fortune--2020-06-15--Major indices eke out gains Monday as Fed says it will begin buying individual corporate bonds

Markets managed to recover some losses Monday, as the S&P 500 closed up 0.8% on Monday (after trading down as much as 2.5%), while the Dow closed 0.6% higher. Stocks rebounded once the Fed announced it will begin buying individual corporate bonds as an update to continuing efforts to support credit markets.
But investors have recently had a second wave of the coronavirus on the brain, as markets fell early on Monday (adding to a pullback last week that saw the worst one-week drop in the S&P 500 and Dow since March). Last week, markets shaved off over 5% amid growing concerns of spiking infections and a somewhat gloomy outlook from the Fed. CFRA’s Sam Stovall said in a note markets were “looking for a catalyst that could cause a correction”— triggering what Stovall calls “announcement anxiety.”
Edward Jones’ Nela Richardson suggests investors have perhaps gotten ahead of themselves—”There is this tendency to be overly-optimistic in a V-shaped recovery without recognizing that it will be harder to turn the lights on than it was to turn the lights off,” she told Fortune. Meanwhile, at this stage of the market rebound, a correction is not out of left field.
In fact, as far as volatility in the market goes, investors should expect a lot more of it. With the “very high degree of uncertainty we’re facing right now, I think we were probably due for a return to higher levels of volatility, and that’s what we got,” Mark Hamrick, chief economic analyst at Bankrate.com, told Fortune.
Among stocks seeing a boost Monday were Amazon, Facebook, Citigroup, and JPMorgan, all rising over 1%.
Rising infections
Top of mind for investors Monday was news of coronavirus spikes in several states across the U.S. like Arizona and Texas (and in China, which is seeing the largest daily increase in cases since mid-April, Bloomberg reported). And even as states reopen, some officials like Governor Andrew Cuomo have been critical about lax attitudes towards social distancing: Cuomo said Sunday there had been 25,000 complaints about violations of reopening standards, sparking fears the reopening may be stymied by reinforced restrictions.
Yet for many states that initially avoided the high infection rates seen in states like New York and New Jersey, the spike may be part of the 1st wave. In that sense, “It’s more appropriate to say this is still the first wave,” suggests Hamrick.
Investors are on edge about the spikes, but Richardson suggests “The market is used to thinking nationally. They don’t think about what’s going on at the local level, and so I think there’s an unfamiliarity in how to interpret local conditions when it comes to a health crisis,” she says. In that sense, she doesn’t “think the market is doing a great job at interpreting what these upticks mean for a national economic rebound, and there’s a disconnect there.”
Stocks did see a boost midday after the Fed announced it will begin buying individual corporate bonds on the secondary market based on a broad index—an update to its previously announced program, the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility, that has thus far involved buying corporate-bond exchange-traded funds. “This is yet another sign the Fed is going to do everything under their power to help liquidity. Worries over a second wave? No worries, the Fed is here,” LPL Financial’s Ryan Detrick wrote on Monday.
Some investors, at least, jest there has been no limit to what the Fed has been willing to do to bolster the recovery.
I’m not selling until the Fed buys all credit card debt. — Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) June 15, 2020
The Fed’s update to the established program also removes the requirement for issuers to ‘opt-in,’ analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote Monday, adding that, “First and foremost, today’s news increases upside risk (i.e., tighter spreads) relative to our forecasts. The Fed’s posture has shifted from a ‘lender of last resort’ towards more of a regular market participant.”
Update, June 15: This story has been updated with a quote from Goldman Sachs research.


fortune--2020-06-15--What the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on LGBTQ job discrimination means for transgender health pr

What the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on LGBTQ job discrimination means for transgender health protections

Missing and murdered Native Americans : How to combat the worsening crisis in the U.S .

A sweeping 6-to-3 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rules that LGBTQ Americans are protected from job discrimination under existing law. The ruling’s ripple effects could extend to the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back health care protections for transgender Americans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare.
On Friday, just three days before the high court’s landmark decision, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized a rule that would undo the Obama administration’s 2016 decision to expand the ACA’s antidiscrimination provisions to include health care services for trans people.
That 2016 rule leveraged Section 1557 of the ACA, which bars certain health plans and activities from discriminating against people on the basis of “race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability” in accordance with existing civil rights laws. Those laws include Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, among others.
The Obama administration regulations expanded the scope of sex-based discrimination to include refusing to provide abortion services or medical services for transgender individuals.
But the HHS’s revised regulation takes a very different approach. “HHS will enforce Section 1557 by returning to the government’s interpretation of sex discrimination according to the plain meaning of the word ‘sex’ as male or female and as determined by biology,” it reads. In short: Many more health plans would be able to discriminate against someone on the basis of gender identity were the administration’s rule to take effect.
That’s where the Supreme Court’s anti–job discrimination decision could play a critical role. In a concise majority opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court explicitly says that discriminating against an employee on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity intrinsically amounts to discriminating against them on the basis of sex, which is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“It is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex,” writes Gorsuch.
That blunt assessment could make it difficult for the Trump administration to effectively argue that redefining sex discrimination to what it considers “the plain meaning of the word ‘sex’” passes muster.
A HHS spokesperson declined to comment on how the ruling may affect Obamacare’s transgender health protections. But there are arguments the agency could still make—including that health care and employment are different issues, and that HHS has the authority to interpret what the ACA’s various provisions mean. Obamacare’s antidiscrimination clauses rely on Title IX, which is related to Title VII, but not quite the same thing.
The issue may be complicated still more by a religious liberty argument—one that has already been deployed. In 2019, a federal judge ruled against the Obama administration’s original rule expanding transgender health care rights, arguing that it infringed on health care providers’ religious freedoms by forcing them to provide transgender or abortion-related medical services.
Still, the bluntness of Monday’s Supreme Court decision could make HHS’s arguments an uphill climb.


