would be further along than it is now,” said Erik Nordstrom, who became CEO in March.
For years, the large department stores were Nordstorm’s bread and butter, and its successful formula allowed it to go from regional player in the Pacific Northwest renowned for its customer service to a national chain.
Yet for all its success, sales at Nordstrom’s namesake luxe emporiums have been drifting downward for several years as more shoppers transition to buying online, and as brands have shifted their marketing muscle away from department stores and toward their own retail outposts. Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, and Neiman Marcus have all been hit by the same trends.
In an attempt to get in front of the secular declines in shopping at malls and department stores, Nordstrom has built out clusters of small “Local” stores in its most important markets like Los Angeles and New York. These 3,000-square-foot locations are more service hubs than full-functioning stores, but allow customers to try on something bought online or have a garment tailored without having to travel to a full-line store. And that strategy is proving particularly prescient during the pandemic, given many shoppers’ continued reluctance to go malls or big stores.
But the Local concept is relatively new and only up and running in a few key markets, so Nordstrom also is looking at making greater use of its 247 Rack discount stores—where shopper traffic has rebounded more quickly—by offering services like order pickup to customers of its full-price locations as well.
As Nordstrom has leaned into the strength of its Rack locations, some analysts have questioned how far down the discount store road the brand could go before hurting its luxury aura.
The company dismisses this idea as overly binary. “Many consumer businesses can fall into the trap of hewing too tightly to the idea of, ‘Oh, they’re a full-price customer,’ ‘They’re an off-price customer,’” says CEO Nordstrom. “The fact is that most customers cut across lines.”
This is not to say the company is packing it in when it comes to mall-based stores. They are crucial for brand building and supporting e-commerce, says Nordstrom. And the CEO notes that all of the company’s department stores are in so-called A-malls, the centers with the highest-end tenants. “In general, we feel good about our locations,” he says.
Despite the challenges of the pandemic, Nordstrom still believes in the long-term soundness of a business model based on inviting stores that work with e-commerce and provide useful touch-points for shoppers. That includes the New York flagship Nordstrom opened last year at a cost of hundreds of millions that is now grappling with weak traffic after a strong start in the fall.
“Those who are returning to stores are enjoying having a human interaction,” says Nordstrom. “When more occasions return, like weddings, conferences, going into the office again, we’ll be well positioned.”


fortune--2020-07-20--Airline stocks dip as air travel slips once again

This is the web version of Bull Sheet, a no-nonsense daily newsletter on what’s happening in the markets. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
Good evening, Bull Sheeters. This is Fortune finance reporter Rey Mashayekhi, filling in this week for Bernhard Warner with a special PM edition of the newsletter.
We’ll be doing things a little differently and starting off with the U.S. markets, where Big Tech stocks drove the major indices upward.
Markets update
U.S. 🌎
After swooning in the first hour of trading Monday, the Dow rallied Monday to inch up 0.03%. The S&P 500 ended the day up 0.8% to go positive for the year, while the Nasdaq—driven by a robust day for large-cap tech giants like Amazon—was up 2.5%.
As indicated by the Nasdaq’s positive performance, Big Tech put last week’s lukewarm market performance in the rearview. Besides Amazon (+7.9%), the likes of Tesla (+9.5%), Microsoft (+4.3%), Alphabet (+3.1%), and Apple (+2.1%) all had strong days.
Optimism on the coronavirus vaccine front appears to have helped the mood of the markets. Pfizer and BioNTech reported more good news in their joint trial, as did Oxford University in an early-stage trial with pharma giant AstraZeneca.
As November’s presidential election draws nearer, more analysts are predicting what an increasingly likely Joe Biden victory could mean for the markets. While some believe a Democrat in the White House would lead to more tepid market conditions, Bank of America thinks a Democratic sweep of the executive and legislative branches could see a unified response to the COVID-19 pandemic that would prompt a stock market rally.
Europe 🌍
The European bourses had a less enthusiastic start to the week, though good news on the vaccine front also prompted a late-day rally on the continent. London’s FTSE was down 0.5%, but Frankfurt’s DAX (+1%), the CAC 40 (+0.5%) in Paris, and the pan-European STOXX 600 (+0.7%) all were up.
Europe’s more centralized, aggressive approach to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic—and the region’s accelerated emergence from the crisis—could see European stocks outperform markets elsewhere, according to BlackRock. “As economies start to normalize, we see European equities as the most attractive regional exposure to a differentiated global reopening,” strategists for the asset manager said.
UBS and Morgan Stanley are expected to lead the IPO for British telecommunications firm Vodafone’s European mobile towers unit, per Reuters—a deal that could raise more than $4 billion and value the business at $18 billion.
Asia 🌏
While Tokyo’s Nikkei (+0.1%) and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng (-0.1%) started off the week virtually flat, mainland China’s major indices posted strong gains. Shanghai’s SSE Composite was up more than 3% Monday, while Shenzhen’s SZSE Component (+2.6%) and SZSE Composite (+2.7%) weren’t far behind.
Jack Ma’s Ant Group—which owns and operates the hugely popular Alipay mobile payments network—will be going public via dual IPOs in Hong Kong and Shanghai, the Chinese tech giant announced Monday. Ant will list on both the Hang Seng and Shanghai’s upstart, tech-focused STAR Market—bypassing the New York exchanges amid U.S. regulators’ heightened scrutiny of Chinese companies.
Wealth managers at Credit Suisse, HSBC, UBS and other banks are reportedly screening clients in Hong Kong for any ties to the region’s pro-Democracy movement in a bid to avoid the ire of Chinese authorities, according to Reuters.
Elsewhere 📈
Gold prices continued their rally.
The dollar ticked upward.
Crude oil was up marginally, with Brent closing at more than $43 per barrel.
Rough flight
The airline industry’s hopes for a steady post-COVID recovery have been dealt a blow with the news that U.S. air travel is once again slipping. The total number of people who passed through checkpoints at U.S. airports fell last week for the first time since April, indicating more pain in the cards for carriers as the coronavirus’s spread continues to scare off travelers.
Airline stocks reflected such fears on Monday, with the major publicly-traded names all taking a sizable hit. Delta, which is looking to cut pilots’ guaranteed minimum pay, and Southwest, where nearly 17,000 employees have signed up for buyouts and partially paid leaves of absence, each fell more than 3%. American’s stock dropped nearly 4%, and United shares lost almost 5% of their value.
That’s bad news for investors who were hoping to capitalize on a beaten-up sector—one presumably primed for a rebound should a successful COVID-19 vaccine be developed and/or the virus be brought under control. But with cases in the U.S. continuing to escalate, and even the most advanced vaccine candidates still in the trial stage, that “dip” appears to have evolved into a longer, lingering rut with no clear end in sight.
***
That’s all for today. Have a pleasant evening and see you tomorrow.
Rey Mashayekhi
@ReyM12
Rey.Mashayekhi@Fortune.com
Today's reads
Masters of catastrophe. Fortune’s Jeremy Kahn has an insightful read on the market for catastrophe bonds, or “cat bonds,” which are used by the insurance industry to cover the financial risks associated with certain natural disasters. With 2020 expected to bring a busier-than-usual Atlantic hurricane season, the security offered by such securities may well come in handy.
Digital delivers. The coronavirus pandemic has proven a boon for branchless, online-oriented consumer banking offerings like Marcus by Goldman Sachs, which has grown its deposits by more than 50% this year so far. “There’s been a profound acceleration in the adoption of digital [banking] tools by consumers,” Adam Dell, head of digital product management at Marcus, told Fortune.
Keeping score. Morgan Stanley will become the first major U.S. bank to publicly disclose how much its loans and investments contribute to climate change, Politico reports. The move comes as banks have faced growing scrutiny in recent years, from shareholders and activists alike, for underwriting fossil fuel projects like pipelines, mines, and power plants.
Some of these stories require a subscription to access. You can use this link to sign up. Thank you for supporting our journalism.
Market candy
0.22%
That’s how much the S&P 500 has gained in 2020 so far. The index turned positive for the year to date with Monday’s 27-point gain, which took it to nearly 3,252 points—just surpassing the 3,245 points it held at the opening bell on Jan. 2, 2020.
Since then, we’ve had a global pandemic that has disrupted the worldwide economy, a historic market correction that saw the S&P lose a third of its value in March, and an equally historic rally that has now seen the index recover all of those losses despite continuing recessionary conditions. Some year, right?


