fortune--2020-04-24--Ricky Gervais on releasing ‘After Life’ season two during a global pandemic: ‘Everyone is grieving a

Ricky Gervais on releasing ‘After Life’ season two during a global pandemic: ‘Everyone is grieving all the time’

As quarantined TV fans clamor for escapist entertainment to binge during the current global coronavirus pandemic, could a series about a suicidal Brit grieving his dead wife be a panacea for our collective fear and suffering?
Ricky Gervais, the Emmy-winning creator and star of Netflix’s After Life, says there is a particular comfort in seeing characters struggle and mourn, especially at a time when human connection has never been a more precious commodity.
Fortune spoke by phone on March 29 with Gervais (then a few weeks into sheltering-in-place in London with longtime girlfriend, producer Jane Fallon) about how it feels to unveil the second season of his handcrafted dramedy amid so much suffering, how atheism inspires him to “make the most of living,” why Larry David gets away with jokes he never could, and how honesty is now his most powerful currency.
How are you holding up so far? Is your family safe?
We are okay. We have enough booze to last us and haven’t had to panic-buy anything. And I’m eating and drinking too much as usual. I know of people who’ve been sick, and a few family members think they may have had the virus, but they don’t know for sure. I think I have it every day now! There’s just so much misinformation. It’s quite frightening. All my fears are for other people. I haven’t got it bad. No complaints.
That’s a change for you.
[Laughs] Yeah, I’ll generally complain about anything.
Gervais says he draws upon his own relationship with longtime partner Jane Fallon (right) for a convincing portrayal of his alter ego’s relationship with late wife Lisa. Andrew Cowie—AFP/GettyImages
So much blame is being hurled at our leaders during this time, yet you generally avoid getting political in social media. What’s been your approach to connecting with fans in the past month?
I never get political—and not because I think would alienate an audience. I just know that I’d personally be a terrible leader. When I first joined Twitter, I’d do a joke that’d get hundreds of “likes.” But if one person says, “I don’t like it,” I’d delete it. I want to be liked way too much. So I’ve been doing Twitter live in the last few weeks—I’ve joked that I’m like Churchill during the war, bringing morale up—but you don’t want to be too flippant or too down. It’s a fine line I’m not used to worrying about. When people see me perform live, what’s happening in the outside world doesn’t usually matter.
You couldn’t have imagined what a captive global audience you’d have for season two of After Life, which is excellent, but somehow even more depressing than season one. Is this the best or worst possible time for viewers to watch a show about a man who is suicidal over his wife dying from cancer?
I’d never had tens of millions of people watch a show of mine, nor have such an emotional connection to it, as I did with season one. My agent got 300 letters! What I learned from that was: Everyone is grieving all the time, and the older you are, the more you have to grieve about. People would tell me on the street, “I lost my brother the week before I watched the show,” or “My wife’s going through chemotherapy, and we watched it together.” And this brings me to the second thing I learned, which is: People like to watch things about what they’re grieving. It’s good to talk about it. I also think we like watching things about our lives if they are done well, particularly about taboo or niche topics. People are tired of having things watered down for them. After Life could never be on network television. Those show creators have good intentions like, “I’m gonna do a series with real, grownup themes,” but someone always comes along and says, “If you change that, you’ll get more viewers.” I don’t know why we think that people can’t take seeing hard things; they’re already talking about them at work and at home.
The love story of Tony and Lisa (Kerry Godliman), whose death from breast cancer happens just before the series begins, is told throughout “After Life” via flashbacks and video footage. Ray Burmiston—Netflix
It’s probably because television has, since the beginning, been about selling aspiration. Programming has long reflected a way of life that most people aren’t living, and the advertising required to keep shows on the air has to support a skewed reality.
Yes, and I see why that had to be, especially in a postwar world. We needed optimism and positivity. I actually think of After Life as aspirational; talking about grief, death, and terrible things in an interesting, funny way is uplifting. Humor is meant to help us get over bad things.
It’s also meaningful, and rare, to see a middle-aged man be so vulnerable and broken. It’s certainly the most heart-wrenching, dramatic acting I’ve ever seen you do.
Oh, thank you. Yeah, you don’t often see a hero being so screwed up and flawed, and not in a cool way like, “He’s screwed up because he’s a hard-drinking womanizer! That’s his flaw!”
Like James Bond.
Exactly. As opposed to just being a fat little putz who misses his dead wife. I’ve always liked exploring heroism in ordinary things. It’s hard to be normal. It’s hard to be alive. The show is obviously a study in grief, mental illness, and addiction, but also just surviving everyday challenges.
And that it’s okay to not put on a brave face to make other people feel better.
Yes. And Tony is aware that his situation is quite heavy for some people. There’s a line where he says, “I should be nice at least to the people who’ve tried [to help me].” Even though he’s tried to become a psychopath, he’s nice to the dog, his nephew, the new girl at work, and old lady in the graveyard. Being cruel is not who he is.
When have you personally felt the most grief-stricken in your own life?
When I lost both parents. I also lost my oldest brother last year.
I’m very sorry.
Yeah, thank you. Losing grandparents and parents is the natural order of things. But losing a sibling or a spouse isn’t. Another theme I’ve explored in the show is the idea of a spouse saying, “I want to go first. I want to die first.” But that’s selfish!
Tony’s friend and fellow mourner Anne (Penelope Wilton) takes a swig of wine as the two visit their dearly departed partners in a scene from season two. Ray Burmiston—Netflix
To not want to be around for the suffering that follows.
Yes. [Penelope Wilton’s] character, Anne, says in [season one]: “I’d rather live missing him than have him missing me,” which is a beautiful, twisted piece of altruism. She’s basically saying, “I am suffering more than anything at the moment, but I’m glad he isn’t.” It’s selfish to want to “go first” and bittersweet, particularly if you believe there’s no afterlife. In that case, you don’t fear death, because there’s nothing to fear. But what you do know is this life is all you’ve got, so what a tragic waste to throw it away before you have to!
Does this mean atheists naturally live more robust lives than those who believe in a version of heaven?
That’s interesting. People think because I’m an atheist I don’t care about dying, which couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s not that we think we’ve got nothing to live for; it’s that we know we’ve got nothing to die for, and that makes us want to make the most of everything. But it still comes down to quality of life, which for me is more important than longevity. Like putting a pet down—it’s most beautiful thing one can do.
Speaking of, I was very sorry to see that your sweet cat Ollie passed away.
Thank you. She was such a lovely, little soul. She was 16-and-a-half. We bawled our eyes out, but knew it was the kindest thing to do. And no one should ever worry about doing that for themselves. I’m a big campaigner for assisted suicide. It should be everyone’s right; no one should have to bargain or beg for deciding when they die.
Tony and his colleagues Sandy and Lenny (Mandeep Dhillon and Tony Way) interview an eccentric local musical producer for their small-town-England newspaper, the Tambury Gazette. Natalie Seery—Netflix
In the new season, Tony’s brother-in-law Matt is still seeing the terrible, caustic therapist he saw in season one. To what degree are you skewering the practice of therapy with that character? Are you drawing at all from your own experience?
I’ve actually never been to therapy, nor suffered from depression or mental illness that I know of. And that’s just luck. [Therapist actor] Paul Kaye is amazing, isn’t he? I put everything I knew about “toxic masculinity” into his character. The point I’m also making is that we’re all narcissists now, especially on social media. People are rewarded for bad behavior—and then they write a book about it. [Laughs]
This season you’ve also gone more out of your way to humanize side characters—like Roxy the sex worker—who might otherwise be throwaway. She isn’t pathetic or sad; rather, a happy, intelligent woman with an emotional inner life who offers friendship and comfort to Tony when he needs it most.
I’ve tried to create a world where’s there one of everyone in this strange little village. People assume after seeing me host the Globes or do standup that I’m the most judgmental person in the world. That’s not true at all. I let everyone off the hook because we’re all flawed. I’ve often said the one thing from the Bible that should be taught is “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Comedy should never be judgmental; it should be always about the idea that we’re all fucking idiots.
Gervais’s 2018 Netflix stand-up special “Humanity” earned backlash for jokes, including about Caitlyn Jenner’s gender transition from male to female, that some deemed as transphobic. Gervais defends the material as another chapter in his equal-opportunity skewering of all people and topics, such as “AIDS, cancer, famine, and the Holocaust.” Ray Burmiston—Netflix
That said, you have gotten blowback in the past for tweets and jokes you’ve made at the expense of transgender people, including a prolonged bit in your 2018 Netflix special Humanity about Caitlyn Jenner. There’s a scene in After Life this season where Tony’s dopey colleague Lenny opens up about his confusion surrounding what it means to be transgender, and Tony guides him through the proper words to use. Is this vignette meant to reinforce to critics that you aren’t in fact transphobic?
That scene is all about how some people really don’t understand [trans issues], nor how to keep up with the proper terminology. I’ve always been pro–trans rights as I am for all human rights. I think [the backlash] came when I made a joke about a person who happened to be trans. You can joke about race without being racist; you can joke about a trans person without being transphobic. The offense comes when people confuse the subject of a joke with the actual target. They’re not the same. I did a joke once about peanut allergies, and a woman complained because her daughter was allergic to peanuts. She was very emotional. I told her I also make jokes about AIDS, cancer, famine, and the Holocaust. She said, “Yes, but the Holocaust didn’t kill children.” What? You can’t be logical when you care that much about something.
Why do you think someone like Larry David, who like you is a Caucasian, cisgender straight male, is able to get away with jokes about transgender people, of which there were a few in the most recent season of Curb Your Enthusiasm? Transgender actors Laverne Cox and Chaz Bono even appeared on the show for said gags, one of which centered on Bono’s character having such a large penis he would accidentally knock things over with it. It’s hard to imagine you emerging unscathed from such material.
There are a few reasons: Larry doesn’t care about realism or the emotional impact of his comedy. Everyone goes back to square one after each joke, where in my comedy and shows, I deal with the fallout. People know what he’s doing is a cartoon, and even the players don’t take it seriously. The other thing Larry does right is that he doesn’t bother to explain himself. I ask for it by doing that. [Laughs]
Back to After Life, how much are you pulling from your relationship with Jane in creating a portrait of Tony’s relationship with his late wife? How does she feel about the show?
She loves it, and it’s all influenced in some way by real life. I wanted to make it feel like a real relationship. It’s funny—someone at a junket asked us, “Are you worried their relationship seems too perfect? That the video flashbacks aren’t believable?” And Kerry, the actress who plays Tony’s late wife, Lisa, said, “Why would they film their arguments?” [Laughs]
Gervais’s zeitgeisty 2001 BBC comedy “The Office” (starring Martin Freeman, Lucy Davis, Gervais, and Mackenzie Crook) kick-started a slew of quirky series created by and starring the comedian, who says he has little interest in appearing in films or shows that aren’t his own. BBC/Courtesy Everett Collection
Well, there’s certainly plenty of sad footage of Lisa for Tony to pore over, which he does.
And those moments allow us to go a bit more brutal. There’s a moment this season, without spoiling it, that kills me. I choked up every time I watched it in the edit. It’s also interesting to realize that all of our “afterlives” are now going to be on video and film. There are maybe 10 pictures of me from growing up. But I’ve got 50 photos of me and my cat in the bath, hundreds of me sitting on the sofa and making stupid faces. And video of everything. I heard once that more pictures were taken in 2014 than in the rest of history put together.
And most were of the Kardashians.
Yes, of course—photos of people pouting. Narcissism is the new genetic trait. I mean, they had to ban selfies at Auschwitz last year.
Looking back at your career, from The Office to Extras to Derek, you’ve rarely acted in anything that you didn’t also create. Is that because what most inspires you is that which is the most personal?
People do ask me to act in their stuff, and I always have to explain to them why they can do better than me. [Laughs] I’ve done Night at the Museum, Sesame Street, writing The Simpsons for fun, but I don’t count them as “my work.” It just doesn’t excite me to pop up in a film I didn’t write or direct. If you asked what I’ve done in my career I’d say I’ve made three or four sitcoms, a couple of movies, and stand-up. I don’t want to get more famous or get richer; I want to be more honest, and I don’t care if the number of people I connect with dwindles as a result. What excites me most is humanity; people saying, “Your show helped me through a terrible time.” That makes me want to skip down the street.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Chris Hemsworth calls Extraction the most exhausting shoot of his career
—True History of the Kelly Gang director, stars on their hypnotic outlaw saga
—Hollywood artists are creating PPE for the medical community
—China’s movie theaters are closed again, causing anxiety for studios
—How Mrs. America designers revived a ’70s feminist showdown
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-04-24--A chef considers her restaurant’s place in a post-coronavirus world

