fortune--2020-12-15--The list of Republicans finally accepting Biden as President-elect is growing

Following a flurry of failed legal challenges and amid continual denial from President Trump, the list of Republican leaders accepting Joe Biden as President-elect is gradually growing.
Perhaps the most significant figure yet—Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—finally acknowledged Biden’s victory on Tuesday on the Senate floor. “The Electoral College has spoken,” he said, referring to the group’s formal confirmation of presidential votes a day earlier. “Today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”
McConnell’s admission, among others, suggests Republican leadership is inching away from the Trump campaign’s strategy of challenging election results in the courts—though many have been careful not to entirely rule out any legal possibilities.
“It’s a very, very narrow path for the President,” Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina—who made calls to state election officials weeks ago—said to reporters on Monday. “I don’t see how it gets there from here, given what the Supreme Court did. But having said that, I think we’ll let those legal challenges play out.”
Said Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina: “He’s presumptive President. But I don’t want to discount valid, legal disputes that’ll be settled over the next couple weeks.”
“We’ll deal with Vice President Biden as the President-elect,” said Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri. “The President continues obviously to have all the options he has available to him, but the electoral vote today was significant.”
Other Republican figures were more upfront. In the case of retiring Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, he even urged Trump to outright drop his claims of election fraud.
“The presidential election is over. States have certified the votes. Courts have resolved disputes. The electors have voted. I hope that President Trump will put the country first, take pride in his considerable accomplishments, and help President-elect Biden get off to a good start,” Alexander said. “Especially during this pandemic, an orderly transition of power is crucially important.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia agreed. “It certainly looks [like a Biden victory], and I think it’s time to turn the page and begin a new administration,” Capito told a Capitol Hill reporter.
Any chance of a legal challenge altering the result of the election appeared to go out the window last week when the Supreme Court declined to take up two cases regarding the election process. The Electoral College’s vote all but seals the result for Biden barring an unprecedented reversal.
“At some point you have to face the music,” Senate Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota told reporters Monday. “And I think once the Electoral College settles the issue today, it’s time for everybody to move on.”
Despite McConnell’s acknowledgement on the Senate floor, Trump continued to tweet out false claims that he won the Electoral College.
But the result appears so set that even Russian President Vladimir Putin called Biden to congratulate him on the victory, six weeks after numerous world leaders did the same. The Kremlin at the time said it was “correct” to wait for official results to confirm Biden the winner.
“Vladimir Putin wished the President-elect every success and expressed confidence that Russia and the United States, which bear special responsibility for global security and stability, despite their differences can truly contribute to solving many problems and challenges that the world is currently facing,” a Kremlin statement said on Tuesday.
“For my part, I am ready for cooperation and contacts with you,” Putin added.


fortune--2020-12-15--Big Pharma’s new CEOs must step up to erase inequities in drug access

Vise , a company founded by two high school graduates , raises $ 45 million in funding with Sequoia at @ @

I have been asked many times: Does the vision of the CEO have the power to change a pharmaceutical company so it can solve global health challenges?
My answer is yes. The power of a top drug industry executive to change the global health care landscape is real. On the downside, he or she (and, let’s face it, they are still nearly all men) can cause plenty of damage by adopting the wrong policies. But if they are truly willing to make the radical changes that this industry desperately needs, they can also make a big difference for the good.
The question matters more than ever. As the world grapples with the biggest health crisis in more than a century, the pharma industry has a crucial role to play in ensuring that drugs and vaccines for COVID-19 reach those who need them most, whether rich or poor. We are relying on the industry’s infrastructure, production capacity, and scientific know-how to throw the world a lifeline during this pandemic.
However, the issue is also highly relevant because a new generation of CEOs has recently taken over at the helm of some of the largest global pharma companies. Gilead, Sanofi, and Pfizer are among the drugmakers whose chief executives have been in their roles for two years or less. And all of us—from government ministers to stock market investors to children in rural Africa—need them to steer their corporations in the right direction.
I lead the Access to Medicine Foundation, where for more than 15 years we have evaluated pharma’s contribution to global health. Over that time we have seen progress, most notably in R&D and in how companies approach access to medicine. Our foundation also publishes the Access to Medicine Index, where we rank companies on how well they serve the health needs of the global population.
Historically, there have been important interventions, such as the decision in the 1980s by Roy Vagelos, then leading Merck, to distribute the river blindness drug ivermectin free of charge, setting the standard for industry engagement in eliminating several neglected tropical diseases via donations.
But corporate activity from the pharmaceutical industry still concentrates on too few countries and too few diseases, and a handful of companies are left carrying most of the load when it comes to expanding drug access to underserved parts of the world.
We have seen the likes of GlaxoSmithKline, under former CEO Sir Andrew Witty, shift to a volume-based approach from a margin-based one in order to ramp up access in low-income markets, for example for vaccines. He led GSK to reduce drug prices in 50 of the poorest nations, released intellectual-property rights into a patent pool to encourage new drug development, and invested 20% of profits from the least-developed countries in medical infrastructure for those countries. While some say it cost GSK money and perhaps even contributed to Witty losing his job, the company’s actions saved a lot of people’s lives, which should matter.
It is concrete steps like these—rather than warm words or statements from companies—that we evaluate. For example, how responsibly are operations governed? Where are firms deploying their R&D efforts? How do they manage intellectual-property issues? And, crucially, how are they addressing pricing and improving capacity to ensure people all around the world get the medicines they make? These are the factors that determine whether a company moves up or down the Access to Medicine Foundation rankings.
In January 2021, we will publish the next Index, and I expect it to be scrutinized more intently than ever. This year has been a uniquely testing time for the industry, but the message to pharma has been clear: Guaranteeing equitable access to medicine is not only the right thing to do, but it is also the strategically and economically smart thing to do. COVID-19 has underscored the pivotal importance of access for the long-term sustainability of the pharma sector, and it has pushed the issue up the agenda for investors who provide companies with their financial lifeblood.
A new guard of industry CEOs, different in their views and more public in their voice and vision, now has the opportunity to move the dial. We have already seen them speak up on several other important ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) issues, including gender and race equity, work/life balance, and the environment. Unfortunately, they have also been far too reticent on the need for better access to medicine.
This younger generation of pharma CEOs is active on social media, which tells us they are not afraid of making their views public. Yet they still front an industry that is widely distrusted and is better known for the high price of its drugs than for the lives it can save. Now is the moment to change this. To do so, we need CEOs who put people before profits and are ready to solve chronic industry challenges. The prize is that by stepping forward they will be able to rally like-minded investors and unleash the potential of like-minded employees, who will be incentivized by having jobs with a greater social and health impact.
Making binding commitments to expand access to specific drugs is a powerful starting point for these new CEOs to show leadership and encourage others to follow. In areas such as maternal and child health, antimicrobial resistance, noncommunicable diseases, and now COVID-19, we have seen that commitments made by a few players can have a snowball effect, leading to matching pledges and actions by others.
But commitments in specific areas are just a start. More fundamentally, the industry needs to address the high cost of medicines by challenging the ingrained expectations of sky-high profit margins that underpin them. CEOs need to convince shareholders that their companies should benefit people globally—not just for altruistic reasons, but because expanding access into emerging markets and low-income countries can unleash untapped revenue streams, albeit at lower margins. Until this happens, the simple fact is that many lifesaving medicines invented by pharma will remain out of reach for hundreds of millions of people.
We need one CEO to stand up and address these deep-rooted inequities embedded in the current pharma business model.
Who will step forward?
Jayasree K. Iyer is the executive director of the Access to Medicine Foundation.


fortune--2020-12-15--Prince Harry and Meghan sign multiyear podcasting deal with Spotify

The royals are following the Obama playbook.
Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex, will produce and host podcasts for Spotify, adding to the Swedish streaming giant’s burgeoning podcast empire. The royal couple’s Archewell organization has signed a multiyear agreement with the company, with the first series coming next year.
Harry and Meghan have been tiptoeing into public life since stepping back from their royal roles and relocating to the U.S. After signing with a bureau for public speaking and creating a philanthropic group, they are now entering the world of entertainment—following a path similar to that of the Obamas after they left the White House. First they signed a deal to produce films and TV shows for Netflix, and now a deal to produce podcasts for Spotify.
The Obamas’ first audio program, “The Michelle Obama Podcast,” has been a huge hit for Spotify, and the company is betting that the royals’ global appeal will draw millions of new listeners to its audio app. The royal family is a subject of great interest across the world, including in places where podcasting is still nascent.
The company has converted more than 70 million of its 320 million current users into podcast listeners and is pushing to make its app the default podcast experience outside the U.S. It offers more than 1.9 million podcast titles and has funded hundreds of original series.
“The power of their voices rests in their status as citizens of the world,” Dawn Ostroff, Spotify’s chief content officer, said in a statement. “That they are embracing the extraordinary capacity of podcasts on Spotify while also seeking to elevate underrepresented voices is a testament to their appreciation for the potential of audio storytelling.”


fortune--2020-12-15--MacKenzie Scott is giving away her $60 billion fortune at a record pace