fortune--2020-07-20--More people die in winter than in summer. The coronavirus could change that

This is the web version of The Capsule, a daily newsletter monitoring advances in health care and biopharma. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
Good afternoon, readers.
I’m currently shacked up in my bedroom because it’s the only room in my apartment with air conditioning in the midst of a brutal heat wave in New York and other parts of the country. But what’s weighing on my mind is what this means for people who don’t have the luxury of dealing with a pandemic, a recession, and global warming all at the same time.
I feel bad for blasting a window A/C unit because of what it does to the environment (and dreading the utility bill coming my way this month). On a broader level, though, I’m dreading the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic colliding with a hot, humid summer across America—and how both of those realities will disproportionately affect those who are already afflicted.
To date, nearly 141,000 Americans have died from COVID and there are 3.8 million confirmed cases in the country, according to Johns Hopkins. The death toll is a lagging indicator.
Imagine being homeless or lacking access to air conditioning in a city like New York or Washington, D.C. right now, where temperatures are well into the 90s (Fahrenheit). Humidity spikes the heat index further. That suffocating heat is expected to extend into the Pacific Northwest and other parts of the country in the coming days.
Now imagine having to wear a mask under those conditions (which, as I’ve emphasized, is critical from a public health standpoint) when there are few avenues for relief. In New York, cooling centers that provide respite from the heat are required to abide by public health measures such as distancing and masking. That’s a responsible thing to do from a health standpoint. But it lowers capacity at a time when people need these resources the most.
One tragic irony of all this is that, usually, winter is the season when the most people die. CDC data “show very clearly that the heart of winter—December, January, and February—are the deadliest months of the year. This may seem counterintuitive, given how much the media hypes summer heat waves. But the reality is that the summer months are actually the safest,” writes the American Council on Science and Health.
Many factors may drive that trend, including a lack of access to heating or housing in the coldest months. But a pandemic like COVID-19 could very well upend that historic norm, just as it has for so many others.
Read on for the day’s news.
Sy Mukherjee
sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy
DIGITAL HEALTH
Can the pandemic transform telehealth? We've written about how one of the very few silver linings of the coronavirus outbreak is the potential to boost telehealth (although that comes with its own set of problems). One group trying to make that happen is the MA FQHC Telehealth Consortium, according to Healthcare IT News, and it's focusing on expanding access to the basic devices (cell phones, laptops, etc) required to make telemedicine mainstream. (Healthcare IT News)
INDICATIONS
Caution on COVID vaccines. A joint project between Oxford and British drug giant AstraZeneca on a COVID vaccine has been health media catnip. On Monday, the firms added that the experimental product produced immune responses in a study published in the journal Lancet. But before you get too excited (caution and healthy skepticism is always warranted in times like these) it's important to look at the details. "We may need two doses. Other vaccines will need two doses. So we will need several vaccines," said AZ CEO Pascal Soriot. (Fortune)
Glaxo, CureVac strike coronavirus vaccine deal. On that note... GlaxoSmithKline has struck a deal with the much smaller biotech CureVac to support vaccine development (COVID and otherwise) based on mRNA technology. The $164 million deal could have implications well beyond coronavirus if mRNA platforms (more on that here) actually work.
THE BIG PICTURE
COVID cases continue to soar in Florida. There were "only" eight coronavirus deaths in New York on Sunday, according to the CDC. But the situation looks much more grim across the country. More than 30 states have reported increases in COVID cases in the past week; in Florida, there have now been six straight days of 10,000 new daily reported cases. (Reuters)
REQUIRED READING
Confidential computing and why cloud companies are so interested in it, by Jonathan Vanian
Many businesses are using e-commerce for the first time due to the pandemic, by Rachel Schallom
Hong Kong had the coronavirus contained. But key mistakes led to new infection waves, by Naomi Xu Elegant
Sign up for other Fortune newsletters.


fortune--2020-07-20--Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin to trade on public stock market for first time