You ’ re the breadwinner in the relationship .
Now what ?

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Sen. Elizabeth Warren mourns her brother, who died of the coronavirus, Midol rebrands to reach a new generation of women, and a chef considers her place in a post-COVID world. Have a rejuvenating weekend.
– ‘I’ve been dreaming again.’ Let’s end the week with some wholehearted candor. When I went to read chef Gabrielle Hamilton‘s open, honest essay in the New York Times about the shuttering of her East Village restaurant Prune, I might as well have highlighted the whole thing.
It’s a commentary on so many of-the-moment matters—the coronavirus’s impact on small businesses, yes, but also urban gentrification, the near-impossible economics of the restaurant industry that employs so many, income inequality, and our current on-demand, Instagram culture, which Hamilton treats with open distain.
She walks us through the labor-intensive process of temporarily shutting a businesses—”It turned out that abruptly closing a restaurant is a weeklong, full-time job”—and the quagmire of government resources that are supposed to help—”No one was going to rescue me.”
And she dwells on a gut-wrenching question so many are asking these days; whether the world that emerges from this crisis will still need the skills and talent we once offered it.
In the end, it’s a portrait of resilience, of an entrepreneur “dreaming again,” in a papered-up restaurant, of “round tables, big tables, six-people tables, eight-tops.”
I encourage you to read it.
Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
Today’s Broadsheet was produced by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Rest in peace. Sen. Elizabeth Warren's brother Donald Reed Herring died of the coronavirus on Tuesday. Herring, an Air Force veteran, was 86. "I’m grateful to the nurses and other front-line staff who took care of my brother, but it is hard to know that there was no family to hold his hand or to say ‘I love you’ one more time," Warren said in a statement. Boston Globe
- Not your mother's Midol. Midol is getting a major rebrand, embarked upon after Bayer learned that consumers weren't particularly attached to the old Midol or aware about how it differed from other pain relievers. The new bright pink and yellow packaging is meant to reach millennial and Gen Z women with its "modern, bold femininity." Adweek
- Home at the White House. First Lady Melania Trump has in the past avoided too many speaking engagements or campaign stops. But she's much more comfortable at home, making her well-suited to the coronavirus era's form of public appearances. Washington Post
- Taking stock. Why is it so fraught to charge members of Congress with insider trading? Fortune's Rey Mashayekhi examines the question—including the effects of the 8-year-old Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act—after the high-profile trades by Sen. Kelly Loeffler and other lawmakers. Fortune
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Ten-X president Maureen Waters joins MetaProp as partner. Casper hired Lisa Pillette as CMO. Meredith Corporation EVP and chief business and data officer Alysia Borsa joins the board of trustees of the National 4‑H Council.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Essential again. Texas's battle over abortion during the coronavirus lockdown is over for now. A revised ban on non-essential medical procedures allows exceptions for providers that don't use hospital beds or public sources of personal protective equipment; the state's attorney general agreed that abortion providers meet those standards and can resume procedures. CBS News
- Relief restrictions. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ordered that government relief for college students affected by the coronavirus crisis can only go to those eligible for federal student aid—meaning that undocumented students and DACA recipients can't receive the emergency relief. New York Times
- Soothing song. Kacey Musgraves' 'Rainbow' was released on her award-winning Golden Hour album in 2018, but the ballad has found new popularity among listeners seeking comfort in the coronavirus era. It sold 3,000 downloads after Musgraves performed it on the 'One World: Together at Home' broadcast, remained near the top of the iTunes chart for days, and is now in a Target ad about the pandemic. Washington Post
ON MY RADAR
Beyoncé and Jack Dorsey donate $6 million for African-Americans’ mental health during the coronavirus pandemic Fortune
What novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reads while she works New York Times
Nurses have always used ingenuity when it comes to personal protective equipment Vogue
PARTING WORDS
"We’re completely tied together."
-Colleen Stephens, president of Alaska's Stan Stephens Glacier & Wildlife Cruises, on how coronavirus outbreaks in Seattle and Canada hurt Alaska's tourism industry


fortune--2020-04-24--The Church of England is going up against ExxonMobil on climate change. Can it win?