MacKenzie Scott is giving away her fortune at an unprecedented pace, donating more than $4 billion in four months after announcing an additional $1.7 billion in gifts in July.
The world’s 18th-richest person with a $60.7 billion net worth announced the latest gifts in a blog post, saying she asked her team to figure out how to give away her fortune faster. Scott’s wealth has climbed $23.6 billion this year alone, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, as Amazon.com Inc, the primary source of her fortune, has surged.
After considering almost 6,500 organizations for possible contributions, her advisers ultimately zeroed-in on 384 groups to receive gifts, Scott said in a post on Medium.
“This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling,” she wrote. “Economic losses and health outcomes alike have been worse for women, for people of color and for people living in poverty. Meanwhile, it has substantially increased the wealth of billionaires.”
The donations were focused on groups “operating in communities facing high projected food insecurity, high measures of racial inequity, high local poverty rates, and low access to philanthropic capital.”
Scott, 50, who was formerly married to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, signed the Giving Pledge in 2019, promising to give away the majority of her fortune.
“I have a disproportionate amount of money to share,” she wrote in her pledge. “My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty.”
The rate at which she’s been giving it away rivals many other philanthropists, despite her being a relative newcomer.
“Other billionaires should draw inspiration from her approach to move funds to urgent needs, to historically marginalized groups, to share decision-making with non-wealthy people, and avoid warehousing funds in private legacy foundations,” Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, said in an email.
This year has also been an active year for Bezos’s philanthropy. In February, he committed $10 billion to issues related to climate change and last month announced the first of those grants, totaling nearly $800 million to 16 groups. He also disclosed another round of grants for his Day One Fund, giving away more than $100 million to 42 organizations that combat family homelessness.
Bezos, 56, kept three-quarters of the couple’s Amazon shares in the divorce, maintaining his status as the world’s richest person with a fortune of $185 billion, according to the Bloomberg index. His net worth has increased $70 billion this year.


fortune--2020-12-15--A digital pandemic tops off coronavirus woes

Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse, add a digital pandemic on top of the the worst public health catastrophe in 102 years.
Cybersecurity investigators are scrambling to assess the damage caused by a widespread breach of U.S. federal agencies and private companies. A list of affected organizations includes the Treasury, Commerce, Homeland Security, and State Departments, plus the National Institutes of Health, and parts of the Pentagon, according to the latest news reports.
Yet the blast radius likely extends much farther. In addition to the government, top national labs, and hundreds of universities, many big businesses may have been targeted by the 9-month-long cyberespionage operation. SolarWinds, the little-known software company based in Austin, Texas, that’s at the center of the compromise, estimates that more than half the customers of its pervasive Orion network management products could have been affected: around 18,000 customers.
That’s according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing SolarWinds put out on Monday, now buried under a flurry of share sales disclosures. (You can view its since-stricken customer list, captured by the Internet Archive, to get an idea of the possible breadth of the cyberattack.)
SolarWinds was patient zero. The company’s systems were hacked, and its IT tools were subverted to deliver Trojan horses all over the map. The situation, a so-called software supply chain attack, recalls the NotPetya malware attack of 2017, when Russian agents unleashed a global cyberattack by subverting the software update mechanism of a popular accounting tool developed by a Ukrainian tech company. (You can read preliminary analyses of the SolarWinds hack by digital forensics firm FireEye and Microsoft.)
Though it’s still early and investigations are ongoing, cybersecurity researchers suspect nation state hackers are to blame, due to the sophistication of the hacking campaign. In particular, they’re pointing fingers at the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service and a successor to the KGB. As usual, the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., denied the allegations.
The Homeland Security Department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, tasked with coordinating defenses across government and industry, is attempting to get a grip on the situation, issuing alerts and advising people to update their software or unplug systems that use Orion tooling. But the agency is also reeling from recent turnover after President Trump removed its founding director, Chris Krebs, who refused to play along with Trump’s baseless election fraud claims. (To nip misinformation in the bud: Dominion Voting Systems, a central target of Trump’s conspiracy theorizing, says it has never used SolarWinds’ Orion products.)
When President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January (now that his victory is electoral college-official), he is going to inherit not just the COVID-19 scourge, but this unholy mess too.
Robert Hackett
Twitter: @rhhackett
robert.hackett@fortune.com
THREATS
Shot through the heart. The official death toll of the coronavirus pandemic exceeded 300,000 in the U.S. on Monday, the same day health workers began receiving the first doses of the emergency-approved Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. A vaccine developed by biotech firm Moderna could become the second to receive FDA authorization this week. Walgreens and CVS Health executives say they expect to have COVID-19 shots available to the general public by early spring.
Buns and thighs. The reviews for Apple's Fitness+ are in—and everyone seems to think it compares favorably to Peloton's more expensive workout service. Data Sheet's usual author and Apple guru, Aaron Pressman, says the exercise catalogue is well-designed, but the routines seem "best suited for beginners and intermediate exercisers, and not more advanced users." Speaking of fitness, Amazon's Halo fitness band is now available to the public. (I wonder what its privacy disclosure label might look like...)
On pins and needles. Pinterest reached a $22.5 million settlement with Françoise Brougher, its former chief operating officer. She alleged that she endured mistreatment and gender discrimination while working at the company. Pinterest admitted no liability as part of the deal. Meanwhile, a judge ruled that Uber has less than a month to pay a $59 million fine to California’s Public Utilities Commission for failing to answer questions over a safety report detailing thousands of alleged cases of sexual assault. The ride-hailing firm says it is protecting victims' privacy by not releasing more information.
Aloha means "hello" and "goodbye." Larry Ellison, the cofounder, executive chairman, and tech chief of (future TikTok parent?) Oracle, is the latest tech billionaire to depart from California. After his company said it would relocate its headquarters to Austin, Texas, Ellison revealed in a letter to employees that he has taken up residence in Hawaii. He owns almost all of the island of Lanai.
Truly "doctored" photos.
ACCESS GRANTED
Content moderation has been an issue online since the earliest Internet forum days. It's practically a rite of passage for tech startups to get tangled up in users' harassment and censorship allegations. So it is with the invite-only social network Clubhouse, which critics say is inadequately policing people's behavior. Vanity Fair puts under the microscope some of the controversies already fomenting on the audio-centric app.
In the bubble that is Clubhouse, pseudo-intellectual monologues from powerful users can go unchecked, leaving them free to promote racist ideas under the guise of posing legitimate questions or playing devil’s advocate. It’s the type of dialogue that wouldn’t necessarily be flagged on Twitter or Facebook either, but that seems especially common on an app with relatively less scrutiny and relatively more big-name users, who may feel comfortable airing views that would likely get ratioed elsewhere.
FORTUNE RECON
Disney’s profits on streaming services are expected to plunge—and investors love it by Geoff Colvin
Photos: U.S. health workers begin receiving COVID-19 vaccine by Alex Scimecca and Mia Diehl
Voting machine maker threatens to sue Fox News over conspiracy claims by Jeff John Roberts
TikTok, YouTube, Amazon targeted by FTC in privacy review by Ben Brody and David McLaughlin
After a blockbuster IPO, DoorDash’s challenge now is to deliver profits by Danielle Abril
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access.Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
ONE MORE THING
The family of Tony Hsieh, founder of the Amazon-owned e-commerce emporium Zappos, is having troubling piecing together the late entrepreneur's estate. Apparently, Hsieh, who died last month after sustaining injuries in a Connecticut house fire, left thousands of color-coded sticky-notes detailing financial commitments on the walls of his mansion in Park City, Utah, the Wall Street Journal reports. A sticky situation indeed; it sounds very much in keeping with Hsieh's famed management style.


fortune--2020-12-15--Bank chief proposes far-out crypto idea ‘that should be next Nobel Prize’