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Grayscale Investments, a New York firm that makes cryptocurrencies available in the form of stocks, announced on Monday that regulators have given the go-ahead for the sale of two new cryptocurrencies to the public.
One of the newly listed stocks will represent shares of Litecoin, one of the oldest cryptocurrencies after Bitcoin, and the other is Bitcoin Cash, a controversial spinoff to Bitcoin launched in 2017. They are respectively the eighth and fifth biggest cryptocurrencies by market cap, according to Coinmarketcap.
The new stocks, which will trade under the symbols LTCN and BCHG, will be available to the general public in the next two to four weeks.
While cryptocurrency enthusiasts typically purchase Litecoin and other digital currencies directly on dedicated crypto exchanges like Coinbase or Binance, Grayscale has found a niche selling them in the forms of shares.
The Grayscale crypto products amount to shares in a trust that holds the underlying asset. Even though the Grayscale shares trade at a premium to the price of the asset, they have found favor with some institutional investors concerned about investing in Bitcoin and other crypto assets directly.
Meanwhile, Grayscale stocks—especially Bitcoin—have found a niche with millennial investors on apps like Robinhood. Indeed, Charles Schwab reported in December that the Bitcoin stock, which trades under the symbol GBTC, was one of the top five equities held by millennials—ahead of stocks like Netflix.
“Grayscale builds investment products that operate within existing regulatory frameworks. With two additional products gaining approval for public trading, we’re broadening access for investors to gain exposure to the digital currency asset class,” said Grayscale’s managing director, Michael Sonnenshein in a statement.
The new Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash stocks bring to six the total number of cryptocurrencies available to the public as shares. The other stocks, also packaged by Grayscale, represent shares of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and a blend of different currencies.
More broadly, Grayscale has developed a lucrative practice selling shares of its trusts to accredited investors. Those investors are initially barred from reselling those shares to the public, but once regulators grant a green light to do so, they are typically able to make a considerable profit.
Grayscale stocks trade on the OTCQX, an over-the-counter market, where securities do not have to be registered with the SEC. Instead, industry regulator FINRA oversees such offerings.
This story has been updated to correct the ticker symbol for Bitcoin Cash and to reflect that the shares will be sold by secondary investors rather than by Grayscale directly.
More must-read finance coverage from Fortune:


fortune--2020-07-20--Will there be a second stimulus check and extension of the extra $600 in unemployment benefits? What

Will there be a second stimulus check and extension of the extra $600 in unemployment benefits? What to know before Congress begins debate

Malls are dying , but Nordstrom has no intention of being dragged down with them

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is set to begin the debate for another coronavirus stimulus package this week. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, President Donald Trump, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin all said over the past week they’re optimistic another bill will be passed in July.
“We are committed that, by the end of this month…before the enhanced unemployment insurance expires, that we pass legislation so that we can protect Americans that are unemployed,” Mnuchin said Monday.
The CARES Act, which passed in March, helped Americans stay above water financially through a combination of stimulus checks, $600 weekly bonus unemployment benefits, Paycheck Protection Program forgivable loans to small businesses, eviction protection, and foreclosure protection. The consensus among economists is those benefits saved millions of jobs and prevented more severe economic pain.
With much of that aid having already been spent by households and businesses, economists are calling for more stimulus to boost the economy ravaged by the pandemic. And with cases surging in most states, those calls are growing more widespread.
With another stimulus bill looking increasingly likely, now the questions turn to what it might include.
Why do Americans and the economy need more aid now?
The unemployment rate skyrocketed from 4.4% in March to 14.7% by April as states mandated shutdowns. Since, the economy has improved as those orders are rolled back, and the jobless rate came down to 11.1% in June. While promising, that’s far from a much hoped for V-shaped recovery.
And that economic progress could get derailed in infancy by resurgent coronavirus cases. That fear is pressuring Congress to get another stimulus bill passed now.
Will there be a second stimulus check for some Americans?
The first round of stimulus checks were worth as much as $1,200 for individuals or $2,400 for married couples, plus $500 for each qualifying child. That amount decreased for adjusted gross income above $75,000 per individual or $150,000 per qualified couple. Individuals earning above $99,000 (or $198,000 per couple) weren’t eligible for the first round of checks.
But earlier this month McConnell hinted they might issue another stimulus check only for workers with incomes under $40,000. Such a proposal excludes tens of millions of Americans who received the first check. Democratic leaders oppose such a measure.
Big takeaway: There is support for a second stimulus check on both sides of the aisle. It’s less contentious than other items they’ll debate and likely to pass in some form.
Will the extra $600 weekly unemployment benefit get extended?
House Democrats passed a $3 trillion relief package in May that included a provision to extend the $600 benefit into January 2021. But that bill died in the Senate.
Republicans raised concerns that the $600 extra weekly benefits—on top of state benefits—mean millions of Americans make more out of work than they did while working. They argue it could deter the jobless from returning to work.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has suggested lowering the weekly payment to $200 or $400 per week. That would still help millions of households financially, Mnuchin says, while still spurring people to look for work.
Another idea is to couple an extension of the benefit with “back to work” bonuses. This would pay jobless Americans a bonus if they return to work and leave unemployment rolls. The idea here would be to prevent the generous extra $600 weekly benefit from deterring jobless Americans from accepting job offers.
“We’re going to make sure that we don’t pay people more money to stay home than go to work,” Mnuchin said Monday.
Verdict: It’s likely something will replace the $600 benefit. Republican opposition to this specific benefit may be hardened at this point. But with 17.3 million on the unemployment rolls, it is unlikely they’ll let it go away entirely without a replacement.
Read: Extra $600 unemployment benefit likely to expire before the next stimulus bill passes
Aid for schools and local governments?
The Heroes Act passed by House Democrats would’ve given more than $1 trillion to state and local governments to help offset their massive revenue losses.
That bill died, but obtaining state and local government aid remains a priority for Democrats in this bill.
Schools might also get pulled into the debate. Some Republicans would like to give aid to schools that reopen. That might get resistance from Democrats who aren’t keen on pressuring schools to fully reopen.
“We’re going to have big incentives, money to states for education, for schools that can open safely and do education,” Mnuchin said Monday.
Will rent and mortgage protections be extended?
The CARES Act prevents lenders and loan services from foreclosing on borrowers with federally backed mortgages from March 18 to Aug. 31. And tenants in federally subsidized or federally backed housing are protected from eviction for nonpayment through the end of August.
If Congress doesn’t extend these provisions millions of Americans could find themselves pushed out of their current residence in the coming weeks.
Party leaders are not making statements of support or opposition in regard to including an extension of these housing provisions. That could be a sign an extension won’t be a priority during the debates.
Will businesses and schools get protection from COVID-19 related lawsuits?
The spread of the deadly virus at workplaces creates health risks and potentially massive legal liabilities for businesses. Already dozens of Republican controlled states passed their own COVID-19 liability protections.
On Monday Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reiterated his goal of including immunity for businesses and organizations from coronavirus related lawsuits. But Democrats have seemed less open to the idea, arguing it could harm workers.
“We don’t need an epidemic of lawsuits on the heels of the pandemic we’re already struggling with,” McConnell said Monday.
Where do Americans stand on the issue? A Fortune–Civis Analytics survey of 2,045 U.S. adults conducted from May 22 to May 27 found 43% of U.S. adults say the government should pass legislation providing temporary limits on legal liabilities for businesses, to protect them from lawsuits filed by customers or employees alleging exposure to the coronavirus. Meanwhile 24% of U.S. adults disagree with such legal protections, and 33% are unsure.