By the time Edward Mason stepped up to the lectern in front of a crowd of oil and gas executives on a Tuesday morning in February, the presence of the slight, gap-toothed head of responsible investment at the Church Commissioners for England—the main investment vehicle of the Church of England—should not have come as a surprise.
Mason and his colleague Adam Matthews, director of ethics and engagement at the Church’s pension board, have become a regular presence at events like this one—the annual International Petroleum Week in London—and everywhere else climate change and the world’s largest oil and gas companies are discussed. On this winter morning, Mason was using his time on stage to provide an update on the Church’s investment policies—and to deliver a warning.
“You’ll all be aware of the divestment movement,” he said, referring to the push among some large investors to withdraw funds backing oil companies, and other sectors seen as major contributors to climate change. The Church wants “to see change”, said Mason, but does not believe that ending their investment is the best way to meet that goal. Instead, he told executives, “we will strain every sinew to help you become part of the solution to climate change.” At the same time, there’s a limit to the Church’s patience, says Mason. If companies do not get on board with dramatically reducing emissions, his organization will have no choice but to reverse its policy.
At first glance, Mason’s statement appears to be something of an empty threat. The Church admits its holdings in the oil and gas sector are relatively minor, so the possible loss of its financial backing does not exactly have the industry running scared. But the Church of England does have something that gets the attention of energy CEOs: influence.
Mason and Matthews lead engagement on climate change with the world’s biggest energy companies on behalf of a group of institutional investors representing over $40 trillion. As a result, the Church commands attention and has been credited with driving a wave of public and institutional pressure on the industry to cut emissions.
The pair have had some wins: shortly before Mason’s appearance at IP Week, British energy giant BP announced it would aim for ‘net zero’—meaning it would reduce emissions as much as possible, then offset the remainder—by 2050. On April 16, Royal Dutch Shell, based in the Netherlands, announced it had made the same commitment, becoming the largest energy company in the world to do so—and quoted Matthews in its press release.
That accomplishment was overshadowed by a crisis more immediate than climate change—the COVID-19 pandemic. But despite their concerns about the virus, Mason and Matthews are staying focused on another longterm challenge, one that lies on the other side of the ocean, and has so far proved more resistant to change than its European counterparts: ExxonMobil.
This week, the Church’s repeated, if not overly successful, efforts to bring that U.S.-based giant to heel ratcheted up a level when it announced on Friday that it, along with other powerful climate-focused investors, would issue a protest vote against Exxon’s entire board at it’s upcoming general meeting. It’s the latest blow in the battle between the two institutions—but almost certainly not the last.
‘Destruction of God’s world’
The Church of England—a 486-year-old institution with a former oil executive for an Archbishop and Queen Elizabeth II at its head—might seem like an unlikely candidate to play the climate change heavy. After all, the movement to act on climate change has become all but synonymous with youth activists like Greta Thunberg, while the Church struggles to even coax young people through its doors.
And not only does the Church seem, at least at first glance, to be a relic from another age, but its financial firepower is also limited. With a total of roughly GBP 14 billion (or about $17.73 billion) under management across all of its funds, it’s one of the world’s largest religious investors—but remains a relative minnow compared to large institutional pension funds and asset managers. By comparison, a frequent collaborator—the national Swedish pension fund, AP7—had about $54.6 billion assets under management between its equity and fixed income funds as of March 31.
Adam Matthews, director of ethics and engagement at the Church’s pension board. Credit: Church of England
What’s more, its oil and gas holdings are also relatively modest. The Church’s pension fund holds GBP 16.2 million ($19.9 million) in common stock across the oil and gas sector as a whole, while its Church Commissioners fund doesn’t disclose exact figures for the sector; both BP and Shell are listed as among its top twenty most valuable equity holdings.
Given those limitations, the Church’s ability to command the attention of the oil and gas sector is all the more surprising. One of the ways it’s managed to hold sway is by committing to make climate change a focus in a way other large investors, juggling multiple stakeholders and priorities, do not. From 2014 onwards, the Church Commissioners’ annual reports listed climate change as a major responsible investing priority, and in 2017, the Church co-founded the Transition Pathway Initiative, a centre at the London School of Economics to help asset managers track companies’ climate change policies. In February, the Church expanded that strategy to its own operations, committing to make hundreds of thousands of drafty, ancient churches and cathedrals carbon neutral by 2030.
It’s also bolstered its clout by leading efforts not just on behalf of its own funds, but for other investors with far deeper pockets. The Church co-leads engagement efforts with other investors on BP, Shell, and ExxonMobil on behalf of Climate Action 100+, an institutional investor group that covers $40 trillion worth of assets, including BlackRock, and explicitly works to shift companies’ climate policies.
Climate investment groups credit the Church as a pioneer of this cooperative approach, particularly when it comes to engaging directly with oil companies on emissions reductions targets, and on their lobbying practices. A Church-led effort with AP7 to call out European companies’ behind-the-scenes lobbying against climate change policies, in 2018, provided the inspiration for a similar effort in the U.S., says Timothy Smith, director of ESG shareowner engagement at Boston Trust Walden, an ESG-specialized asset manager, and former executive director at the U.S.-based Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. “They did this when nobody else was doing it,” he says. And more broadly, the Church’s approach has provided a model for a growing number of investors that are beginning to put climate change at the center of their portfolios.
“They very much punch above their weight,” says Fiona Reynolds, CEO of the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investing, which is also a member of Climate Action 100+.
Beyond tactics, Mason and Matthews attribute the Church’s outsized role in climate change investment to having something secular investors do not: a moral imperative. While companies like BlackRock must carefully justify their climate policies in terms of financial risk and reward, the Church has a council of investment advisors and religious leaders to provide both the financial and theological backing to its approach.
As Smith puts it: “To use religious terms: they’re worried about the deep destruction of God’s world, that will occur—and is occurring.”
‘The gap was large, and now it’s even larger.’
But while major European energy companies appear to finally be shifting their climate-related policies, across the Atlantic, America’s largest publicly traded oil and gas company, ExxonMobil, has been—and remains—the Church’s white whale.
The company is often treated as a bellwether for the U.S. oil and gas sector as a whole, but its sheer scale gives it influence far beyond its headquarters in Irving, Texas. After Shell and BP, it is the third largest publicly traded oil and gas company in the world, operating in 45 countries on six continents, and pulling in nearly $265 billion in revenue and other income in 2019. Any shifts in Exxon’s policies wouldn’t just represent a major pivot in the future of U.S. energy—but could be a tipping point that would force other major companies to follow the same path.
head of responsible investing at the Church Commissioners for England. Credit: Church of England
In 2017, a shareholder proposal brought by the Church to Exxon’s annual general meeting to force the company to disclose the impact of climate change on its business passed with 62% of the shareholder vote. Since 2018, Exxon has released annual “Energy and Carbon Summary” reports on how rising temperatures will impact its business.
The Church followed that win with engagement directly with Exxon, when Mason began speaking directly to the company in 2018 on behalf of Climate Action 100+, working with the New York State Common Retirement Fund. With little sign of progress from its private conversations, the Church has also continued to use the public route, attempting to introduce shareholder proposals on climate policy at the company’s Annual General Meetings.
But since 2017, the approach has only gained limited ground, with further shareholder proposals either failing to pass, or being struck off the proxy ballot with the backing of the SEC. This year, a Church of England proposal asking the company to set emissions reduction targets consistent with the Paris Climate Agreement was struck from the ballot for the second consecutive year. Other climate-related proposals on climate policies and lobbying disclosures brought by other investors have made it to the ballot, but have so far failed to gain a majority vote. In February, Mason said Climate Action 100+ is still engaging with Exxon, “but we’re not happy with what we’re hearing.”
By April, that relationship appeared increasingly tense. On Friday, the Church and the New York Common State Retirement Fund announced they would vote against Exxon’s full board at its Annual General Meeting in May—in protest over the company’s climate policies—and urged other shareholders to do the same.
Exxon, for its part, denies being a climate change holdout. In a response to the Church’s description of a company that refuses to budge on the subject, Exxon provided a summary of its policies on climate change; it did not address the Church of England or other critics directly, and did not confirm that it engages with Climate Action 100+. The company says it is committed to and aligned with the Paris Agreement, and is transparent about political donations. In March, the company said it had reduced its methane emissions—a potent greenhouse gas that the International Energy Agency says is equal to 6% of global energy-related emissions—by 20% between 2017 and 2020.
Exxon also says it had good reasons for striking down shareholder proposals brought by the Church and other investors on its climate policies. In its statement to the SEC this year on the Church’s proposal on emissions targets, the company said the proposal was dropped because it was “false and misleading”, sought to micromanage the company, and was ultimately unnecessary, since the company had already “substantially implemented” the proposal to cut emissions.
The question of why the Church, so effective when engaging with European giants like BP and Shell, has failed to find traction with Exxon largely comes down to politics, say ESG experts—and specifically the gaping divide between the U.S. and Europe on the subject of climate change.
Investors’ stance on the issue tends to “mirror the politics of that place,” says Gayle Peterson, an associate fellow at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, and co-director of its social finance and impact investing programs. For major corporations in the U.S. versus Europe, “there’s a very different mindset,” says Fiona Reynolds, of PRI, adding that European governments are much further ahead on climate change policy.
A protester in Chicago held a sign in June encouraging a stop to climate change a year after President Trump’s decision for the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. Scott Olson—Getty Images
In late 2019, the Trump Administration gave official notice it would pull out of the Paris Agreement, after first promising to leave the accord in 2017. Meanwhile, the governments of the U.K. and EU have been far more willing to engage with the issue; both are targeting net zero emissions by 2050. And with Shell’s April commitment to do the same, the U.S. and Europe have drifted even further apart, says Matthews: “The gap was large, and now it’s even larger.”
Now, there’s yet another factor complicating the efforts to pressure Exxon and other companies flagged as climate laggards: the coronavirus pandemic. The International Energy Agency says demand for oil due to global lockdowns is likely to drop by 9.3 million barrels per day this year—and that’s assuming demand starts to recover in the second half of 2020.
While anemic demand is likely to curb emissions in the short term, it also threatens the financial health of energy companies, with even the largest pledging production cuts and announcing furloughs and layoffs. The broad economic fallout—not to mention the distraction, as the world pivots to focus on combating the virus—risks reducing the capital and urgency driving the movement to reduce emissions, former Bank of England governor Mark Carney warned in March. Indeed, this crisis represents a test of whether companies worldwide will even stick to the climate commitments they’ve already made, said the IEA’s executive director, Fatih Birol.
But in February, even before the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic or the announcement of Shell’s new net zero target, Mason warned when it comes to climate change and business, the world is changing very fast.
“Exxon has its fingers in its ears, and is saying, you know, ‘la, la, la, things are going to be the same as they’ve always been’,” he said. “And they’re not.”
More must-read energy sector coverage from Fortune:
—Why the coronavirus crisis could make Big Oil greener
—How Global 500 companies are responding to the coronavirus
—IEA warns of “staggering” demand drop in global oil markets
—Crude math: Why $10 oil could be worth less than nothing—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: PSEG CEO on climate change action: “It should have been done yesterday”
Subscribe to The Loop, a weekly look at the revolutions in energy, tech, and sustainability.