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Brian Brooks, America’s top banking regulator, has an idea to help close the wealth gap between the developing and developed world. He calls the concept “country coin.”
What the generic-sounding proposal lacks in catchy branding it makes up for in substance. The crux of the plan is to promote education and economic growth worldwide, says Brooks, the U.S. Acting Comptroller of the Currency. Since higher literacy rates correlate to higher “gross domestic product,” then incentivizing people to continue their schooling could boost productivity, individual well-being, and societal prosperity, he says.
Such rags-to-riches principles are well established in the academic literature, even if their implementation lags in practice. (Just ask the World Bank’s economists.) But it’s the nature of Brooks’ particular incentive system that might strike people as zany. The ideal inducement? Cryptocurrency tokens, he says.
Under the plan, world governments would reward people with so-called country coins for continued learning. A student earns coins by completing online courses and passing tests. The coins would essentially represent claims on a “trust fund” set up by the state; they would entitle recipients to future payouts representing a share of the rising tax revenue generated by increased GDP.
Translation: As people get more education, nations, country coin–earning students, and investors get richer together. The cryptocurrency ensures everyone benefits, rather than just people who land good salaries in the job market after finishing their studies.
“This is a way of increasing equity and increasing growth without raising taxes and without pitting the rich against the poor,” Brooks says.
Nobel no-brainer?
Brooks debuted the idea at the Singapore Fintech Festival on Dec. 9. Not shy about his own high opinion of the plan, Brooks said, “I’m telling you this should be the next Nobel Prize. It’s a big idea.” He compared the proposal’s potential impact to that had by Muhammad Yunus, founder of Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, whose pioneering work on alleviating poverty through microloan financing won him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1996.
Brooks pointed to Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, and Latin America as being among the ripest places where country coin could have the largest impact. “There’s no technological reason this couldn’t happen right away,” he said.
What’s needed is for regulators “to recognize this as a relatively lightweight, noninterventionist, non-us-against-them policy approach to letting everyone get richer together, which is what the developing world ought to want,” Brooks continued.
Bryan Hubbard, Brooks’ deputy comptroller for public affairs, shared an exclusive preview of a report his team plans to release that describes the country coin proposal in detail. Brooks coauthored the paper with two former colleagues at Coinbase, the biggest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, where he was previously chief legal officer.
“In effect, the coins become a quasi equity stake in the country because it represents a prediction about the growth of future cash flows,” says the paper, whose cowriters include Hermine Wong, Coinbase’s chief of staff for trust and risk, and Amy M. Luo, Coinbase’s senior counsel for global business development and “stablecoins,” a type of cryptocurrency that is designed to maintain a consistent value.
A flowchart found in the “country coin” paper describing an economic “flywheel effect” that could result from tying education to equity around the world.
In practice, this means a Colombian student could take virtual courses using a cell phone and receive, as compensation, Colombia coins from the nation’s finance ministry. If the coins are worth $10 apiece at the time of disbursement, then earning 100 coins would yield $1,000 right away. Assuming Colombia’s GDP and tax base rise over time, then the price of the coins could be expected to rise too, earning more for the recipients.
“A virtuous flywheel cycle is created in which the more students learn, the more valuable the coins become, and demand for the coins (and thus their value) increases as more students take education courses,” the paper says. The proposal addresses socioeconomic inequality “in a way traditional tax policy has not,” the abstract declares.
Universal basic instruction
The idea can be viewed as a kind of universal basic income—with a twist.
Instead of distributing a set amount of money to people simply for being taxpaying citizens, country coin would reward those people who study and learn the most. They are, after all, the very ones who are directly improving national outcomes in health, livelihood, social stability, and GDP.
The chosen discipline doesn’t matter; whether someone studies A.I. programming or postmodern literary theory makes little difference. “GDP growth is affected by the philosophy professors, no less than by the software engineers,” Brooks says. “The beauty of this approach is that the employment markets can still treat you differentially, but everybody shares in national wealth creation. We’re all in it together.”
Some countries are already experimenting with forms of universal basic income. Tests have taken place in Brazil, Kenya, Switzerland, and Finland, as well as U.S. states such as Alaska and California. In the U.S., the idea gained more traction after former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang adopted it as part of his campaign platform. Cryptocurrencies have been proposed for the purpose too.
Comptroller of the (Crypto-)currency
Brooks has been shaking up the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency since he joined earlier this year. Hallmarks of his tenure include granting more banking charters to financial tech, or fintech, startups, vocally supporting cryptocurrency innovation, and pushing for a politically controversial “fair access” to banking services rule.
Some members of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party have criticized Brooks for devoting, they say, too much time and attention to the cryptocurrency industry. In contrast, he has earned plaudits from the private sector for his regulatory approach, including by clarifying that banks are permitted to hold deposits backing stablecoins.
Brooks, a former general counsel of the mortgage giant Fannie Mae, is awaiting a confirmation hearing for a possible five-year term as the country’s top bank regulator after his appointment by President Trump to the interim role in May. If Brooks gets confirmed, President-elect Joe Biden could—and, indeed, very well might—remove him from the role to install a stricter, potentially less business-friendly regulator of his own choosing.
“Finance can be a force for real change and real good in the world,” Brooks says. “Creating a permission-less country coin in countries that are on growth trajectories from developing to developed status is one of the biggest ideas in finance today.”


fortune--2020-12-15--Big Tech risks big fines, and even breakup, under Europe’s new content and antitrust rules

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Big Tech’s lobbyists have their work cut out for them in Europe—and not just in the European Union.
On Tuesday, the European Commission proposed long-awaited legislation that could see tech giants such as Facebook and Amazon pay out billions of euros in fines if they don’t stop the spread of illegal content—such as hate speech and ads for counterfeit goods—on their platforms. This law will be called the Digital Services Act, or DSA.
The DSA will be accompanied by another proposal, the Digital Markets Act, which could heavily fine or even potentially break up the largest platform operators that don’t treat business users and consumers fairly. Crucially, the DMA would attempt to stop abuses before they occur, rather than just punishing the companies after the fact.
“Many online platforms have come to play a central role in the lives of our citizens and businesses, and even our society and democracy at large,” said Thierry Breton, the internal market commissioner, in a statement. “With today’s proposals, we are organizing our digital space for the next decades.”
Also on Tuesday, the British government—whose country is no longer an EU member—announced upcoming “online harms” rules that again threaten companies with billions of pounds in fines if they don’t scrub their platforms of illegal content, such as child sexual abuse material and terrorist material. This would apply to everyone from social networks and search engines to consumer cloud-storage sites, and even video games that allow online interaction.
“Today Britain is setting the global standard for safety online with the most comprehensive approach yet to online regulation,” said U.K. Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden in a statement. “We are entering a new age of accountability for tech to protect children and vulnerable users, to restore trust in this industry, and to enshrine in law safeguards for free speech.”
The U.K.’s new rules, which will be set out in an Online Safety Bill next year, would allow for fines of up to 10% of global annual revenues, plus the potential blockage of noncompliant services. The EU’s DSA would allow for fines of up to 6% of global annual revenues.
However, the EU’s DMA proposal would be harder hitting.
The DMA, which would allow for fines of up to 10% of worldwide turnover, with scope for further fines, will apply only to the largest “gatekeepers” that provide a link between businesses and consumers—the aim is to protect both those groups from unfair terms.
These gatekeepers could be search engines, messaging services, social-networking services, and even the proprietors of operating systems.
The U.K. announced a few weeks ago that it will set up a new, tech-focused antitrust watchdog within the existing Competition and Markets Authority, with Facebook and Google explicitly in its sights.
In mid-morning trade in New York, shares in Amazon, Facebook, and Alphabet’s Google were down, underperforming the Nasdaq.
Liability protections
The EU’s Digital Services Act could mark a distinctly new era in European tech regulation, as it would update liability protections that have been in place since 2000—a time when Google and Amazon were still extremely young and Facebook didn’t even exist.
Those protections, encapsulated in the e-Commerce Directive, say “intermediary service providers” aren’t liable for the illegal content their users post, as long as they swiftly remove it once someone flags its illegal nature. The directive also says EU countries can’t force these intermediaries—these days known as platform operators—to proactively monitor everything that happens on their platforms.
As proposed by the Commission, the DSA would leave these protections intact, but it would give Big Tech firms more responsibilities: They would have to publish annual risk assessments regarding their fight against illegal content and the spread of disinformation, and they will be audited to make sure they’re telling the truth.
“We’re relieved to see that monitoring and censorship is still not a policy option,” said Christoph Schmon, international policy director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the world’s biggest digital rights organization.
The DSA proposal would effectively introduce an EU counterpart to the “Good Samaritan” protections that platform operators enjoy in the U.S. under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This rule means platform operators can’t be punished for trying to keep their platforms clean.
Ironically, in the U.S. there is a push by conservative lawmakers to remove this rule because they feel right-wing views are being unfairly censored by the likes of Facebook and Twitter.
As for e-commerce platforms—here’s looking at you, Amazon—the companies will need to keep a closer eye on the traders using their platforms, to ensure customer safety.
If they break the rules, they could face fines of up to 6% of global annual revenues—a similar approach to the 4% maximum fines introduced under the General Data Protection Regulation, though potentially tougher. However, unlike the GDPR, this would not be a one-size-fits-all law; the heaviest obligations would apply only to platforms with over 45 million users in the EU. The same applies to the Digital Markets Act.
This is only the beginning of the road—Commission proposals need to be scrutinized and amended by the European Parliament and member states, meaning it will take years for these rules to finally appear—but the big question is one of enforcement.
The GDPR’s fines may be big in practice, but it’s up to national authorities to enforce the law. Most Big Tech firms’ European bases are in Ireland, and the Irish privacy regulator has been reticent to issue any major fines thus far.
Indeed, on Tuesday, two and a half years after the GDPR came into force, the Irish Data Protection Commission issued its first fine in a case where it coordinated with its other EU counterparts, as the GDPR envisions for Big Tech cases. The result? A mere €450,000 ($546,500) fine for Twitter, over a data breach.
“There’s going to be quite a lot of responsibility with national states, and the GDPR isn’t a great example in that respect,” said Aline Blankertz, a project director at the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung, a prominent German think tank.
Digital markets
The Digital Markets Act would stop “gatekeepers” from using their business users’ data to compete with them—something the European Commission has already charged Amazon with doing.
Gatekeepers will also “need to allow their business users to promote their offers and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform,” the Commission said Tuesday, adding that those business users will also need to have access to their own data.
In some cases, the platform operators will need to allow third parties to interoperate with their services.
The 10%-of-revenues maximum fine for infringements will be accompanied by “periodic penalty payments” of 5% of global revenues, if companies continue misbehaving. And if that doesn’t stop them, the Commission would be able to force the breakup of the business.
This time, the Commission itself would enforce the law; it wouldn’t be left up to individual member states.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA)—a major trade association that counts Facebook, Google, and Amazon among its members—responded cautiously to the Commission’s proposals, saying it welcomed the objectives.
“We look forward to working with EU policymakers to help ensure that the proposals meet the stated goals so that Europeans continue to reap all the benefits of digital products and services,” said CCIA Europe chief Christian Borggreen in a statement.
Meanwhile, the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) said the plans weren’t ambitious enough and that the European Parliament and Council should toughen them up.
“Antitrust investigations have shown how gatekeeping practices by digital players harm competition and thus limit consumer choice,” said BEUC head Monique Goyens. “But competition investigations can be too slow to prevent irreparable harm on the market. It is the right move to prohibit some practices upfront instead of picking up the pieces afterward.”