fortune--2020-07-20--What Chevron really gets from its $5 billion deal to buy Noble

When Chevron announced Monday morning that it would acquire Noble Energy in an all-stock transaction, the company was sending out two powerful signals: After a bruising spring for the energy sector, dealmaking is once again in the cards—and gas is still king.
The company, based in San Ramon, Calif., said it would purchase Houston-based Noble in an all-stock transaction for $5 billion, $10.38 per share, the first such M&A deal after COVID-19 demolished energy demand this spring, pushing several independent U.S. oil and gas companies into bankruptcy. The deal is still subject to Noble shareholder approval, but is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter, Chevron said in a statement.
“This is a cost-effective opportunity for Chevron to acquire additional proved reserves and resources,” Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said in a statement Monday morning. “Noble Energy’s multi-asset, high-quality portfolio will enhance geographic diversity, increase capital flexibility, and improve our ability to generate strong cash flow.”
Chevron is the second-largest stand-alone oil and gas company in the U.S. after Exxon Mobil, and is currently at No. 15 on the Fortune 500. Noble shares rose by more than 6% in the hours after the announcement, while Chevron shares were down by 1.5%.
The deal has a total enterprise value including debt of $13 billion, Chevron said. Noble’s assets will expand the company’s reach across Colorado’s DJ basin and 92,000 acres of the Permian Basin—the blockbuster Texan oilfield at the heart of the U.S. shale boom—and includes assets off the coast of Israel, a growing hub for gas production.
The Permian assets, in particular, will fulfill Chevron’s efforts to expand in the region, after a planned acquisition of Anadarko last year fell through when the company instead chose a deal with Occidental. Chevron chose to receive a $1 billion breakup fee instead of pursuing a bidding war.
“We’ve always said that we have a high bar for M&A, and this transaction clears those hurdles,” Wirth said in a call with investors following the announcement. The deal would also produce an estimated $300 million in pretax savings, including reductions in corporate office jobs, he added, and the option to scale up production as demand for energy returns.
The deal also represents an interesting expansion into the eastern Mediterranean: The Israel assets represent Noble’s “crown jewel,” said Jean-Baptiste Bouzard, an analyst on the upstream research team at Wood Mackenzie, a Scottish energy consultancy. The company’s position in the east Med also includes a discovery off the coast of Cyprus.
Aside from local energy markets, including Egypt, the region also offers a closer transit-way through the Suez Canal to the energy-hungry economies of Asia.
“The eastern Med is proving to be quite a prolific hydrocarbon basin, and Noble was there right at the beginning,” Wirth said on the call.
Demand for gas in the region continues to grow, he said. While gas prices have struggled with the drop in demand, paired with global overcapacity that has sent prices into a tailspin, Wirth’s bet on the region’s gas assets is a one that many others in the sector—including Warren Buffett, who recently said he would acquire assets from Dominion Energy—are making: that as economies move to decarbonize, gas—while still a hydrocarbon—will be a lower-carbon option compared with coal.
“It’s widely acknowledged that it’s a fuel that will continue to displace coal for electricity generation,” Wirth said.


fortune--2020-07-20--Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet’ is now indefinitely delayed by the pandemic

Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet,” which had hoped to herald Hollywood’s return to big theatrical releases, has yet again postponed its release due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Warner Bros. said Monday that “Tenet” will not make its August 12 release date. Unlike previous delays, the studio this time didn’t announce a new target for the release of Nolan’s much-anticipated $200 million thriller.
“Tenet” had already shifted from July 17, then July 31 and then Aug. 12. Nolan, a staunch advocate for the big-screen experience, has strenuously hoped that “Tenet” could lead the resumption of nationwide and global moviegoing.
But the surge of the virus across much of the U.S. has upended the industry’s aims for even a late-August return. Last week, California ordered its cinemas closed.
Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich said the studio will soon share a new “2020 release date” for “Tenet.” It may be a much different rollout, with the film opening in staggered international release.
“We are not treating ‘Tenet’ like a traditional global day-and-date release, and our upcoming marketing and distribution plans will reflect that,” said Emmerich.
Emmerich said the pandemic’s spread has forced the studio to reevaluate its plans. Warner Bros. also shifted the horror sequel “The Conjuring 3″ from Sept. 11 to June 4, 2021.
“Our goals throughout this process have been to ensure the highest odds of success for our films while also being ready to support our theater partners with new content as soon as they could safely reopen,” said Emmerich. “We’re grateful for the support we’ve received from exhibitors and remain steadfast in our commitment to the theatrical experience around the world.”
Other films have planned their releases partially around the launch of “Tenet.” Walt Disney Co.’s “Mulan” remains scheduled for theatrical release on Aug. 21.
Movie theaters remain in a precarious limbo. Without new releases, U.S. indoor theaters and drive-ins that are open have played mostly older films and a smattering of smaller new releases.
Before the recent spike in the coronavirus crisis, theater chains have sought to assure moviegoers with protocols like limiting theaters to 25-50% capacity and cleaning seats in between showings.
But months of closed theaters and no new product has put enormous pressure on an already stressed business. AMC Theaters, the world’s largest chain, recently reached a debt deal to help itself remain solvent.
AMC has been aiming to reopen most locations July 30. Cineworld, which owns Regal Cinemas, had set July 31 for its reopening.