fortune--2020-04-24--Pandemic economics: The U.S. is learning why limiting hospital beds carries a steep cost

The coronavirus outbreak should be teaching an important lesson. Capping the number of hospital beds is a bad idea.
Around half of all Americans live in states governed by iron-fisted regulations that effectively block the construction of new hospitals, the expansion of existing facilities, or even the addition of beds in recovery rooms to treat an overflow of patients in a bad flu season. Those certificate-of-need laws, or CONs, artificially hold the number of hospital beds at far lower volumes than providers would supply in a free market. When a deadly outbreak strikes, hospitals in the regulated states are handcuffed. The flood of infected patients need unoccupied beds, but those beds aren’t available because the hospitals are tightly packed. The CONs hobble their flexibility to handle a surge.
Given those constraints, you’d think that the coronavirus pandemic would have swamped America’s hospitals, forcing providers to turn sick patients away, and accelerating COVID-19’s spread. Indeed, many experts were predicting that doomsday scenario just a few weeks ago. It hasn’t happened––and not just because the remarkable adherence to social distancing flattened the curve of new infections much sooner than forecast. In reality, the U.S. escaped disaster in large part because restrictive states suspended their caps, allowing hospitals to expand far beyond their official “capacity” and so that tightly controlled New York became just as free as such non-CON peers as Texas.
The remarkable results from letting freedom ring should prompt the states to weigh permanently scuttling their CONs. If that happens, states constrained for decades would add all the new beds providers could profitably fill in normal times, as well as a cushion for future outbreaks that’s now a thin, fragile buffer. If the CONs are reinstated, American hospitals could well get overwhelmed when the next pandemic strikes. “I would hope the governors would say, ‘Let’s not risk this again,’” says Jeffrey Singer, a surgeon in Phoenix and fellow at the Cato Institute. “The free-market states have a lot more capacity than the CON states. They should be the model for ensuring America has the right hospital capacity in the future.”
What are certificate-of-need laws?
CONs are all imposed by individual states via regulations voted by their legislatures. But it was a federal measure that first spread the regimes from coast to coast. In 1974, the U.S. offered big incentives to states that created agencies empowered to establish tight controls on health care services. Then, as today, the theory ran that unfettered competition curbs care in poor urban and farm communities in favor of affluent suburbs, and that providers would flood America with MRI and dialysis centers and low-quality hospitals forcing Medicare and patients to pay extra for all the over-investment.
In 1987, Congress repealed the federal mandate, and over the next three decades, 15 states have scuttled their CONs. In the 35 that kept them, state agencies hold the power to approve, deny, or alter applications from hospitals, ambulatory centers, and other providers for new or expanded facilities. The list of regulated services varies widely by state. In New Jersey, the Healthcare Facility Licensing/Certification Agency grants or withholds CONs for all types of hospitals, as well as diagnostic treatment centers, nursing homes, and a dozen other services.
Among the most commonly and heavily restricted categories are hospitals. Of the 35 CON states, 28 require their agency’s approval for construction of a new hospital or additions to an existing one. States regularly ban hospitals in the same chain from transferring beds from a site that has too many, to facility that needs them. The restricted 28 encompass most of the states hit hardest by the coronavirus, including New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Washington, and Illinois. Notable non-CON states are Pennsylvania, California, and Texas.
CONs don’t deliver the promised benefits
The idea that artificially constraining the supply of any product or service would expand availability and lower costs is suspect. And in the case of CONs, many studies show that the practice cripples competition with predictable results: higher prices, bigger total costs, and less access. The rub is that incumbent hospitals, nursing homes, and diagnostic centers have a strong incentive to block lower-cost rivals from invading their markets and forcing down rates. “It’s protectionism on the state level,” says Matt Mitchell, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Mitchell found that CON jurisdictions offer far fewer ambulatory surgery centers, dialysis facilities, and MRIs than non-CON states. In a letter to the President in 2018, the secretaries of Labor, Treasury, and HHS warned that “state policies that restrict entry into provider markets can limit choice, competition, and innovation.” The three departments, along with the FTC and antitrust arm of the Justice Department, advise states to consider repealing or scaling back their CONs. “It’s as though a state agency told all retailers that each store could devote only four shelves to toilet paper, when customers would be buying out six shelves,“ says Singer. “You’d have a shortage of toilet paper, and consumers would pay much higher prices for it.”
The supply of beds is a lot lower in the CON states
Contrary to the claims that restrictions greatly improve access and choice, Mercatus found that the free-market states have, on average, 30% more hospitals per capita than do the CONs, and that edge holds for both urban and rural facilities. Across the U.S., the average number of hospital beds per 1,000 people is 2.77. By contrast, Italy has 3.18, China 4.3, South Korea 12.3, and Japan 13.1. The divide is stark between the two categories of states. According to Mercatus’ research, the CON states have 1.31 fewer beds per 1,000 people than the non-CONs.
Many of the CON states with large metro areas offer extremely low levels of empty beds, and hence lack a crucial buffer if a new virus attacks. The Urban Institute’s Fredric Blavin conducted a study of unoccupied beds per 1,000 residents in all 50 states in 2018; those figures are likely little changed since just before the outbreak. While the national average stands at 0.80 free beds per 1000 population, Connecticut registers 0.45, Massachusetts 0.51, Washington 0.57, and New York 0.58.
Miraculously, tight supply didn’t cause crippling shortages
A warning to the reader: I was unable to fully reconcile the hospitalization numbers coming from such sources as New York State, the CDC, and the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). It’s unclear precisely which categories of beds different sources are counting. Still, here’s my best take on the predicted “shortages” that didn’t materialize for both the U.S. overall and for certain states.
On its website, IHME shows “beds needed” for the U.S. at roughly 66,000, and a “shortage” of 13,400, split between a shortfall of 8,900 ICU and 4,500 regular beds. Those figures suggest that the areas hit, or expected to be hit, by the virus, dominated by urban hotspots such as the New York metro area, offered around 52,600 available beds before the outbreak (66,000 beds needed minus the shortage of 13,400). Those figures square with the Urban Institute numbers showing total unoccupied beds in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island of less than 24,000, since those five account for around half of all coronavirus cases.
Those 24,000 free beds are an incredibly lower number compared with national norms. For example, Long Island’s Nassau County had just 0.34 empty beds per 1,000 people, while Kings County, home to Brooklyn, had 0.32, and Connecticut’s Fairfield County 0.42––all far below the U.S. average of 0.8.
But wait! The U.S. found beds for all the coronavirus patients who required hospitalization. All of the 66,000 “beds needed” were supplied. According to the IHME site, New York State alone is lodging 20,300 coronavirus sufferers, 7,200 more than the state’s capacity, apparently meaning the level of unoccupied beds prior to the pandemic. All told, hospitals in the five states are supplying 38,500 beds for COVID-19 patients, 60% more than their pre-crisis capacity.
So how did America defy the CONs and create such an on-the-spot gusher in beds?
States loosened the regs to help America’s hospitals handle the surge
A big factor was the ban on elective procedures, opening up beds that would have gone to patients recovering from or hip replacement surgery to folks gravely ill with COVID-19. But the states also helped big-time with what amounted to a sweeping wave of deregulation. No fewer than 18 states waived or scaled back the CONs restricting more hospital beds, including New York, North Carolina, and Kentucky. “In non-CON states, hospitals couldn’t bring in more beds fill part of the ERs and recovery rooms,” says Singer. “That’s what the Arizona hospitals always do when hit by a bad flu season. But when states lifted their CON restrictions, the hospitals were able to add lots of beds.”
Granting hospitals the flexibility that the CON laws normally deny them worked beautifully. But what if total hospitalizations hadn’t peaked below 70,000, and had hit the roughly 200,000 that the IHME and other organizations believed possible just a few weeks ago? In that case, making up for the shortfall, even if the states once again lifted their CONs, would be a lot harder. The CONs are designed to keep capacity tight, and that policy runs directly counter to fighting an epidemic. The better option is for the states to scrap their CONs and allow rising entrepreneurs and new rivals to provide all the beds America’s health care customers want, and ample extra capacity to tackle the next attack.
More must-read finance coverage from Fortune:
—Real unemployment rate soars past 20%—and the U.S. has now lost 26.5 million jobs
—Why charging members of Congress with insider trading is so fraught
—Out of work, but not unemployed: How much Europe is paying its idled workers
—This time, the banks were ready: How the Big Four prepared to survive the coronavirus
—Furlough vs. layoff? What to know about your rights and benefits
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
Subscribe to Fortune’s Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