fortune--2020-12-15--Welcome to the investing wars

Welcome to the investing wars

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Sequoia Capital may be a major investor in Robinhood, but it doesn’t think stock-picking will take over all of investing.
In a bet consumers won’t put all their investing dollars into robo-advisors and stock-picking apps, the venture capital firm is leading a $45 million Series B round in Vise, a startup seeking to automate time-consuming tasks for independent investment advisors while shaping individualized portfolios for their clients with the help of A.I. Since Vise’s revenue comes from the assets it helps advisors manage, it does appear to indirectly compete with companies like Robinhood for the same investing dollars.
But Sequoia Partner Ravi Gupta says he believes the pie is big enough that all these companies can co-exist together. “We don’t see Robinhood as a competitor—we think Robinhood is thriving and will continue to thrive,” says Gupta to Term Sheet, adding customers of investment advisors tend to skew older while Robinhood’s users tend to be millennials. As a result of the deal, Sequoia will hold two board seats within the company. That’s not to forget: The company was founded in 2016, when the duo were just teenagers. Read more.
Other investors also seem to think there is more space for even more direct competition too. As soaring stock markets and boredom have taken over the psyches of those locked in at home, would-be Robinhood challengers are also taking advantage of the times.
Public, a stock-trading app that is directly competing with Robinhood, has raised $65 million in Series C funding with Accel leading the round. Seeking to differentiate itself with a social element in which users can share their stock picks, the company has signed on prominent folks in media, including Scott Galloway, skateboarder Tony Hawk, and The Chainsmokers band member Alex Pall. That comes amid a story that Robinhood is losing traders to another platform, WeBull.
The question for Public: Will it have a place in a world dominated by Robinhood? In theory, the social element makes a lot of sense to me. Stock trading is an insanely social activity. Retail traders are aggressively loud on Twitter and Reddit where they both fight and discuss each other’s investments. And unlike on Venmo where few want to broadcast their dinner payments, investors like to broadcast when they win, and even sometimes when they lose. Social media is a great place for celebration and commiseration, and stock trading can be a massive cause for both.
But the reality is, Robinhood still stands far above its competitors and stock pickers are still gravitating to the existing social platforms to air their successes and grievances. If Public maintains its strategy for getting to the top, it won’t just be about acting like a TDAmeritrade or a better stock-picking app, but also as a better social-media platform too. Read more.
IPO LAND: We may not see the IPOs of Affirm or Roblox before year end, but do keep an eye out for Wish, the e-commerce platform that sells bargain goods primarily sourced from China. The company is set to price its IPO today, after indicating that it plans to raise about $1.1 billion.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Zenoti, a Bellevue, Wash.-based management platform for the beauty and wellness industry, raised $160 million in Series D funding, valuing it at over $1 billion. Advent International led the round and was joined by investors including Tiger Global and Steadview Partners.
- Xsight Labs, an Israeli fabless semiconductor company, says it has raised $116 million to date from investors including Intel Capital, Microsoft M12, Xilinx, Battery Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, and Atreides Management and others.
- ClickUp, a San Diego-based project management software maker, raised $100 million in Series B funding. Georgian led the round and was joined by investors including Craft Ventures.
- Locanabio, a San Diego, Calif.-based gene therapy company focused on severe neurodegenerative, neuromuscular, and retinal diseases, raised $100 million in Series B funding. Vida Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including RA Capital Management, Invus, Acuta Capital Partners, SVB Leerink, ARCH Venture Partners, Temasek, Lightstone Ventures, UCB Ventures and GV.
- Uhnder, an Austin-based maker of a radar chip for vehicles, raised $45 million in Series C funding. Sensata Technologies led the round.
- Self Financial, an Austin-based credit building startup, raised $40 million in Series D funding. Meritech Capital led the round.
- Well Dot, a Chapel Hill, N.C.-based health guide company, raised $26 million in Series A funding. Investors included General Catalyst, John Doerr, Mosaic Health Solutions, and partners of Hellman & Friedman.
- Noname Security, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based enterprise API security company, raised $25 million in funding from Lightspeed, Insight Partners and Cyberstarts.
- Arya, an India-based agritech startup focused on post-harvest services for farmers, raised $21M in Series B funding. Quona Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Omnivore and LGT Lightstone Aspada.
- Taxdoo, a Germany-based automated platform for financial compliance in e-commerce, raised $21 million (€17 million) in Series A funding. Accel led the round and was joined by investors including Visionaries Club, 20VC and existing investor HTGF.
- Aware, a Columbus, Oh.-based compliance and governance monitoring company, raised $12 million in Series B funding. Spring Mountain Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Blue Heron Capital, Allos Venture, Draper Triangle Ventures, Ohio Innovation Fund, JumpStart, Rev1 Ventures, and JobsOhio.
- Workit Health, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based virtual substance use disorder care provider, raised $12 million. FirstMark Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Lux Capital, GingerBread Capital, Blue Cross and Blue Shield Venture Partners as well as actor Rob Lowe. Read more.
- LogicGate, a Chicago-based provider of cloud software solutions for automating governance, risk, and compliance, raised $8.8 million in funding. Investors included Greenspring Associates and Silicon Valley Bank.
- Metaphor Data, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based search platform for data scientists, raised $5.3 million in seed funding. Amplify Partners and Andreessen Horowitz led the round.
- Tonic, a San Francisco-based maker of synthetic data for testing, raised $8 million in Series A funding. GGV Capital led the round and was joined by Bloomberg Beta, Xfund, Heavybit, and Silicon Valley CISO Investments.
- The Routing Company, a Boston-based startup building routing and vehicle management solutions for transit providers,raised $5 million in a seed round led by The Engine.
- Whirli, a London-based toy subscription service, raised a £4 million ($5.3 million) in seed funding. Octopus Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including MMC Ventures.
- Mozper, a Mexico-based maker of a debit card and app for children, raised $3.6 million in seed funding. Hetz Ventures led the round and was joined by F-Prime Capital, Foundation Capital, Secocha Ventures, Dux Capital, and John Farrell. Read more.
- Sesh, a San Francisco-based mental health company, raised $3 million in seed funding. Polaris Partners led the round.
- Joro, an Oakland, Calif.-based maker of an app for tracking climate impact, has raised $2.5 million in Seed funding. Sequoia Capital led the round. Read more.
- Hashnode, a London-based blogging platform, raised $2.1 million in funding. Sequoia Capital India’s Surge led the round and was joined by investors including Naval Ravikant, Ritesh Arora and Nakul Aggarwal (founders of BrowserStack) as well as Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur (founders at Razorpay).
- Recycleye, a U.K.-based startup seeking to automate waste sorting, raised £1.2 million in seed funding. MMC Ventures and Playfair Capital led the round.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- EQT has agreed to acquire Recipharm, a Swedish pharmaceuticals company, for $2.1 billion.
- Apollo Global Management and Hudson Executive Capital agreed to acquire Cardtronics (Nasdaq: CATM), a Houston-based ATM owner and operator, valuing the company at $2.3 billion, including net debt.
- Artlist, backed by KKR and Elephant Partners, acquired Motion Array, a Decatur, Ga.-based marketplace for stock media and videos, for $65 million.
- Ebb Therapeutics, backed by KKR, will merge with Kryo, the parent company of sleep technology brand ChiliSleep. KKR will also lead a $37 million investment in the business.
- A group including Apollo Global Management and Blackstone Group are in talks to acquire Wells Fargo’s student loan portfolio, per Bloomberg citing sources. Read more.
- FORM.com, backed by Diversis Capital, acquired GoSpotCheck, a Denver, Colo.-based provider of image recognition software. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Kingswood Capital Management agreed to acquire Cost Plus World Market, an Alameda, Calif.-based home goods retailer, from Bed Bath & Beyond. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Genius Sports Group, backed by Apax, agreed to acquire Sportzcast, a Winter Springs, Fla.-based maker of sports scoreboard data distribution systems. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Phone2Action, backed by Frontier Capital, acquired KnowWho, a Lorton, Va.-based directory of public officials and influencers. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- TA Associates invested in The Benecon Group, a Pennsylvania-based developer and manager of self-funded medical benefit programs. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Thompson Street Capital Partners invested in WeVideo, a Mountainview, Calif.-based collaborative video creation platform. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
EXITS
- Groupe Bruxelles Lambert agreed to acquire a majority stake in Canyon Bicycles GmbH, a bike maker, from TSG Consumer Partners. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Reddit agreed to acquire Dubsmash, a New York-based short form video startup backed by investors including Index Ventures. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
OTHER
- Huntington Bancshares (Nasdaq: HBAN) agreed to acquire TCF Financial Corp (Nasdaq: TCF), a Detroit-based regional bank, for $6 billion in stock.
- Murphy USA plans to acquire QuickChek, a convenience stores operator in New York and New Jersey, for $645 million in cash. Read more.
IPO
- 908 Devices, a Boston-based provider of mass spectrometry devices, plans to raise $100 million in an offering of 6.3 million shares priced between $15 to $17. Arch Venture Partners backs the firm. Read more.
SPAC
- Marquee Raine Acquisition, a SPAC formed by the Raine Group and the Chicago Cubs' owner, raised $325 million.
- Blade, a New York-based helicopter taxing company, agreed to merge with Experience Investment Corp. (NASDAQ: EXPC), a SPAC sponsored by KSL Capital Partners. Investors in the PIPE include affiliates of KSL Capital Partners, Hedosophia, HG Vora Capital Management, and David Geffen. The deal values Blade at about $825 million.
F+FS
- Imaginary Ventures raised $160 million for its second fund.


fortune--2020-12-15--The next round of stimulus will likely lose support for state and local governments