fortune--2020-07-20--A promising COVID-19 vaccine from Oxford and AstraZeneca just cleared a key safety hurdle

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The COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Oxford University and manufactured by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has cleared initial human safety tests.
The vaccine proved safe and elicited two different kinds of immune response to the virus that causes COVID-19, according to research published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet.
The results will buoy hopes that an effective vaccination program against the pandemic can begin in the U.S., the U.K., and possibly elsewhere, before the end of the year.
But the results of the initial human trial also indicated two doses of vaccine might be necessary to provide long-lasting immunity.
If true, that will make bringing the pandemic to an end both more logistically challenging and more expensive, since a large percentage of the world’s population will need to be injected two different times.
By partnering with researchers at the University of Oxford, which began developing a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as the virus’s genetic code was published in January, AstraZeneca leaped ahead of competing drugmakers, many with better track records in vaccines, to gain the inside track on delivering a vaccine that could help end the global pandemic.
AstraZeneca has made arrangements to provide about 2 billion doses of Oxford’s vaccine, including 300 million doses for the U.S. and 100 million for the U.K. It has agreed to provide 400 million doses to the European Union and made arrangements with partners to provide 1.3 billion doses for low- and middle-income nations.
But even so, it will not be enough, the company’s chief executive officer, Pascal Soriot, said in a media call on Monday.
“We may need two doses,” he said. “Other vaccines will need two doses. So we will need several vaccines.”
AstraZeneca is providing these doses at cost. It will only make a profit if, once the pandemic has ended, COVID-19 becomes a recurrent threat for which people need regular booster vaccinations—similar to the seasonal flu—and if its vaccine proves the most effective at combating it.
There are currently at least 163 different COVID-19 vaccine candidates in some stage of development, according to the World Health Organization. But the Oxford vaccine is arguably the furthest along in large-scale human clinical trials.
The research published in The Lancet comes from part of the first cohort of 1,077 people vaccinated in the U.K., as part of Oxford’s Phase I safety trial.
Larger second- and third-stage clinical trials—which are designed to prove how effective the vaccine may be—are currently underway in South Africa, Brazil, and the U.K., involving some 17,000 people. AstraZeneca is planning to begin a stage-three clinical trial in the U.S. involving 30,000 people next month.
AstraZeneca and the Oxford researchers had initially hoped that the results of these late-stage clinical trials might be available by the end of August. But falling infection rates in many parts of the world may mean it will take longer to prove that the vaccine is effective. Soriot said that results should be clear sometime between September and November and that the company is ready to deliver the first doses as soon as regulators approve the vaccine, which they are expected to do on an emergency basis if the late-stage clinical trials are successful.
Vaccines have traditionally been made using proteins that come directly from the virus they are meant to protect against. Either a weakened version of that virus or fragments of the virus are used. The Oxford vaccine is different: It uses a harmless chimpanzee virus and genetically modifies it so that it produces the same spike protein found on SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
The clinical trial showed that Oxford’s vaccine was safe, with most of those inoculated experiencing only mild symptoms from the inoculation, similar to those patients sometimes experience with a flu shot, such as fatigue, a headache, malaise, and a mild fever. None of those given the vaccine experienced a severe reaction.
Although the study was primarily designed to prove the vaccine’s safety, not its effectiveness, the researchers published their study of the immune response in 25 of those who received the single vaccine dose, and 10 others who received two doses.
Mene Pangalos, AstraZeneca’s executive vice president of biopharmaceuticals research and development, said that this immune response data was limited by the time it takes to run the assays necessary to analyze the blood samples. He said the Oxford researchers planned to publish additional blood data from more of the Phase I volunteers as it became available.
In the published results, of those who received a single dose, 91% developed neutralizing antibodies. In those who received two doses, 100% developed these antibodies. The antibody levels peaked at 28 days after injection and remained elevated throughout the 56 days of the study period.
The researchers found that those who received two doses of the vaccine had antibody levels similar to those found in people who become ill with COVID-19 but recover.
In addition, the vaccine triggered another immune response involving T cells. These killer cells seek out and attack pathogens in the body, and some of them can remember viruses they’ve battled before, helping the body to quickly dispatch them. All of the patients studied showed a strong T-cell response, peaking 14 days after inoculation, even from a single dose of the vaccine.
It is not known how long antibodies to COVID-19 remain active. But Pangalos said that based on Oxford’s work with a similar vaccine for MERS, which conferred immunity for 18 to 22 months after two doses, he is confident that, if it is proven effective, this COVID-19 vaccine would also, with two doses, confer immunity for at least a year.
He also noted that the Phase I trial showed that the mild symptoms people experienced in reaction to the vaccine actually lessened with the second dose, which meant people would be able to tolerate getting multiple booster shots of the vaccine throughout their lives.


fortune--2020-07-20--How Ford cars are getting closer to self-driving with Intel’s Mobileye