fortune--2020-04-25--Coronavirus brought China’s travel industry to a standstill. Now it’s showing signs of life

Much of the world is struggling to contemplate how to make a trip to the local grocery store amid the coronavirus pandemic. China, meanwhile, is starting to mull leisure travel.
Chinese residents will have several days off next month for the annual ‘Golden Week,’ from May 1 to May 5, that celebrates the country’s Labor Day holiday. With offices and businesses closed, it’s a popular time to travel. And with the dark days of China’s coronavirus lockdowns fresh in their minds, millions of people are ready to stretch their legs—80 million in fact.
A new report from Chinese online travel agency Trip.com on tourism trends ahead of the upcoming holiday estimates that 80 million people are expected to take trips over the five-day break. For now, the company says there is far more demand for trips that involve smaller groups and are within driving distance of travelers’ homes. However, Sanya, a beach resort city in southern China, is among the top destinations, signaling that there are at least some travelers willing to fly; Sanya is on Hainan island.
To be sure, this year’s traveler projection is less than half of last year’s total for the same holiday—195 million. But it’s nearly double the 43 million who made trips during China’s Tomb-Sweeping Day holiday in early April, suggesting the country’s tourism industry is rebounding after the coronavirus brought large swaths of the country to an abrupt standstill.
The revival of China’s travel sector may provide hope to the restless millions under lockdown around the world, but the upcoming holiday in China will by no means be a free-for-all. In fact, travelers will be staggered, scanned, and subject to restrictions, perhaps providing a glimpse at what global travel will look like once the worst of the crisis is over.
Travel with care
Chinese travelers make up the world’s largest source of international tourism revenue with 131 million trips abroad each year, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization. But few will be leaving the country in coming weeks. Firstly, there are few places to go as other nations have shut their borders to non-residents amid the COVID-19 outbreak. And second, returning home is burdensome, since China has imposed 14- to 28-day quarantine for all arrivals from abroad.
Those limitations, however, may be boon to China’s domestic travel industry that was all but paralyzed from the end of January to the middle of March.
At the same time though, domestic tourist sites and operators will have to adhere to a new set of guidelines released by China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism on April 13, which appear aimed at avoiding the kinds of large crowds that descended on tourist sites during the early April holiday.
The guidelines state that tourist sites in China can only operate at 30% capacity and must “strictly limit” the number of people purchasing tickets in-person. The majority of visitors to any site in China will have to pre-register for tickets through travel agencies or directly through site operators, the guidelines stated.
Each site will also conduct health checks of visitors with temperature screenings and the scanning of health code apps, which rate users on their risk of COVID-19 infection.
The regulations are cumbersome, but travel agencies and tour operators, eager for business, are adapting to China’s new tourism environment.
“The pandemic has presented a great challenge for all of us,” Trip.com Chairman James Liang said in a press release on Tuesday. “A shift towards new, innovative modes of tourism is driving promising growth over the upcoming holiday, and indicative of new heights for the industry in the near future.”
A bump for airlines
China’s airlines, meanwhile, also see golden week as a lifeline.
During the first quarter of 2020, China’s airline industry lost $5.6 billion due to travel restrictions imposed during the country’s response to the pandemic, according to China’s Civil Aviation Administration. The aviation sector is poised to lose over $50 billion dollars in comparison to 2019.
“Chinese carriers are hoping that they could make a breakthrough on the Labour Day holiday,” Lei Zheng, the president of the airline industry-focused think-tank the Institute for Aviation Research, told the South China Morning Post.
Domestic carriers are offering dirt-cheap deals and innovative packages to lure domestic travelers back into seats.
CNN found that several domestic carriers in China were offering extra seats at discounted rates for those who wanted to maintain their distance from fellow passengers. Domestic carrier China Express was even offering passengers the option to receive six seats for the price of one.
Those bargain-basement prices have climbed slowly in recent weeks, but flights are still significantly cheaper than before the outbreak. A roundtrip ticket from Beijing to China’s southeastern city of Kunming during golden week costs around $140, according to the Chinese version of trip.com. In early January, the same trip was $400.
A report from the Chinese investment bank, China International Capital Corporation, said that an uptick in travel bookings in the weeks before the holiday points towards a ‘U-shaped’ recovery for the industry, as opposed to a continued ‘L-shaped’ curve with further losses.
Even before the lead-up to Golden Week, China’s aviation industry was improving. As of April 21, the number of daily air passengers in China was was up 7.9% compared to March, China’s aviation administration said on Wednesday. There is, however, lots of room to grow as China’s April passenger volume represents 29% of totals from the same period last year, the airline regulator reported.
The drop-off in air travel in early 2020 was mostly by design, as China sought to contain its coronavirus outbreak. In addition to regional lockdowns in the first quarter, China banned nearly all foreigners from entering the country—even those with resident permits—on March 28 and reduced flights to foreign countries to one roundtrip journey per country per week. But in another upbeat sign for the travel industry, Chinese officials have begun exploring with counterparts in Asia and Europe the possibility of facilitating business trips for foreigners, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—Bill Gates explains how to beat the coronavirus pandemic
—The U.S. is learning why limiting hospital beds carries a steep cost
—Instacart to hire 250,000 more workers amid soaring demand
—What to know if your small business is applying for Round 2 PPP loans from the SBA
—14% of women considered quitting their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic
—The 3-pronged approach to defeating the coronavirus
—Why the coronavirus crisis makes moral leadership more important than ever
—PODCAST: COVID-19 might have upended the concept of the best companies of the year
—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.


fortune--2020-04-25--Trump sued for denying stimulus checks to 1.2 million Americans married to immigrants