For the latest information on the ongoing stimulus negotiations, please check out our coverage here
As top Washington negotiators reach for a long-delayed agreement on COVID-19 relief, rank-and-file Democrats appear increasingly resigned to having to drop, for now, a scaled-back demand for fiscal relief for states and local governments whose budgets have been thrown out of balance by the pandemic.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., spoke with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin by phone Monday evening and continues to press for help for struggling states and localities. But top Democratic allies of President-elect Joe Biden came out in support of a $748 billion plan offered by a bipartisan group of lawmakers and hinted they won’t insist on a pitched battle for state and local aid now.
“We cannot afford to wait any longer to act. This should not be Congress’ last COVID relief bill, but it is a strong compromise that deserves support from both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. “We cannot leave for the holidays without getting relief to those Americans who need it.”
The message from Coons, a confidant of Biden, and a similar message from Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., came as a bipartisan group of lawmakers unveiled a detailed COVID-19 aid proposal in hopes it would serve as a model for their battling leaders to follow as they try to negotiate a final agreement.
But the group was unable to forge a compromise on GOP-sought provisions shielding businesses from COVID-19-related lawsuits, a key priority of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky Republican is pressing a lowest-common-denominator approach that would drop the lawsuit shield idea for now if Democrats agree to drop a $160 billion state and local aid package.
Pelosi has insisted for months that state and local aid would be in any final bill, but as time is running out, Democrats appear unwilling to hold the rest of the package hostage over the demand. Several Democrats appeared at the bipartisan news conference endorsing the $748 billion package.
“I found it interesting that they separated out the state and local and liability provisions. Senator McConnell had suggested that earlier,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “Seems to me that we’re making some progress on it.”
Cornyn, a McConnell lieutenant, spoke after a dozen or so lawmakers unveiled two bills. One is a $748 billion aid package containing money for struggling businesses, the unemployed, schools and vaccine distribution. There is also $45 billion for transportation and transit assistance, funding for rural internet service and help for the Postal Service, among other provisions. The other bill proposes a $160 billion aid package for state and local governments and a modified liability shield that is backed by Republicans and Democratic moderate Joe Manchin of West Virginia, but it is probably too politically freighted to advance.
The path forward for their proposals — and for COVID-19 aid more generally — remains unclear, though Cornyn said the bipartisan plan has lots of “good stuff” for any yearend agreement.
Any agreement is likely to be forged in parallel negotiations between Pelosi and Mnuchin — closely watched by McConnell.
Outstanding issues in the leadership talks include a potential second round of direct payments to individuals, a plan for $300-per-week bonus unemployment benefits, state and local aid, and the GOP-sought liability shield against COVID-19-related lawsuits.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she hoped that Capitol Hill leaders and the administration will use the proposals as the basis for a COVID-19 relief package “that is urgently needed by our struggling families, our hard-hit small businesses, our stressed-out health care providers, our overwhelmed Postal Service, our challenged schools, and so many others.”
Lawmakers also worked to finalize a yearend catchall funding package that will be the basis for the last significant legislation of the Trump presidency.
There’s a hoped-for deadline of midnight Friday to deliver the completed package to President Donald Trump, which is when a partial government shutdown would arrive with the expiration of last week’s temporary funding bill. But there’s no guarantee that the massive yearend measure will be completed in time. If the talks drag, further temporary bills could be needed.
Negotiations on the $1.4 trillion catchall spending bill are “essentially finished,” said a congressional aide participating in the talks. While details are closely held, “the status quo is prevailing.” That means Trump would get another $1.4 billion or so for a final installment to continue construction of his long-sought U.S.-Mexico border wall.
Republicans have succeeded in killing a $12 billion plan to break last year’s budget mini-agreement by using accounting maneuvers to pad veterans health care funding to accommodate big cost increases from expanding access to health care services from private providers. Instead, a different set of moves is being employed to provide for equivalent spending increases for other domestic programs.
The post-election lame-duck session is the last chance to wrap up the unfinished work this year, a goal of all involved, though they have been slow until now to forge the often-tricky compromises required to pull the measure together.
Pelosi has not thrown in the towel on her drive to obtain state and local aid, which was part of the almost $2 trillion CARES Act that passed the Senate unanimously in March. But many Republicans are adamantly against the idea now.


fortune--2020-12-15--How hospitals are prioritizing who to give COVID vaccines to first

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The first COVID vaccine has arrived.
The initial shipments of Pfizer and partner BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine, which received emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday, are already being deployed. And the first tranches will go to those who are on the literal front lines: health care workers.
With hospitals, ICUs, and all manner of medical units overwhelmed by a surge in coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, and COVID-related deaths, the nation’s top medical experts are facing a critical question: How do we get our own workforces vaccinated?
This isn’t just a question of resource allocation—although that is a critical point. It’s a logistical conundrum the likes of which the nation hasn’t witnessed in modern times.
From safe transportation and storage to prioritization of who gets a COVID vaccine to dealing with side effects from the vaccine—which may take out an already depleted and burned-out health care workforce—to regulatory issues such as various states’ differing approaches and even keeping track of which vaccines people are getting, the coming weeks will be a titanic pull for some of the nation’s most critical workers.
Dr. Melanie Swift, one of the doctors tasked with leading the famed Mayo Clinic health system’s COVID vaccination campaign, is in the thick of things this week. And while she’s optimistic about Mayo’s plan, questions and challenges abound.
“The top concern is how you prioritize, amongst all the health care workers, who would be eligible under the CDC recommendation for who should be vaccinated, which the CDC advisory committee voted on Dec. 1,” says Swift, who focuses on occupational and internal medicine in Rochester, Minn.
COVID vaccine distribution is a game of supply chains with multiple players who have to work together. The federal government is coordinating with state governments; state governments are coordinating with local health systems; local health systems are coordinating with pharmacies like CVS and smaller local hospitals; everyone’s coordinating in some fashion with logistics companies like UPS and FedEx and, of course, companies like Pfizer, which are actually making these vaccines.
The operational chain of command is more like a spiderweb of decisions. And ultimately it will be up to individual organizations to figure out what to do with disparate advice, which is meant to build flexibility but can also be confusing.
“The CDC voted to recommend the vaccine as the first wave to all health care personnel. That was more than we were expecting,” says Swift. “We were expecting them to recommend it for a certain set of health care workers, like those who work in hospitals. So we had to determine how to fairly and equitably allocate this limited resource, knowing that health care workers want this vaccine.”
The Mayo Clinic appears to be ahead of the curve on the issue. Several physicians Fortune spoke with in the Los Angeles area, where COVID cases are skyrocketing, bluntly said they have no idea what their vaccination rollout plans will be in the coming weeks. It’s a wait-and-see game that will rely on local governments.
But Mayo, at the very least, has a plan in place. And it is, fittingly, quite clinical.
“We’ve provided a grid of different tasks and places where our people might work,” says Swift. “So the COVID-specific unit, for example, emergency departments, a COVID outpatient vaccine infusion center, etc.”
It goes deeper on an operational scale. There are nonmedical workers who must work within a hospital, and they’re critical to protect as well: the people who take out the bedpans and scrub down the ICUs. Systems have to account for them too.
“There’s about 10 or 11 of these different risks and settings. And it goes all the way down to outpatient clinics, non-direct patient contact staff, and teleworkers. So we’ve got this grid. We actually sent these lists out to the appropriate level supervisor,” says Swift.
“And over the past few days, they’ve been marking the risks box for each of their people, and sending it back in. And so then what we have is a spreadsheet with a bunch of columns, and there’s X’s in the columns,” she says. “And we’re able to then take everybody that’s got an X in the first risk group, and maybe the second and maybe the third, depending on how many we’ve got.”
But as a leader in a sprawling health system, Swift isn’t even sure how many doses of the vaccine will be delivered to various hospitals. She’s received numbers for some places—a few thousand doses here, need to figure out how many over there—but it’s essentially an ad hoc process.
She expects there will be about six or seven waves of vaccines being rolled out to staff, with priority going to personnel specifically designated to COVID-related services, emergency services, and their support staff.
She’s also planning for side effects. The Mayo Clinic has constructed a grid of which adverse events, such as a mild fever or headache or muscle aches, are associated with the vaccine versus what is clearly a symptom of active coronavirus infection.
Swift explains that symptoms such as, say, loss of a sense of smell or taste are things that don’t manifest with Pfizer’s vaccine. So with a depleted workforce, those who display only side effects directly related to the vaccine would probably still be asked to work, while being thoroughly monitored.
Mark, who asked to use only his first name, is an anesthesiologist who takes care of patients in the emergency room on a daily basis at a large New York City–area health system, and he echoes much of what Swift said with a dash of local uncertainty thrown in.
When elective procedures at hospitals were halted to divert resources to COVID treatment, Mark and his colleagues had to use their training to do a job they didn’t exactly sign up for.
“It was sort of a part of our skill set to be involved with that treatment process,” he says. “As anesthesiologists, we are called for intubations for patients, and we’ve had sort of education and simulation around doing intubation safely for COVID patients. So they’re preparing us to be able to take care of patients safely and respond safely.”
As for when Mark himself will get a vaccine? “As I understand it, the plan is to prioritize the people who are actually on a daily basis working with COVID patients or at risk, but not specifically.”
It’s a coordination issue, he says, and relates it to a pyramid distribution system. The federal government, working in conjunction with manufacturers like Pfizer and logistics companies such as UPS, will distribute the vaccines to various state facilities. State governments must then determine which health systems have the most need for COVID vaccine doses and send them their way—and then those health systems will have to prioritize various personnel for vaccination.
And then, as Swift says, larger and more capable hospital systems will have to coordinate with smaller local hospitals to act as a hub for getting their own vaccines in case they don’t have the staff or storage capacity for these delicate pharmaceuticals.
“We meet regularly with other hospitals in our region, some of which are small,” she says. “Because it’s ultracold-storage requirements, it is a burden for small hospitals. The minimum package is 975 doses. So there are hospitals that could not use that or have the ultracold freezer to store it until they do use it.” Mayo is even willing to do the storage and deliver daily shipments to other hospitals on a need-by-need basis. Swift compares the alternative option to going to Costco to buy a toothbrush. It just doesn’t make sense.
As tough as the logistics puzzle is, it’s equally important to track all the data once staff start getting vaccinated, especially after vaccines from multiple companies are available. Ruby, an informatics analyst and trainer who works with major Baltimore-area hospitals, has the critical task of wading through pandemic data management. That includes maintaining vaccine data for major health systems through electronic health record vendors like Epic.
“In terms of the nitty-gritty, our team has been involved in doing the actual Epic build of how the staff are going to distribute and actually administer the vaccine in our electronic health record,” says Ruby, who asked to use a pseudonym for privacy.
“Basically, employees will sign up online to receive the vaccine; they can schedule themselves. And we’ve done that work on the intellectual-property side, and then when they actually show up to get the administration of the vaccine, we have done the build within Epic for the actual vaccinators to be able to document this employee.”
This process also includes following up with certain employees in high-risk departments about who they may have had contact with and whether or not they have COVID symptoms.
Health care workers, medical staff, and nursing home residents are the priority groups for COVID vaccinations, and they are the first groups to pilot this daunting task. There are many timelines going around for other groups, but most public health officials seem to agree a broad rollout for getting a COVID vaccine for your average, non-sick American at a local pharmacy or hospital probably won’t happen until late spring or early summer.
There’s still much to learn about how various states will tackle this distribution dilemma, akin to the problem the U.S. faced when it came to testing at the beginning of the pandemic.
In short: It’s still a work in progress. But the bright side is that we’ll know much, much more within the next month.