As the battle to supply the global auto industry with technology for self-driving vehicles heats up, Intel’s Mobileye notched a big win on Monday.
The company said it had struck a deal with Ford, the fourth-largest car company in the world by volume, to supply current versions of its EyeQ camera-based gear and software (with some tweaks) across Ford’s global product line.
“By customizing Mobileye’s excellent software and sensing technology, Ford’s great driver-assist features will continue to evolve and provide customers with confidence on the road throughout the life of their vehicles,” Lisa Drake, chief operating officer for Ford in North America said in a statement.
But Ford isn’t leaping entirely into the self-driving future quite yet. The deal covers systems like collision warning, automatic lane keeping, and adaptive cruise control. Those kinds of systems, which require the driver to maintain their attention on the road, are categorized only as Level 1 and Level 2 self-driving technology. Level 3 technology, which enables drivers to take their eyes off the road, isn’t yet included, let alone Levels 4 and 5, enabling cars to drive without human interaction.
Mobileye is competing with a horde of rivals, from chipmaker Nvidia to Google’s Waymo unit to well-funded startups like Argo AI. And that’s not to mention carmakers with their own efforts, like Tesla, and Big Tech players yet to show their wares, like Apple or Amazon (which bought self-driving startup Zoox last month).
Shares of Intel gained 1% in midday trading on Monday. Ford shares lost 3% as investors fretted that the auto industry would not recover quickly from the current pandemic-induced sales slowdown.
In Monday’s announcement, Ford said it would use Mobileye’s chips, sensors, and software in its upcoming next generation of vehicles including its top-selling F-150 pickup truck and new electric SUV, the Mustang Mach-E. The partners did not release the financial terms of the deal, but said that Ford cars will display Mobileye’s name and logo in vehicles that include the technology.
Intel bought Mobileye, the brainchild of Israeli computer scientist Amnon Shashua, for $15 billion in 2017, expecting it might take years for the technology bet to pay off. Now the unit is one of the fastest-growing parts of Intel, with revenue up 22% to $254 million in the first quarter. But it’s still a drop in the bucket at Intel, where chips for PCs and servers brought in $17 billion in the quarter. Mobileye’s operating income of $88 million, up 29%, was likewise dwarfed by PC and server operating income of $7.7 billion.


fortune--2020-07-20--Amazon loses driver wage suit, teeing up potential Supreme Court challenge

Are Amazon delivery drivers engaged in interstate commerce like seamen and railway workers? The First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled they are, meaning the company can’t rely on an arbitration clause to duck lawsuits over working conditions.
The ruling in question involves Bernard Waithaka, a driver who used his own car to carry out “last mile” deliveries for Amazon in Massachusetts. Waithaka alleges the company violated the state’s minimum wage laws, and illegally classified him and other drivers as independent contractors rather than employees.
Amazon responded to Waithaka’s lawsuit by pointing to a clause in its Amflex app—an app that Amazon uses to oversee deliveries with its own fleet of drivers. The clause requires drivers to waive their right to sue Amazon and instead to resolve any disputes under the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925.
This tactic of compelled arbitration is widely used by big companies, and its legality has been repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court. The Arbitration Act, however, contains a significant carve-out for “seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.”
In his lawsuit, Waithaka claimed that the carve-out should apply to Amazon drivers like him. The company pushed back, saying he couldn’t have been engaged in interstate commerce since he never left the state of Massachusetts.
A unanimous three-judge ruling of the First Circuit disagreed with Amazon’s interpretation of the law, pointing to a series of railway cases and other precedents to conclude workers don’t have to cross state lines to claim the Arbitration Act carve-out.
“Waithaka and other last-mile delivery workers who haul goods on the final legs of interstate journeys are transportation workers ‘engaged in…interstate commerce,’ regardless of whether the workers
themselves physically cross state lines,” the panel wrote.
The ruling has significant implications not only for Amazon but other companies like Postmates that rely on fleets of drivers to carry out deliveries. Such companies prefer to treat these drivers as contractors because it permits them to avoid numerous state laws related to wages and working conditions—a situation that could crumble if drivers are able to bring class action lawsuits challenging the classification.
The First Circuit’s ruling is likely not the final say on whether delivery workers are engaged in interstate commerce. Mike Sacks, a former lawyer and Supreme Court watcher, noted on Twitter that last week’s ruling tees up the issue for the country’s top court.
Amazon worker wants to sue Amazon in a class action, Amazon said it’s exempt under Federal Arbitration Act.
First Circuit sides with worker.
That’s a clear SCOTUS bat signal. https://t.co/SvtyIu1jMM pic.twitter.com/YXRTYfs4oF — Mike Sacks (@MikeSacksEsq) July 19, 2020
Amazon did not immediately reply to a request for comment about whether it will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, a lower court will continue to hear Waithaka’s claims about whether the company violated minimum wage and other employment laws.


fortune--2020-07-20--What is confidential computing, and why are cloud companies so interested in it?

Cloud technology companies are betting that businesses worried about being hacked will adopt a new computing technique to safeguard their most valuable information.
Google debuted last week a new service for its cloud computing arm that’s built around a concept known as confidential computing. Google vice president of cloud security Sunil Potti told reporters during an online media briefing that confidential computing is a “breakthrough technology that encrypts data while in use.”
This idea of confidential computing is gaining momentum in the tech industry as a possible new solution to security woes. Last fall, for example, several tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Alibaba, and VMware joined the Confidential Computing Consortium (CCC), a new organization that’s part of the influential business software nonprofit Linux Foundation.
Although many companies use encryption technologies to conceal their data if and when they suffer a data breach, there are still several ways hackers can access the information, explained Seth Knox, an outreach chair for the CCC.
For instance, when someone opens an app, the data that a company originally encrypted becomes unscrambled, with a record of that data stored on a computer or smartphone’s memory, Knox, also a marketing executive at CCC-member company Fortanix, explained. A hacker could, theoretically, use malware to covertly access the decrypted data when a user opens an app, he said.
By encrypting the entire computing process, companies can feel safer that their sensitive information is better protected than concealing only the data.
Despite the tech industry’s enthusiasm about confidential computing, it’s still “an emerging technology that is in its early days in terms of adoption,” Knox cautioned. It’s too early to say how effective confidential computing will be at keeping hackers at bay, as they often take some time to find holes to exploit new technologies. In any case, they’re plenty successful with using relatively simple techniques like sending phishing emails to workers as a way to penetrate corporate computer systems.
Still, Stephen Walli, a Microsoft principal program manager and governing board chair of the CCC, said that confidential computing could help make companies comfortable with doing more complicated data training for their machine-learning models. For instance, two organizations, each possessing their own data sets, could use confidential computing to train a machine-learning model without worrying that the other firm could see their data, Walli said.
Health care companies, which are generally reluctant to share data with each other, could team up on machine-learning projects aimed at discovering new medical treatments, for example.
Cloud computing companies like Google and Microsoft believe confidential computing could be a way to entice businesses to adopt more cloud services, Knox said. By encrypting all of a corporate app’s computing processes—often referred to as workloads—cloud computing vendors can better assure their customers that their apps are secure.
Besides the cloud computing vendors, computer-chip makers are also playing a big role in confidential computing, Knox said. In order for the technique to properly work, chip vendors like AMD and Intel would need to build certain security features into their semiconductors.
Google’s new confidential computing service works on certain AMD processors, but it eventually will work with other computer chips, Potti said during the media briefing.