President Donald Trump was sued over a provision of the coronavirus relief package that could deny $1,200 stimulus checks to more than 1 million Americans married to immigrants without Social Security Numbers.
The suit was filed Friday by an Illinois man using the pseudonym John Doe, who seeks to represent all others in his position. Doe claims a carve-out in the relief package discriminates against him “based solely on whom he chose to marry.”
The $2 billion Cares Act, approved by Congress last month, provides $1,200 payments to U.S. taxpayers who earn as much as $75,000 — plus $500 for each child. But to be eligible, both spouses in families that file joint tax returns must have Social Security numbers — unless one of them is a member of the military.
That leaves 1.2 million Americans ineligible, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Chicago. The lawsuit cites the Migration Policy Institute which says on its website that’s how many “unauthorized” immigrants in the U.S. are married to Americans.
Iowa state Senator Claire Celsi said on Twitter she’d been contacted by people who are affected.
Doe says he is married to an immigrant who pays taxes and files tax returns with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, which is issued by the Internal Revenue Service.
The suit names Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Acting Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin. The three authorized the exclusion and in doing so have failed to treat John Doe “as equal to his fellow United States citizens,” according to the lawsuit.
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—Bill Gates explains how to beat the coronavirus pandemic
—The U.S. is learning why limiting hospital beds carries a steep cost
—Instacart to hire 250,000 more workers amid soaring demand
—What to know if your small business is applying for Round 2 PPP loans from the SBA
—14% of women considered quitting their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic
—The 3-pronged approach to defeating the coronavirus
—Why the coronavirus crisis makes moral leadership more important than ever
—PODCAST: COVID-19 might have upended the concept of the best companies of the year
—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.


fortune--2020-04-25--Hotels become barracks for health workers ‘going to war’

Want gender balance in boardrooms ?
Here are 3 alternatives to quotas

The tourists and conventioneers who once filled the rooms of The New Yorker hotel are long gone, driven away by the coronavirus, but its lobby is still bustling.
The big, art-deco hotel in midtown Manhattan is one of several across the U.S. that have become barracks for an army of health care workers deployed to fight COVID-19.
“You come home, get your dinner, take a shower, get to sleep and then do it all over again the next day,” said physician assistant Shadoe Daniels, through his mask, in a ballroom converted into an intake area, where shoe sanitizing stations are a must-stop before guests head to the elevators.
The Honesdale, Pennsylvania, resident likened his workday to “going to war.”
More than 15,000 of the nation’s 56,000 hotels and motels are now offering rooms for emergency and health care workers, according to Chip Rogers, president of the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
Some health care workers have snagged free rooms at the Sophy Hyde Park hotel in Chicago or the luxurious Four Seasons Hotel New York.
Others, like Daniels, are being put up by staffing agencies hired to quickly bring reinforcements to overwhelmed hospitals.
At another time, hotels packed with out-of-town workers on a shared mission might have been buzzing like a college dorm, with nurses or doctors sharing drinks at the bar after shifts or heading out to a Broadway show.
But several healthcare workers staying at The New Yorker told The Associated Press that they are too exhausted after 12-hour workdays to do much more than shower, eat, exercise, read and sleep. Shuttered bars, restaurants and businesses limit options.
Zuri Longoria, a nurse from Aransas Pass, Texas, said she relieves stress from tending to dying patients by chatting with other medical volunteers like herself.
“You can’t share that type of bond with anybody else,” Longoria said.
In the hotel’s ballroom, sanitizing materials rest on a table and prayer cards and handwritten well wishes from the community hang from a bulletin board. “Thank you for helping others in their time of need!” reads one.
Öne note acknowledged how inadequate words, prayers and small contributions seemed for the workers. “It’s not a lot and way less than you guys deserve! Please be safe!” it said.
Nathan Shapiro-Shellaby, a nurse anesthetist from Seattle, said he runs outdoors and meditates before boarding a shuttle bus for work at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, which has been ground zero for the crisis.
After work, he’s sharpening his Facetime and Zoom skills to maintain relationships.
“That’s been one of my favorite things to do to kind of release stress and hear about family and friends from all around the world,” Shapiro-Shellaby said.
Daniels said immediately after a shift he sanitizes his shoes, wipes down anything he carries with Clorox wipes and drops his clothing in a laundry bag at his room.
“Then I jump right in the shower. My bedroom is like COVID-free, as much as it can be,” Daniels said.
Daniels, Longoria and Shapiro-Shellaby were recruited to New York by Krucial Staffing, which advertised that three-week stints for 400 nurses starting in mid-April would pay $10,000 per week.
Two weeks ago, the Mariott hotel chain announced it would provide $10 million of free “Rooms for Responders” in New York City, New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Washington, D.C. and Newark, New Jersey. In less than two days, 6,200 nights in rooms had been booked, with 53% of them in the New York area and 34% in Los Angeles.
Hilton and American Express also teamed up to donate up to 1 million hotel room nights nationwide.
Rogers estimates that half of the hotels in the country are closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. And most of the rest are operating with skeletal staffs.
Hotel authorities say most hotels still up and running are housing workers, while some have offered space for hospital operations or to provide rooms for the homeless or quarantined individuals.
“It’s a win, win, win,” said Kim Sabow, president of the Arizona Lodging and Tourism Association. She said 300 Arizona hotels had volunteered to house medical workers. “This is just a wonderful way in which the hotels can keep their doors open and give back at this horrific time of crisis.”
Some hotels volunteered after California’s governor threatened to use the powers of the state to take over hotels.
“Hotels were rightfully concerned. At the same time, we had already heard hotels saying: ‘Look, if this starts getting worse, they can use our hotel if they need to,’” Rogers recalled.
Michael Jacobson, president of the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association, said Chicago and state officials asked hotels in early March to identify locations that could be used.
Some offered free rooms; others at cost. Tight security ensures nobody breaks social distancing rules. Rather than housecleaning, linens and towels are left outside rooms, along with meals.
“Hotels aren’t making a profit out of this. It is allowing them to at least maintain some basic operations and frankly, keep at least a portion of their staff employed,” Jacobson said. “I knew folks would step up, there’s no question about it, but I also knew that every hotel owner I know of is hurting right now, and hurting bad.”
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—Bill Gates explains how to beat the coronavirus pandemic
—Elective surgeries—mostly paused due to the pandemic—are critical to hospital finances
—World Health Organization says 3 more coronavirus vaccines are in human trials
—Late payments soar, revealing extent of coronavirus pain on European companies
—14% of women considered quitting their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic
—Forget “wet markets” and bats: For scientists, failing environmental policies have created a boom time for outbreaks
—Out of work, but not unemployed: How much Europe is paying its idled workers
—PODCAST: COVID-19 might have upended the concept of the best companies of the year
—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.


fortune--2020-04-25--Reopening Florida’s theme parks after COVID-19 could be long, slow process