fortune--2020-12-15--Vise, a company founded by two high school graduates, raises $45 million in funding with Sequoia at

Vise, a company founded by two high school graduates, raises $45 million in funding with Sequoia at the helm

So-called robo-advisers may be all the rage, but Sequoia Capital is betting that humans will still hold a prominent place in helping people make investment decisions.
On Tuesday, the Sand Hill Road firm led a $45 million Series B round of funding in Vise, a startup that seeks to automate time-consuming tasks for independent investment advisers while also creating individualized portfolios for their clients with the help of A.I.
Founded roughly four year ago by Samir Vasavada and Runik Mehrotra, now both 20, the company that raised its Series A round just some seven months ago is preparing once again to bulk up amid continued growth through the pandemic. Now with about 50 employees, the company hopes to hire another 50 by early next year. Investors in the December round also include Allen & Company, Greenoaks Capital, Creative Artists Agency cofounder Michael Ovitz, and Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks.
The Vise team says that by using A.I. and data from financial providers such as Bloomberg, it can help create tailored portfolios for clients of investment advisers who, for example, specifically seek a portfolio that is environmentally friendly or one that is over-indexed on female CEOs. Then the human adviser can help personalize it even further.
“The thesis is that we believe humans are the future of advisories, and we believe that A.I. should help them,” said Ravi Gupta, the partner at Sequoia who led this round.
Vise gets its revenue from taking a 0.5% fee on assets that run through its platform. That raises the question: Doesn’t that model put Vise indirectly in competition with robo-advisers or stock-picking apps like Sequoia portfolio company Robinhood that are also seeking to get the same investment dollars in the end?
Gupta says he believes Robinhood is serving a different part of the market compared to those who already have an investment adviser and that the two can coexist.
“We don’t see Robinhood as a competitor. We think Robinhood is thriving and will continue to thrive,” says Gupta, adding customers of investment advisers tend to skew older while Robinhood’s users tend to be millennials.
While the company and Sequoia both declined to give numbers on its valuation, both say the new capital pushes that figure up. They also declined to share numbers on the firm’s revenue growth, but a Vise spokesperson says the amount its clients manage through the startup, upon which it bases its revenue, has grown 50% monthly since May.
And Gupta pointed to recent starry additions to the team as a positive sign. A former chief compliance officer of BlackRock’s Digital Wealth division, Shah Hafiz, was recently named chief compliance officer. The former director of product at point-of-sale lending startup Affirm, Niki Sri-Kumar, also joined as vice president of product. Meanwhile, two former SEC commissioners, Troy Paredes and Joe Grundfest, joined the company’s advisory board. (Sequoia will have two board seats at the company, held by Gupta, who focuses on later-stage investments, and Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, whose concentration is on investing in early-stage companies.)
By age alone, it’s a stark contrast to the two founders. Now both 20 years old, the duo had their start as consultants while they were teenage best friends, earning hundreds of dollars an hour by teaching large financial institutions about A.I.
Following the entrepreneur route, now-CEO Vasavada graduated high school early, moved to San Francisco, and eschewed college altogether. Under pressure from his family, Mehrotra, on the other hand, enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania. Through it all, the duo were still working on an early version of Vise.
But it soon became clear long-distance wasn’t ideal. So Vasavada flew across the country and slept on the floor of Mehrotra’s dorm room in late 2018, hatching a plan to convince the latter’s family that a startup could work. Mehrotra’s family countered with a condition they believed to be impossible: Raise at least $1 million from investors. Vasavada and Mehrotra raised $2 million that year in a round led by Keith Rabois at Founders Fund and Ben Ling at Bling Capital. And while Mehrotra still gets a call “every now and then” from family members testing his resolve, the now chief investment officer of the company says he has no plans to return to school for now. With the company’s growth, “it doesn’t make much sense,” he says.
Correction, Dec. 15, 2020: A previous version of this story misstated the year of the company’s founding.


fortune--2020-12-15--How to make mental health care more accessible to women

This is the web version of the Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Women in health care get the first coronavirus vaccines, Pinterest settles its lawsuit with Françoise Brougher, and a startup that aims to make mental health services more accessible. Have a terrific Tuesday.
– A mental health moment. Today’s guest essay is courtesy of our colleague Michal Lev-Ram:
Last week, my husband and I got an unexpected notice from our 2-year-old’s preschool: He had been directly exposed to COVID, and we had to go pick him up right away. Along with the other families in our son’s room, we would have to get tested and quarantine.
This set off a chain reaction: I immediately asked my ex-husband to keep my two older kids, who live part-time with us and part-time with him, until my husband, son, and I were in the clear. My girls, ages 9 and 11, would have to stay at their other home in order to minimize their exposure.
So far, everyone appears to be healthy. But I can’t overstate how devastating this ordeal has been for me. At a time of uncertainty and fear, when all I wanted was to hold all of my children close, I couldn’t. As my 11-year-old daughter said to me, beautifully summing up the incongruity of the situation: “It’s hard enough socially distancing from my friends, but I never thought I’d have to socially distance from my mom.”
Lucky for me, I have a support network, including a therapist. When the pandemic hit last spring, we switched our in-person appointments to virtual sessions. And I’m so glad we did. These sessions have been more important than ever, giving me a dedicated time and place to talk through all the ups and downs (okay, mostly downs) of this chaotic year.
I’m just one data point in a growing trend. The pandemic has forced a rise in telemedicine across all fields, but a recent study from the Commonwealth Fund shows that behavioral health leads the way. Out of all other fields, it has the highest percentage of visits currently conducted online—about 40% of total sessions. This has potential implications way beyond the pandemic. One of the biggest hurdles to therapy is access. Another one is cost. Telemedicine doesn’t entirely solve for these, but it certainly alleviates some of the accessibility issue. That’s especially true for people in communities without an adequate supply of providers nearby.
Would women, who end up shouldering more of the responsibilities at home, be more likely to turn to therapy if it was easier and less time-consuming to do so? (Again, I realize therapy is not just inconvenient, but also cost-prohibitive, for many.)
Case in point: Men are typically much more likely to seek treatment for addiction than women. That’s just one of the fascinating tidbits that came out of a recent interview I did with Robin McIntosh and Lisa McLaughlin, two entrepreneurs who met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Their startup, Workit Health, brings together technologists, clinicians, and counselors to offer a fully-digital recovery program. The aim? Make the path to recovery accessible for more people, from wherever they are.
Interestingly, initial results show that Workit Health’s digital-first approach is achieving better retention results than traditional, in-person recovery programs. There’s a lot that’s still to be learned about the opportunities and limitations of telemedicine and its applications to recovery and behavioral health. But with mental health-related issues on the rise, along with rates of opioid and other drug-related overdoses, there’s plenty of room—and need—for innovation.
While I don’t suffer from addiction, I can easily see how this time of uncertainty and the separation from my kids, not to mention the slew of very real threats and traumas so many of us are facing under the pandemic, could have sent me spiraling if I did. To be honest, I broke down a bit. We all have our breaking points, and for a variety of reasons, this particular episode hit me hard. But I feel blessed to have a place to turn. Nothing beats holding my children close, but talking to someone—yes, even over Zoom—can provide solace at a time of need. May we all be so lucky.
Michal Lev-Ram
michal.levram@fortune.com
@mlevram
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Pin this. Pinterest settled its lawsuit with former COO Françoise Brougher, who sued the tech company for gender discrimination and retaliation. The $22.5 million settlement is one of the largest for gender discrimination that has been made public. New York Times
- On the front lines—in a new way. As COVID-19 vaccines start to be administered nationwide, women in health care who have been on the front lines of the pandemic are among the first to receive them. In New York, ICU nurse Sandra Lindsay said she felt "hopeful" after receiving the state's—and the country's—first approved vaccine. In Los Angeles, ICU nurse Helen Cordova was among the first to be vaccinated. In Florida, the honor went to nurse Vanessa Arroyo. BuzzFeed
- Serena + startups. Serena Williams, who invests in startups through her fund Serena Ventures, wrote an op-ed about how Black women founders are underestimated, underpaid, and underfunded. The tennis star—whose op-ed was published shortly after her friend Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex announced a startup investment of her own—says she sees herself in "the Black female founders who are often counted out right from the start." CNN
- New allegation in New York. Lindsey Boylan, a former aide to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, accused him of sexual harassment. Boylan, who is now running for Manhattan borough president, says that the governor often "harassed [her] about [her] looks." A spokesperson for Cuomo denied the allegations. New York Times
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Thumbtack hired Melanie Margolin, SVP and general counsel for Wabash National and Cummins, Inc., as chief legal officer.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Safety first. As members of the Electoral College convened yesterday to cast their votes for President, all eyes were on Michigan, where right-wing protesters this year have demonstrated with guns at the Capitol and where there was a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The state's legislative buildings closed due to a "credible threat of violence" and Whitmer said leaders have "always been mindful that it's going to be necessary to make sure everyone is safe" on this day. NPR
- A Savage deal. Rihanna is reportedly seeking $100 million to scale her lingerie business Savage X Fenty (not to be confused with Fenty Beauty, her beauty empire). The pop star/mogul has hired Goldman Sachs to raise the funding, the NYT reports, to be used to expand in Europe and introduce athletic wear. New York Times
- Talking the talk. All talk with no action isn't enough on the issue of diversity and inclusion. But new research suggests that talking the talk means companies are more likely to walk the walk. "Verbalizing values appears to be an essential part of the way that companies process and internalize change," write Signe Spencer, Evelyn Orr, and Michael Hyter of the Korn Ferry Institute. Fortune
ON MY RADAR
Panic! In the pod The Cut
These ladies love natural gas! Too bad they aren’t real Mother Jones
The bipartisan stimulus proposal leaves working people on the cutting-room floor at the the darkest time of the pandemic The Hill
PARTING WORDS
"People that like movies. People that want to see stories about people. People that are interested in what women think about things—what it’s like for us to go through the world day by day."
-Director Nancy Meyers, in a wide-ranging interview with Vulture, on who she makes movies for