fortune--2020-07-20--Taxi drivers want to know what Uber’s algorithms know, and they’re willing to appeal to EU privacy l

Taxi drivers want to know what Uber’s algorithms know, and they’re willing to appeal to EU privacy law to find out

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British taxi drivers who have long been fighting Uber over workers’ rights have now opened up a new front in their war: They’ve launched a data-protection complaint against the ride-hailing company.
The complaint has implications not only for Europe’s rules around the gig economy, but also for companies’ ability to maintain the secrecy of their proprietary algorithms—algorithms that in Uber’s case use information about drivers’ performance to allocate rides to them.
This means drivers’ income is partly dictated by information about things such as their driving behavior and passengers’ communications with Uber’s support department.
The newly minted App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU) filed its complaint against Uber in Amsterdam on Monday, the day before Uber starts trying to convince the U.K. Supreme Court that its workers are contractors, not employees, and therefore it doesn’t have an employer’s responsibilities regarding minimum wage and holiday pay. The case will be Uber’s last chance to overturn three successive rulings against it, and its main adversaries in that case, former drivers Yaseen Aslam and James Farrar, are also the president and general secretary respectively of the ADCU.
According to the ADCU’s new complaint, filed in Amsterdam, the location of the company’s international headquarters, Uber doesn’t give its drivers all the personal data it holds on them, nor does it fully explain to them how its algorithms use this information to manage drivers based on their performance.
If this is true, Uber might be breaking the EU’s tough data-protection law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in multiple ways.
The law says a company must tell people what personal data it holds on them, and give them a chance to download that data in a common, machine-readable format that allows the data to be ported over to a rival platform. According to the ADCU, Uber only coughs up very limited personal data in this way, or at all.
This is a particular problem for the ADCU and the affiliated International Alliance of App-Based Transport Workers (IAATW), which are trying to set up a “data trust.” The idea is to build a repository of drivers’ personal data that is outside the platforms’ control and aids collective bargaining. But unless companies such as Uber free their drivers’ data in a portable format, the idea won’t fly.
“Uber has deliberately blocked the efforts of drivers to access their data for the purposes of establishing a data trust,” Farrar said in an ADCU statement. “This is not only a violation of the law but a terrible abuse of Uber’s position of informational power over drivers. Drivers suffer not only wage theft but data theft too.”
The GDPR also says that if a company is using people’s data to make an automated decision about them or to profile them, it has to be transparent about the logic involved: Individuals must have the information they need to challenge that automated decision or profile, if they want to.
According to the union, Uber is again failing to give its drivers access to the performance-related profile data that dictates their treatment by the platform. The information here includes notes that Uber employees attach to certain drivers’ profiles, and tags for things like professionalism and navigation skills.
“We all know Uber manages by algorithm, but we don’t know exactly how, even though workers have the legal right to know,” reads the crowdfunding page for the ADCU’s Dutch complaint. “We have evidence that Uber maintains secret driver and courier profiles, which it uses to rate [workers’] performance with categories such as ‘late arrival/missed ETA,’ ‘negative attitude’ or ‘inappropriate behavior.’ For years, we have worked with hundreds of drivers to make data requests, but Uber always blocks the process and refuses to accept any collective approach.”
Uber had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing, but a spokesperson told the Guardian that its privacy team “works hard to provide any requested personal data that individuals are entitled to.”
The GDPR allows for massive fines of up to 4% of global annual revenues for particularly egregious lawbreaking, but the union is only asking for a fine of 10,000 euros ($11,430) for each day Uber doesn’t comply with the law.
That would be a paltry amount for a company whose 2019 net revenue ran to around $14 billion. Far more momentous would be an order by the Dutch data protection authority against Uber’s algorithmic secrecy.
The part of the GDPR covering automated decision-making hasn’t been tested much in the couple of years since the law entered into force.
One notable exception came last year, when the Finnish data protection authority cracked down on Swedish financial firm Svea Ekonomi over its refusal to tell an 83-year-old man why it rejected his creditworthiness. The investigation showed that Svea Ekonomi’s automated systems would not approve credit for someone that age, which the regulator said was legally unacceptable.
Uber has already shown itself to be the kind of company that will argue a case all the way up to Europe’s highest court if necessary. It did so, unsuccessfully, when trying to claim in a French case that it was just a digital platform rather than a transportation company.
So it is quite possible that this data-protection complaint, if upheld, could end up snowballing—and companies operating in Europe might end up having to be much more transparent about how their algorithms treat people.