Reopening Florida’s theme parks, among the world’s most visited attractions and one of the state’s biggest economic engines, could be a long process fraught with logistical and public health considerations, an industry executive told a task force charged with reopening the state for business.
“We are obviously thinking a lot about when and how to reopen. We’ve got multiple teams working on a number of different scenarios,” said John Sprouls, the chief administrative officer for Universal Orlando Resort.
Sprouls made his comments on the third day of meetings by Gov. Ron DeSantis’s Re-Open Florida Task Force, an assembly of dozens of leaders representing industry, education and government.
The sessions, conducted via telephone conference calls, were generally sparse on specifics but generous with platitudes meant to boost public confidence in any decision to lift “safer-at-home” orders, reopen business and return normalcy to daily life.
DeSantis again asserted that the state had “flattened the curve” on the global outbreak, noting that reality is far different from the scenario predicted by some models weeks ago.
Speaking to a working group focused on agriculture and healthcare, the governor said Florida had significantly less hospitalizations per capita and deaths per capita than states in the Northeast.
“I can tell you, there were a lot of dire predictions made. People were talking about Florida being the next Italy or New York,” DeSantis said.
Armed with graphs and statistics at his news briefing later Wednesday, DeSantis again contended that Florida is better off than almost all other major states—from its rate of infections, available hospital beds and per capita deaths.
During a meeting of a committee focused on the state’s tourism and other key industries, Universal’s Sprouls said the state’s theme parks will have to reopen with small, limited crowds and that getting them fully reopened could take time.
Any decision to reopen, he said, would be guided by state and local officials, as well as by health considerations.
Around 85 million people visited theme parks in Orlando and Tampa in 2018, the most recent year available, according to an annual report put out by the Themed Entertainment Association and AECOM.
Theme park resorts are not just rides, but hotels, sit-down dining, fast-food, nightclubs, retail and TV and film production. All have different requirements for operating safely before the virus is contained, including logistical considerations for screening not only employees but visitors. And there is also the issue of taming long, serpentine lines not conducive to social distancing.
Then there are the rides themselves. Sprouls said it is possible that every other seat and ever other row in the cars will be vacant, but then there is the question of how often they are cleaned. Under normal circumstances, one guest gets on immediately after another gets off—how can that be done safely before the virus is contained?
The closures of the theme parks have led to the temporary layoffs of tens of thousands of workers in central Florida. Disney World began furloughing more than 43,000 employees this week, and SeaWorld has furloughed 95% of workforce at its dozen parks across the U.S. SeaWorld said this week it was losing on average $25 million a month with its parks closed, but it had enough access to cash to survive through the end of 2021 under current conditions.
Abigail Disney, the granddaughter of Walt Disney’s brother, Roy Disney, is astonished at the furloughs and expressed her outrage in a Twitter thread on Tuesday. The outspoken heiress blasted the company’s cutbacks while it paid $1.5 billion in bonuses to its executives.
“That’d pay for three months salary to front line workers. And its going to people who have already been collecting egregious bonuses for years,” she said.
She went on to say the frontline workers had to fight for years to get a salary of $15 an hour, “but if you know the back story, which I do, you would be horrified to know just how hard they made it for the people asking for that $15.”
Disney, who does not have a role in the company, said it faces a rough couple of years, “But that does not constitute permission to continue pillaging and rampaging by management.”
An email sent to the company for a response to Disney’s comments was not immediately returned.
As of Wednesday, the state had more than 28,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with total deaths nearing 900.
During a two-hour session, another group led by Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran tackled the reopening of schools, higher education and industry.
Earlier this month, state officials announced that public school campuses would remain closed for the rest of the school year. Focus now turns to preparing for the possibility of reopening classrooms in the fall.
Among the concerns brought up during the session focused on the ability of public schools to absorb new students from private schools, as financial upheaval forces some parents to pull their children from private institutions.
Meanwhile, Democrats in the state Senate renewed calls to once and for all fix a glitch-ridden online portal that continues to frustrate attempts by some of the newly jobless to claim benefits.
The Democrats also called on DeSantis to raise the $275 weekly cap on benefits and extend eligibility retroactively to the date of unemployment, not the date of application.
“Our state continues to struggle mightily with the unemployment compensation system,” the Democrats said in a letter to the governor. “Those who have been able to file have not yet received their first installment of benefits and therefore lack resources to even feed their families.”
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—These publicly traded companies took millions in PPP loan money
—How Home Depot and Lowe’s are preparing for their busy home improvement season during coronavirus uncertainty
—Which companies’ stocks will thrive after the coronavirus crash?
—Late payments soar, revealing extent of coronavirus pain on European companies
—5 veteran investors on how to approach the coronavirus stock market
—Forget “wet markets” and bats: For scientists, failing environmental policies have created a boom time for outbreaks
—Is A.I. better at diagnosing illnesses than doctors? Don’t believe all the hype
—PODCAST: COVID-19 might have upended the concept of the best companies of the year
—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.


fortune--2020-04-25--Want gender balance in boardrooms? Here are 3 alternatives to quotas

Hotels become barracks for health workers ‘ going to war ’

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote and elevated female voices in our society. Since then, women have gained ground in roles once exclusively held by men, from coaching in the 2020 Super Bowl to leading spacewalks. Yet significant hurdles remain to diversify positions of power in the corporate sector.
Our research shows women still make up only 20% of public company directors in the U.S., and represent only 22% of public company directors globally. These gender gaps will continue if we rely solely on polices like California’s new diversity quota law to close it. As many states look to California’s SB 826 as a policy road map on solving gender balance, we must flag the road bumps and examine possible alternative routes.
The intention behind California’s gender quota law is noble, but shortsighted because it requires a fixed number of female candidates on boards instead of a percentage, a loophole now being exploited by companies. Rather than doing the difficult, yet necessary, job of replacing male directors, many companies added a new board seat and filled it with a woman and as a result, the overall gender balance in corporate board leadership hasn’t really changed.
Further, quotas based on a single factor (like gender) oversimplify complex systemic problems. California’s law offers no direction on how to onboard and integrate new diverse candidates. If a company rushes to meet the quota but makes no other obvious effort at diversity, the incoming candidate could face stigma as a “token hire,” and risk being marginalized by fellow directors.
Too many boards start and end their recruitment efforts with an unconscious bias, asking themselves, “Who do we know who would be a good candidate?” When boards ask this question, they are likely to think of candidates that look like they do—which for now is majority male and white. If lawmakers and regulators require companies to articulate how they ensure board diversity, this ad hoc approach is likely to fall away.
One way to accomplish this would be for Congress to change the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 to expand what the Securities and Exchange Commission is able to enforce when it comes to board diversity. This is an important first step we must take to give the SEC the jurisdiction it needs to ensure public companies disclose information about the diversity of their directors and board nominees, but also explain their approach to ensuring board diversity.
Legislation to this effect passed the House in November 2019, and a similar measure is now languishing in the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. The Improving Corporate Governance Through Diversity Act would require public companies to annually disclose the voluntarily self-identified gender, race, ethnicity, and veteran status of their board of directors, nominees, and senior executive officers.
If Congress passes the legislation currently in front of the Senate, it will allow the SEC to go further than it ever has in what it can require companies to disclose about their commitment to diversity and inclusion.
This would be an important distinction from what the SEC currently offers, which is mere guidance. In other words, the commission recommends public companies disclose the diversity characteristics of board members or nominees in proxy statements or other SEC filings, but doesn’t take it a step further by actually requiring this.
By changing its “guidance” to “requirements,” the SEC could force companies to include a description of how they recruit directors and ensure board diversity in their annual filings and proxy statement disclosures. The key here is mandating transparency to shine a light on the companies who aren’t merely talking the talk, but walking the walk.
It would be irresponsible, however, for the SEC to mandate a one-size-fits-all approach, because there are a number of different recruitment strategies companies can use to balance the diversity of their boards. For instance, companies could commit to having “balanced slates” of nominees—ensuring that no more than a set percentage of nominees for board seats are demographically the same as the current majority of board members.
Another example is to frontload the candidate review process and consider only diverse candidates first. If none of the diverse candidates reviewed by the nominating and governance committee have met the requirements, only then would companies open the search up to candidates that are demographically similar to current board members. Both approaches are valid options and can lead to positive outcomes, and it should be left up to companies to decide what makes sense for them.
Another path forward is for business leaders and lawmakers to push the Senate to certify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which has been ratified by the 38 states required for it to become a formal constitutional amendment. While the fate of the ERA is still unclear, it is possible that making discrimination on the basis of sex unconstitutional might positively impact gender diversity in boardrooms.
For example, the amendment would allow gender discrimination to be given “strict scrutiny” judicial review instead of the current “intermediate scrutiny” status, meaning gender would be considered a protected class right alongside race, religion, national origin, and alienage. This could open a pathway to legal challenges to companies with all-male boards made by shareholders and other stakeholders.
When the ERA passed Congress in 1972, Alice Paul, the amendment’s author, reflected, “I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.”
Will 2020 be the year ordinary equality comes to boardrooms?
Dottie Schindlinger is executive director at the Diligent Institute, the research arm of the Diligent Corporation.
More opinion in Fortune:
—How we can prevent being caught off guard by a pandemic like the coronavirus ever again
—An Earth Day CEO summit shows how dramatically corporate values have changed
—Which companies’ stocks will thrive after the coronavirus crash?
—Northwestern Mutual CEO: 3 lessons learned from economic crises before COVID-19
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: CEO of Canada’s biggest bank on the keys to leading through the coronavirus
Listen to our audio briefing, Fortune 500 Daily


fortune--2020-04-25--Vending machines—the original contactless delivery systems—now deliver ramen and art to U.S. consume

Vending machines—the original contactless delivery systems—now deliver ramen and art to U.S. consumers