fortune--2020-12-15--Public, a would-be Robinhood rival, raises $65 million

The year 2020 has been tough for many companies, but it’s been a fantastic one for brokerages. Buoyed by a record number of new retail investors, firms like Robinhood and Fidelity have experienced record levels of trading.
This trading surge, along with the popularity of newer app-based platforms like Robinhood, has created a potential opportunity for upstarts. These include Public, a New York–based startup whose investing platform seeks to blend social media and investing.
In practice, this means users can tell one another what stocks they buy and, in some cases, see what high-profile celebrities or investors are buying. The company has recruited prominent figures of pop culture, including skateboarder Tony Hawk and Alex Pall of the band the Chainsmokers, to help drum up interest in the platform.
Hawk and Pall are also among those who’ve invested in Public’s new Series C financing round of $65 million. The round, which was led by the venture firm Accel, brings Public’s total funding to $90 million since it launched in 2018.
“The stock market has historically been an intimidating place reserved for a lucky few. As technology continues to disrupt barriers, Public.com is creating a platform that makes investing accessible to everyone,” said Hawk in a statement announcing the new funding round.
Not so public
But while Public has star power and a compelling thesis, it’s unclear how much traction the company is getting in the market. The company declined to disclose how many accounts it has but said the number has grown 10-fold since the start of 2020. Public also declined to provide any information about its valuation.
In an interview earlier this year, venture capitalist Ian Sigalow, who invested on behalf of Greycroft, likened Public to Venmo—a network that grew exponentially thanks to its social media attributes. Those attributes, he says, will also allow Public to avoid spending large sums on marketing since it will be able to rely on word of month instead.
Nonetheless, Public may face an uphill battle. A recent report by JMP Securities shows the number of app downloads for Robinhood is more than quadruple those for other brokerages. Those competitors include traditional brokerages and Webull, another trading app with a social media component.
Despite Robinhood’s apparent dominance, the investment in Public suggests investors believe there is room for it to make inroads. Other investors in Public’s Series C round include Lakestar, Greycroft, and Advancit Capital.
This story was updated at 10:30 ET to include new information about Public’s rate of growth.


fortune--2020-12-15--Putin congratulates Biden on election victory—before Trump, McConnell and Republican leadership have

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent Joe Biden a congratulatory telegram after the Electoral College formalized his victory in the Nov. 3 election, making him among the last world leaders to recognize the U.S. president-elect.
Putin wished Biden luck and said Russia and the U.S. can contribute to solving global problems, according to a Kremlin statement Tuesday. “For my part, I am ready for cooperation and contacts with you,” Putin said in the statement.
The Russian president had previously said he wouldn’t recognize the election results until they were accepted by Biden’s opponent or confirmed in a “legitimate” way.
The Democratic candidate’s Electoral College win over President Donald Trump, who’s refused to concede defeat, was finalized after electors in each state voted Monday. Trump and his allies are still protesting the result, but with more than 50 post-election lawsuits rejected, including by the U.S. Supreme Court, they have no viable path to overturn it.
Polish President Andrzej Duda, who considers himself a political ally of Trump, also congratulated Biden after the Electoral College vote. In a letter, he said Poland and the U.S. were “strategic partners” joined by the values of “freedom, justice, democracy and the primacy of international law.”
Russia, which was accused by U.S. intelligence agencies of intervening in 2016 to help get Trump elected, has been wary of Biden, who is likely to seek to emphasize his support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and traditional U.S. allies. Russia is also concerned about the risk of new sanctions by the incoming administration.
Putin’s telegram came a day after hackers tied to the Russian authorities were suspected of involvement in one of the most audacious attacks on U.S. government agencies in recent memory, as part of a global campaign involving malware inserted into updates by a software maker. Russia has denied involvement.


fortune--2020-12-15--Workit Health, a digital rehab startup, raises $12 million

There’s a saying in Alcoholics Anonymous (okay, there are many): “It works if you work it.” But here’s the problem—many who need to “work it” can’t because of the time and cost associated with traditional recovery programs.
That’s the problem that Workit Health, a startup founded by Robin McIntosh and Lisa McLaughlin, two tech workers who met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Oakland more than a decade ago, is trying to solve. By bringing together technologists, clinicians, and counselors to develop a digital-first platform for recovery, the duo hope they will be able to reach far more people who are in need of recovery than existing, in-person programs.
“Both inpatient and outpatient programs are expensive and inconvenient,” says McIntosh, the cofounder and co-CEO of Workit Health. “And there hasn’t been much of a digital aspect of recovery. It’s still largely face-to-face.”
Workit Health got its start in 2015, well before the pandemic. But it’s no surprise it is now seeing a boom in demand—and is announcing a $12 million Series B round of financing, which brings its total funding to date to $20 million. That’s because COVID-19 has exacerbated existing addiction problems in the United States, with several studies showing that the virus has led to an increase in substance abuse and drug overdoses. At the same time, the pandemic has also accelerated demand for telemedicine and for startups that enable it.
“Workit was already at an inflection point in their growth and was ready for this,” says Beth Ferreira, a general partner at New York City–based firm FirstMark Capital. “[Their] approach is completely holistic and they have the infrastructure to prescribe medication and conduct therapy and group counseling—all aspects of addiction treatment in one platform from the safety and privacy of home.”
Ferreira is leading the Series B investment in Workit. Her firm is joined by Lux Capital, GingerBread Capital, Blue Cross and Blue Shield Venture Partners, and actor Rob Lowe, who is a public advocate for recovery and mental health.
While telemedicine is on the increase in all fields, a recent study from the Commonwealth Fund shows that behavioral health is leading the way: It has the highest percentage of visits currently conducted online—about 40% of total sessions. Workit Health now has more than 10,000 individuals across its recovery platform, accessing group meetings and one-to-one counseling sessions, among other forms of treatment and therapy. (An important note: While Workit Health provides several recovery paths to choose from, its forms of interventions aren’t new; what’s innovative is its delivery model.)
“We saw a 200% increase in demand [this year as compared to last] in part because people are isolated and unemployed,” says McLaughlin, Workit’s other cofounder and co-CEO. “All of these things are coming to a head now.”
So far, Workit’s results are promising. A recent white paper from the company showed that its digital-first approach is achieving better retention results than traditional, in-person recovery programs. But it’s still early days for telemedicine, relatively speaking, despite the explosion in usage providers have seen this year. And there’s still lots of data to be collected and analyzed. Workit’s founders say they have yet to publish in peer-reviewed publications but that they have plans to do so. “JAMA [The Journal of the American Medical Association] calls us on a semi-regular basis,” says McLaughlin.
For now the startup is focused on launching in more regions. To date, Workit is available in five states, including Michigan, Washington, and California, and plans to launch in Ohio, Texas, and Florida in 2021. (Clearly, addiction afflicts both red and blue states.) The duo, meanwhile, are optimistic that despite the uptick in rates of overdose and substance abuse, there are silver linings to the pandemic. “COVID has changed so much,” says McIntosh. “We’ve been advocating for remote care for years.”


fortune--2020-12-15--Singapore is desperate to revive tourism and business travel. Here are all the ways it has tried