fortune--2020-07-20--The other unseen cost of the pandemic

The other unseen cost of the pandemic

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By the numbers, the coronavirus has been no small cost for startups.
Some 536 have laid off roughly 70,587 employees since the pandemic hit the U.S. full force, according to Layoffs.fyi, a site that tracks those metrics. Stay-at-home orders and social distancing have forced revenues to effectively zero at travel and leisure companies and pushed startups with weaker balance sheets into a corner.
The likes of Airbnb, Ola, Uber, and Toast have each laid off upwards of 1,000 employees since early March.
But here’s another long-tail “cost” (or perhaps necessary rejiggering) to watch out for, even as early signs indicate that the pace of layoffs in the sector has slowed and some hard-hit companies are, surprisingly, beginning to see some revenue streams returning: What happens when companies that have distinguished and prided themselves on a community-driven culture compared to their corporate, capitalism-driven predecessors lay off and create disillusioned workers?
Epitomizing that thought: On Friday, the New York Times wrote of the layoffs at multi-unicorn Airbnb with a headline that says it all: Airbnb Was Like a Family, Until the Layoffs Started. Indeed, a quarter of its workforce, some 1,900, were laid off and reminded that, in the end, a job was a job. And in an “unusual public show of dissent” during a virtual employee Q&A session with CEO Brian Chesky, workers, referring to layoffs on Airbnb’s safety team, wrote in: “Safety was never a priority!”
Now former workers are facing a dissonance between a so-called inclusive culture and layoffs, out either creating their own startups or joining new companies. It’s unclear the extent to which this revelation shifts the culture of startup land, and it’s hard, for me, to imagine that the “community-based” culture that it has defined itself by will go away any time soon, but it’s not hard to think skepticism is on the rise.
The edtech boom continues: Coursera, the online learning platform that sources classes from university instructors, raised $130 million as part of its Series F round led by NEA. Existing investors including Kleiner Parkins, Seek Group, Learn Capital, SuRo Capital Corp, and G Squared also participated in the round that values the startup at about $2.5 billion, per the Information.
Investors are flocking to education technology companies that are experiencing a boom in users, as companies and schools alike seek out a new way to educate in the pandemic, and consumers are finding new, socially distanced hobbies.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Xpeng Motors, a Chinese electric-vehicle maker, raised $500 million in extended Series C funding. Investors include Aspex Management, Sequoia Capital China, Hillhouse Capital, and Coatue Management. Read more.
- Dream11, a Mumbai-based fantasy sports unicorn, is reportedly in talks to raise $200 million from investors including Kedaara Capital. Read more.
- Antengene, a Shanghai-based clinical-stage oncology and hematology biopharma company, raised $97 million in Series C funding. Fidelity Management & Research Company led the round and was joined by investors including Hillhouse Capital, GIC, Qiming Venture Partners, and Boyu Capital.
- Moneybox, a London, U.K.-based saving and investing app, raised £30 million ($37.7 million) in Series C funding. Investors included Eight Roads and new names Breega and CNP.
- Cohere Health, a Boston-based healthcare administration company between physicians and health plans, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Flare Capital Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Define Ventures.
- Sibros, a San Jose, Calif.-based connected vehicle system, raised $12 million in Series A funding. Nexus Venture Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Moneta Ventures and Twin Ventures.
- Neurovalens, a Belfast and San Diego-based maker of non-invasive neurostimulation products, raised £5.1 million ($6.5 million) in funding. IQ Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Wharton Asset Management Company, The Angel CoFund, Techstart Ventures, Clarendon Fund Managers, and the Government’s Future Fund.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- KKR is in talks about a potential acquisition of Elsan, a French clinic chain. CVC backs Elsan. A deal could value Elsan at about €3.5 billion ($4 billion). Read more.
- TowerBrook Capital Partners acquired Azzurri Group, a London-based owner of Zizzi and Ask Italian restaurant chains. TowerBrook has committed $88 million as part of its insolvency process. The chain will close 75 of its branches. Read more.
- EBay Inc.’s classifieds unit is in advanced talks to sell to Adventia, the Norwegian as group, per the Journal. The deal could value the unit at $8 billion or more. Others who have submitted bids include Prosus, Blackstone, Permira, and Hellman & Friedman. Read more.
- Astute, backed by Audax Group, acquired iPerceptions, a Montreal-based customer feedback software maker. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- RedBird Capital agreed to acquire 85% of Toulouse Football Club, a French soccer club. Club owner Olivier Sadran will retain a 15% stake. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Perforce Software, backed by Clearlake Capital Group and Francisco Partners, acquired Methodics Inc., a San Francisco-based provider of intellectual property lifecycle management and traceability solutions. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
OTHERS
- SoftBank Group sold an additional $2.2 billion of its stake in Alibaba Group, the Chinese e-commerce firm. Read more.
- Giglio Group SpA is leading a group of investors planning to bid for American clothing brand Brooks Brothers Group. Read more.
- Rosetta Stone (NYSE: RST), an Arlington County, Va.-based maker of education software, is exploring a potential sale of some of its parts as the pandemic boosts business. Voss Capital backs the firm. Read more.
- Sanofi is weighing potential acquisitions of U.S. biotechnology companies including Principia Biopharma, per Bloomberg. Read more.
- Italy’s Atlantia plans to sell its motorway unit, per Reuters citing sources. Read more.
- Intesa Sanpaolo (MI:ISP) raised its bid for rival Italian bank UBI Banca (MI:UBI) by 18% and added cash. Read more.
- Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) agreed to acquire Noble Energy (NASDAQ: NBL), a Houston, Texas-based hydrocarbon exploration company, in stock for $5 billion.
IPOS
- Topgolf, a Dallas-based driving range company, is reportedly going public via merger with Churchill Capital Corp II, a SPAC. Read more.
- Nurix Therapeutics, a San Francisco-based developer of targeted protein modulation drugs, plans to raise $150 million in an offering of 8.8 million shares priced between $16 to $18. Foresite Capital led the round, and was joined by investors including Bain Capital Life Sciences, Boxer Capital (Tavistock Group), EcoR1 Capital, Redmile Group, Wellington Management Company, The Column Group and Third Rock Ventures.
- Annexon, a South San Francisco, Calif.-based clinical-stage company developing therapies for classical complement-mediated disorders, plans to raise $150 million in an offering of 10 million shares priced between $14 to $16 apiece. Redmile Group led the round and was joined by investors including BlackRock, Deerfield Management Company, Eventide Asset Management, Farallon Capital Management, Janus Henderson Investors and Logos Capital.
- Vertex, a King of Prussia, Pa.-based provider of tax software for businesses, plans to raise $317 million by offering 21.2 million shares priced between $14 to $16 apiece. It posted revenue of $321.5 million and income of $31.1 million in 2019. It plans to list on the Nasdaq as “VERX.” Read more.
- Inozyme Pharma, a Boston-based biotech, plans to raise $75 million in an offering of 5 million shares priced between $14 to $16. Longitude Ventures Partners (14.3% pre-offering), Novo Holdings (14.3%), and NEA (14.3%) back the firm. It plans to list on the Nasdaq as “INZY.” Read more.
EXITS
- China Three Gorges Corp. opened talks to acquire X-Elio, a Spanish photovoltaic power generation company backed by KKR and Brookfield, above 500 million euros ($569 million). Read more.
F+FS
- Neotribe Ventures raised $216 million for its second fund.
Balance Point Capital is targeting $425 million target for its fifth flagship fund. Read more.
PEOPLE
- Grove Ventures named Lior Handelsman as a partner. He was among the founders of SolarEdge.
- VMG Partners, a private equity firm focused on consumer brands, promoted Angad Hira to partner and will maintain his position as CFO. Jon Marshall was promoted to partner. Alisa Williams was promoted to partner, as was McConnell Smith.