It wasn’t long ago in the United States that the idea of buying things—be it salad, frozen custard, socks, baby wipes, ramen, or art—from a robotic vending machine was a novelty. That has shifted—quickly. Now, a word that wasn’t much used before the coronavirus epidemic began—contactless—has become a must for retailers and a competitive advantage for those in the vending game.
Back before the pandemic, traveling salesman Luke Saunders started Farmers Fridge as a solution to what now sounds like a rather simple problem: he wanted access to more salads while traveling for work.
In 2013 he founded Farmers Fridge, which sells fresh salads, bowls, and other meals in reusable jars from machines in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indianapolis, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. “It is funny now, but initially it wasn’t. I would tell people what I was doing, and they would say, ‘Are you SURE? Who wants to buy lunch out of a vending machine?’” Sanders said.
Turns out, lots of people wanted his vending machine salads, and the numbers are now growing. According to the National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA), the vending industry has $24.6 billion economic impact, encompassing everything from office coffee services to The Sock Spot‘s namesake product to Anchorage, Alaska-based Baby Vend, which sells bottles, diapers, and baby wipes at airports and other locations parents might need them.
Arun Sundaram, an equity analyst with CFRA, said that businesses with contactless models are well-positioned to cope with the repercussions of social distancing. “This virus has reshaped consumer perception,” he said. Before COVID-19, online orders accounted for about 3%-5% of grocery shopping, as compared with 10% in Europe. “It is spiking right now. We’re seeing more use of Amazon lockers. I think we will see a more rapid adoption rate once the pandemic ends. [These businesses] are benefiting from unexpected trials.”
Depending on the geographic location, some vending machine companies are classified along with businesses that take up a far bigger footprint. In New York, the health department classifies Farmers Fridge units as restaurants. To the eye, the unmanned machines, with Astroturf plots in front of them, occupy a visual space somewhere between full-service restaurant and waiting room units where you buy Cheez-Its in a fit of hunger. Farmers Fridge’s 400 machines are located at airports, college campuses, office complexes, and hospitals. Pre-pandemic, for example, Saunders cited folks in waiting areas in hospitals who wanted something better than a cafeteria meal as another demographic.
“There is a ton of data about the willingness to buy from a machine and it shows that younger people are willing, but in reality, our customers skew older,” said Saunders. “They have a time deficit. Add some kids and work in there, and they are looking for the time savings.”
The company’s vending machines are serviced out of a central location in Chicago, making it easier to maintain quality control over the products, and a driver delivers the food to locations in the Northeast. Even with the expense of drivers and refrigerated trucks, vending is cheaper than brick-and-mortar retail, particularly in locations like airports, where real estate can be prohibitive. “The value proposition gets greater. Those are the kinds of trends that you can’t stop,” said Saunders.
Like Farmers Fridge, Yo-Kai Express was born out of necessity. The Hayward, Calif.-based ramen vending machine. While his wife was at the hospital in labor, CEO and Founder Andy Lin was coming up short on a late-night meal. The hospital vending machines didn’t offer any real foods. So Lin, an engineer, developed a machine to make hot, tasty ramen in eight minutes.
The vending machines are in hospitals and airports (they even accept United Airlines’ vouchers) and in hotels, where nearby office workers pop by for a meal if they missed traditional restaurant lunch hours.
“We are not trying to replace humans,” said COO Amanda Tsung. “We serve you in the off hours when other food options are not available, if your flight is delayed and you want another option not just junk food.”
Fitting in
SouveNEAR, a Kansas City-based company, sells the work of local artists in vending machines in airports and transit centers.
“The idea was that the vending machine made it affordable to get into these tight spaces,” said Suzanne Southard, one of three partners in the business. Price ranges for the art itself don’t exceed $40 and often are in the $5-$10 range, including stickers, t-shirts, and tote bags. Airports typically have high-dollar rent, that wouldn’t be accessible to artists who are making small-batch items. The model appeals, in particular, to women ages 30 to 50 who are traveling and looking to bring home a souvenir that doesn’t look like something they’d find in Any City U.S.A.
Since COVID-19 has curtailed flying, the firm has started selling online as well. But they believe they’re well-positioned for when airports re-open. “We don’t have to staff to be open, which keeps risk down for our people as well as the traveling public,” said Southard. Items are all behind glass. “Customers can know that their selections (and surfaces that they sit on) have not been handled by numerous other shoppers as they are out for display.” Though the machines require pressing two buttons to make a selection, the remainder of the transaction, including using a credit card, can be touchless.
Of course, none of the upsides matter if the vending machine doesn’t do what it was supposed to do. Some Moxy Hotels, such as the Moxy Denver Cherry Creek, had vending machines with fun items like Polaroid cameras in their lobby vending machines. They were removed from the chains because of complaints that the machines didn’t dispense the right item for the proper amount of money on a regular basis.
In general, most business owners say that the technology is better than those days when a machine would eat your quarters. Machines are contactless or touch screen and are Internet-connected, so that businesses get real-time information about stock levels, usage, temperatures, and more.
For St. Louis-based Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, reliable technology, or lack thereof, had been one of the reasons that the iconic company had been reluctant to agree to allowing its product to be sold in any vending machine. “Ted and I have been very picky,” said Travis Dillon, president and owner (and Ted’s son-in-law). But after Dillon saw that Las Vegas-based Advenco Vending had technology that would allow them to stop selling if the frozen treat’s temperatures were off, he felt confident. Advenco buys the custard at wholesale; Ted Drewes gets the marketing benefit of being inside machines that pepper college campuses and airports.
Considering the amount of square footage required, that’s a super sweet boost for all.
More must-read retail coverage from Fortune:
—Retailers that are smartest about shopping tech will finish on top after the coronavirus
—Target’s April e-commerce has nearly quadrupled as crowd controls slam in-store sales
—How Home Depot and Lowe’s are preparing for their busy season during coronavirus uncertainty
—The comfort economy gains momentum during the coronavirus pandemic
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: The greatest designs of modern times
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-04-26--Bill Gates’ coronavirus vaccine could be manufacturing at scale in a year

A.I .
will be crucial to companies outside of Silicon Valley—and they need a new playbook for it

Billionaire Bill Gates is funding production of the seven most promising ideas for a vaccine as he refocuses his philanthropic work on the deadly coronavirus.
“If everything went perfectly, we’d be in scale manufacturing within a year,” Gates said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.” “It could be as long as two years.”
The world’s second-richest man said vaccine production will probably not start in September, as some have said.
“Dr. Fauci and I have been fairly consistent to say 18 months to create expectations that are not too high,” Gates said, referring to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force.
The availability of testing for the coronavirus has been a sore spot in the U.S. for months. President Donald Trump tweeted on Saturday that the U.S. “just passed 5 million Tests, far more than any other country.”
Just looking at raw numbers misses the true picture, Gates said.
“This focus on the number of tests understates the cacophony and the mistakes we’ve made in the testing system,” Gates said. “The wrong people are being tested, and any time you don’t get results in less than 24 hours, the value of the test is dramatically reduced.”
The philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft Corp. said his best-case scenario for a phased reopening of the economy is to “pick the high-value activities like school, manufacturing and construction, and figure out a way to do those with masks and distancing.”
Schools
“If we can figure out how to do K-through-12 in the fall, that would be good,” Gates said, adding that the U.S. may even be able to open colleges “if we’re creative about it.”
“It will probably be in August where we know what’s the protocol, how many schools are opening up, and we won’t really know enough until pretty close to the start,” he said.
Gates also warned that trying to rush a reopening and generating “exponential” growth in COVID-19 cases “will be seeding other parts of the country,” comparing it to the infection spreading via international travel in early 2020.
Microsoft shares, at around $174, are up about 10% for the year to date, even though major market indexes are down and some companies’ stocks have been hammered.
“Tech companies in some ways benefit from an acceleration of a move towards digital approaches, even though the next few years they’ll have a lot of customers that they’ll be helping out, giving free licenses to, where things won’t be as strong,” Gates said.
Earlier, in an interview with the Financial Times, Gates said that his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with an endowment exceeding $40 billion, will give “total attention” to COVID-19.
The foundation has contributed $250 million to help counter the coronavirus so far, and is re-purposing units dedicated to fighting other diseases to join in the battle against the pandemic.
Gates defended the World Health Organization against accusations from Trump that the body had mishandled the virus response.
“WHO is clearly very, very important and should actually get extra support to perform their role during this epidemic,” he told the FT.
Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—Bill Gates explains how to beat the coronavirus pandemic
—The U.S. is learning why limiting hospital beds carries a steep cost
—Instacart to hire 250,000 more workers amid soaring demand
—What to know if your small business is applying for Round 2 PPP loans from the SBA
—14% of women considered quitting their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic
—The 3-pronged approach to defeating the coronavirus
—Why the coronavirus crisis makes moral leadership more important than ever
—PODCAST: COVID-19 might have upended the concept of the best companies of the year
—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.