Singapore announced on Tuesday it will open a segregated travel lane so “business, official, and high economic value travelers” can visit the city-state quarantine-free by staying in a designated “bubble” facility near the airport.
The facility, Connect@Changi, will feature guest rooms and conference rooms where visitors can meet with other people staying in the bubble. Travel lane visitors will be able to meet with Singapore residents in the bubble—but only with floor-to-ceiling dividers separating them.
The business travel lane is the latest attempt by Singapore’s government to jump-start the country’s all-important tourism and business travel sectors, which have cratered in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tourism accounts for 4% of Singapore’s gross domestic product—it generated $20 billion in 2019—and the city is normally a top spot for business conferences and trade shows.
Over 19 million international tourists—more than three times the population of the country—visited Singapore in all of 2019, according to the Singapore Tourism Analytics Network. Through October, just 2.7 million visitors had trickled across the border in 2020.
Singapore largely has its coronavirus outbreak under control; it has not logged more than 20 new daily cases since the end of September. But its small size—the island nation spans 280 square miles—means that unlike its geographically bigger Asian peers that have also tamed COVID-19, Singapore can’t rely on domestic tourism to make up for the steep drop-off in international visitors.
“We don’t have a big domestic tourism market unlike, say, China or Hong Kong or Australia, and so the impact has been tremendous on our tourism industry,” Keith Tan, chief executive of the Singapore Tourism Board, said during a Fortune Global Tech Forum virtual conversation earlier this month.
In desperate bids to revive tourism and business travel, Singapore has rolled out a series of schemes—with varying degrees of success.
Domestic tourism
In June, as Singapore was loosening stay-at-home orders and other COVID-19 restrictions, the Singapore Tourism Board started letting popular tourist attractions reopen in stages and began accepting applications from domestic tour operators to resume business.
The following month, the board launched SingapoRediscovers, a $34 million campaign to boost local tourism, offering residents “staycation” packages, tours, and discounted attractions. That campaign included a $75 voucher for every adult Singaporean to use on hotels and attractions. On Dec. 1, the first day the vouchers were redeemable, the designated booking platforms received $1.4 million in sales.
Singapore’s renowned Jewel Changi Airport features a 16-meter Christmas tree this holiday season. Earlier this year, the Singapore Tourism Board encouraged residents to “travel” domestically by offering vouchers. Suhaimi Abdullah—Getty Images
Singapore’s flagship carrier, Singapore Airlines, has also staged creative attempts to boost revenue and get some of its planes back in the air. (In October, it recorded a 98.2% year-on-year decrease in passengers carried.)
The airline toyed with the idea of “flights to nowhere.” Passengers would board a plane that took off from Singapore’s Changi Airport, fly around, and then land at Changi again. Airlines in Taiwan and Hong Kong have operated flights to nowhere, with some working better than others. The haze over Hong Kong on the day of the region’s inaugural flight to nowhere was so thick that passengers couldn’t see the city from the plane.
Singapore Airlines ultimately didn’t follow through on the flights to nowhere idea, opting instead in October for a grounded experience that offered customers dinner and a movie on a double-decker A380 plane for $37 to $440. The airline also began offering tours of its training center and use of its flight simulator.
Singapore did allow the Royal Caribbean cruise line to launch “cruises to nowhere” from its harbor, but last week one ill-fated ship returned to port a day early after a passenger tested positive for the coronavirus, despite upgraded air filters, mandatory testing, and other safety protocols that officials had required of the operator. (It’s still unclear when or where the passenger contracted the virus.)
Bubbles and lanes
In September, the city-state received the first passengers from Brunei and New Zealand under its Air Travel Pass program.
The scheme lets visitors—including leisure tourists—apply to travel to Singapore and do so without undergoing a 14-day quarantine. Since it launched the plan in September, Singapore has expanded the list of eligible regions to include Australia, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam. The scheme is unilateral, meaning Singaporeans who want to travel to those countries are still subject to existing coronavirus travel restrictions.
Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas cruise ship docked at the Marina Bay Cruise Centre in Singapore on Dec. 9, 2020, after a passenger on a “cruise to nowhere” tested positive for COVID-19. Ore Huiying—Bloomberg/Getty Images
Singapore also runs reciprocal “green lane” programs with China, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Brunei, and Germany that let some corporate and diplomatic travelers skip quarantine on arrival if they test negative for COVID-19.
But Singapore still hasn’t managed to open a travel bubble with another region that would allow tourists from both sides to travel back and forth without quarantining.
In late November, it very nearly pulled off a travel bubble with Hong Kong that would have let residents of each region travel quarantine-free to the other, but a fourth wave of coronavirus cases in Hong Kong thwarted the bubble and forced authorities to delay it until at least 2021.
Conference hopes
Singapore’s various travel schemes provide an immediate boost to struggling hospitality businesses, but they are also attempts to establish Singapore as a place that is safe and open to visitors. Such a reputation would bolster the city-state’s chances of playing host to global conferences and events as COVID-19 vaccines become available and the pandemic eases in 2021.
The “MICE industry”—meetings, incentives, conventions, and exhibitions—supported more than 34,000 jobs in Singapore and contributed $2.9 billion to the economy in 2019, according to the tourism board.
The World Economic Forum announced earlier this month that it would hold its annual meeting in Singapore instead of Davos, Switzerland. The gathering of business and political elites is scheduled for May. If it takes place successfully, it will be a boon for Singapore’s economy and a clear indication that the city can host large global events without risking coronavirus transmission.
But Singapore no doubt is haunted by a worst-case conference scenario it experienced early in the pandemic.
In late January, when Singapore had the third-highest number of confirmed coronavirus infections in the world (which, at the time, meant 43 cases), a British man contracted COVID-19 while attending a business conference in Singapore. The man traveled back to Europe, where he infected several other people. The media dubbed the Singapore conference a “super-spreader event.”
Singapore’s current control over local coronavirus infections supports the city’s argument that it can host global events like WEF’s annual meeting next year. But its handling of the virus was far from perfect. Singapore’s government said on Tuesday that half of the city’s migrant workers have had COVID-19.
Authorities used serology tests to detect antibodies, indicating past infection, and found that 98,289 workers had them. The government is still completing serology tests for 65,000 more workers. The results indicate that Singapore’s case count is far higher than the official tally of roughly 58,000.


fortune--2020-12-16--Stiffed by an airline for a flight you couldn’t take? This U.K. watchdog is on the case

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority is investigating whether airlines violated consumer rights by failing to offer passengers their money back for flights they couldn’t lawfully take during Covid-19 lockdowns.
The probe is part of an ongoing review of how holiday refunds have been handled during the pandemic, the CMA said in a statement Wednesday. Some carriers kept operating even when lockdown rules in the U.K. or abroad made it impossible for people to fly legally, it said.
The refund issue has been a contentious one since the outbreak began disrupting global air travel early this year, prompting cash-starved airlines to steer passengers toward rebooking or accepting credits for future flights. The failure to offer prompt reimbursement spurred a public backlash.
“We recognize the continued pressure that businesses are currently facing, but they have a responsibility to treat consumers fairly and abide by their legal obligations,” CMA Chief Executive Officer Andrea Coscelli said in the release.
Those pressures have led to a minefield of terms and conditions that vary by carrier. Passengers found themselves having to stay on hold with customer-service representatives to get refunds while vouchers were offered automatically, making it easier to choose that option.
BAR UK, which represents 70 domestic and foreign airlines in Britain, said carriers had upheld their obligations under the EU261 regulation, which governs refunds, while also applying their own commercial policies which sometimes exceeded those requirements.
“The industry has been doing its absolute best,” CEO Dale Keller said.
The U.K.’s Civil Aviation Authority previously criticized airlines but said in July that rules were being heeded, with refunds paid, call-center waiting times reduced, and customers getting more clarity over their rights. The aviation regulator said Wednesday that it welcomed the new investigation.
The CMA will examine the response of the industry during the second U.K. lockdown in November, which came after many carriers had bolstered their finances and seen a modest revival in revenue flows in the late summer.
Michael O’Leary, CEO of discount giant Ryanair Holdings Plc, has been vocal in defending airlines over the issue, telling the BBC last month that claims passengers were still waiting for cash were “completely false” and that his company had spent more than 1 billion pounds ($1.2 billion) on refunds and vouchers. Ryanair declined to comment on the CMA probe.


fortune--2020-12-16--BP bets big on carbon credits in latest acquisition

BP Plc acquired a majority stake in forest carbon-management company Finite Carbon, expanding on an initial investment made last year.
The transaction gives BP—one of the world’s biggest carbon-credit traders— control of the largest developer of forest carbon-offset credits in the U.S. It comes at the end of a year that’s seen the oil major step up its commitment to reduce emissions and increase investments in cleaner energy.
Finite Carbon, with 50 carbon projects over 3 million acres of land, connects landowners to businesses that pay a fee per ton of carbon dioxide permanently stored in the forest. Companies can purchase offsets on the market or privately to cancel out their emissions.
BP invested $5 million in Finite Resources—the parent of Finite Carbon—in 2019. The latest acquisition brings Finite Carbon into the oil company’s Launchpad division, which builds up businesses that specialize in digital and low-carbon technologies, BP said in a statement, without valuing the deal.
“The value of BP is that they have a geospatial team of 30 people” and “satellite coverage of the entire world,” Finite Carbon President Sean Carney said in an interview. While more than half of his staff are foresters, “the technology part is something that’s kind of new to us.”
Satellite Data
The BP acquisition may help Finite Carbon to digitize the process of carbon reporting. Currently, employees from the Wayne, Pennsylvania-based company measure trees with tape measures, a laborious undertaking. Digitization will replace that with satellite surveillance to quantify how much carbon is there.
Finite Carbon says it has generated more than $500 million in revenue so far for landowners. It expects BP’s increased investment to deliver a further $1 billion by 2030 amid growing interest in carbon pricing and offsets. In California, where the company currently does most of its work, the oil majors and transportation sector are the biggest emitters, according to Carney.
While carbon offsets are largely voluntary, Finite Carbon has become “overwhelmed by all the interest and demand” this year, he said, highlighting the “inevitable” trend toward a price on carbon. “Forestry and all kinds of land use are inevitably going to be a part of this for a long time.”