fortune--2020-06-15--Why retail investors beat the professionals in the recent rally, according to Goldman Sachs

The market rally has shown the rise of retail—investors, that is.
According to Goldman Sachs, a grouping of stocks favored by retail investors outperformed picks by hedge funds and mutual funds in the rally, as retail investors’ stocks surged 61% since March 23, while hedge fund and mutual fund picks gained 45% (the S&P 500 rose 36% in the same period). That’s made “the narrative of Main Street weakness vs. Wall Street asset inflation…misleading,” strategists at the firm wrote in a note.
Retail investors outperformed in part because they were quick to snap up value stocks as the rally gained traction. While high-quality growth stocks outperformed as the market tanked and in the first few weeks of the rebound—benefiting institutional investors who shifted to growth stocks amid the decline—since mid-May, the rally has shifted toward cyclicals, small-caps, and economically sensitive stocks, Goldman notes. “Stocks with these qualities…were quickly embraced by value-seeking retail investors, and now make up a large portion of our retail basket,” strategists at Goldman write. The firm notes that broker data reveals a “tripling of retail trading activity as the market declined.”
In fact, the Russell 1000 Value Index has outperformed the Growth index, rising over 4% since May 22.
Among the top retail picks in the firm’s compiled portfolio? Hotel and leisure company Penn National Gaming (which owns a stake in Barstool Sports) has seen a massive 184% rise since March 23 (as of June 11). Cruise companies like Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings also topped the list, gaining 93% and 78% since late March, respectively. And, of course, trader-favorite Tesla was among the top picks, returning 124% since March 23—also posting an all-time high in the process as the market rebounded and demand for electric vehicles started to recover in China. Other names favored by retail investors include Snap, coronavirus vaccine–hopeful Moderna, MGM Resorts International, and Spirit Airlines.
But not all amateur investors are getting a pat on the back from the Street. In recent weeks, a group of retail investors flooded cash into stocks whose companies had recently filed for bankruptcy, including embattled car rental company Hertz (which was just approved by a U.S. bankruptcy court to sell up to $1 billion equity while in its bankruptcy process). Users of trading platform Robinhood, a commission-free trading app geared toward millennial investors, have come under fire for pumping up the bankrupt stocks.
But the role of retail investors in the rally is hotly debated. Some firms believe that top picks on trading apps like Robinhood actually underperform, from a net-net basis, according to a recent note by Barclays, and aren’t necessarily responsible for the market’s rally. “While it’s true that many high-return stocks have had a substantial increase in retail ownership, low-return stocks have also had a big increase,” Barclays’ Ryan Preclaw wrote.
Regardless of the influence of retail investors on the rally, Goldman notes that the current wide valuation dispersion in stocks “signals long-term
opportunity for value investors.” But “volatile rotations” in recent weeks emphasize “how difficult timing that opportunity can be,” analysts wrote. In that case, the firm believes “most investors should include some value exposure in their portfolios, although the degree will depend on time horizon and risk tolerance, among other factors.”


fortune--2020-06-15--The 2021 Oscars are moving to April because of the coronavirus pandemic

For the fourth time in its history, the Oscars are being postponed. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the ABC Television Network said Monday that the 93rd Academy Awards will now be held April 25, 2021, eight weeks later than originally planned because of the pandemic’s effects on the movie industry.
The Academy’s Board of Governors also decided to extend the eligibility window beyond the calendar year to Feb. 28, 2021, for feature films, and delay the opening of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures from December until April 30, 2021.
“Our hope, in extending the eligibility period and our Awards date, is to provide the flexibility filmmakers need to finish and release their films without being penalized for something beyond anyone’s control,” said Academy president David Rubin and Academy CEO Dawn Hudson in a joint statement.
Karey Burke, the president of ABC Entertainment, added: “We find ourselves in uncharted territory this year and will continue to work with our partners at the Academy to ensure next year’s show is a safe and celebratory event.”
The 12th annual Governors Awards has also been canceled. The event, in which honorary Oscars are bestowed to previously announced recipients, is generally held in Los Angeles during the second week of November. The untelevised event is a major gathering for many of the year’s awards hopefuls.
The film academy has been grappling with how to handle the pandemic’s near shutdown of the theatrical exhibition and film production and festival business since mid-March. With theaters shuttered, release dates pushed and major festivals like Cannes canceled, the Academy in April made the unprecedented decision to allow films that did not have a theatrical run to be eligible for the awards—but only for one year.
The Oscars ceremony date was the big lingering unknown, however. The organization’s leadership has acknowledged all along that the situation was fluid and that everything was on the table. Now, Oscars nominations will be announced on March 15 and the nominees luncheon will be on April 15.
Still, many decisions need to be made. Academy leadership has not yet addressed the format of the show and whether it will be virtual or in-person. Furthermore, the future eligibility of films for the 94th Oscars and that show date will be announced later.
The Oscars have been postponed before, but never this far in advance. The ceremony was pushed back a week because of disastrous flooding in Los Angeles in 1938. In 1968, it was delayed two days following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And in 1981, it was put off for 24 hours after President Ronald Reagan was shot in Washington, D.C. The 1981 decision was made four hours before the broadcast was scheduled to begin.
The eligibility window was extended beyond 12 months once before—in advance of the sixth Academy Awards in 1934.
Other entertainment industry awards shows are also in flux. The 74th Tony Awards, originally set for June 7, has been postponed indefinitely. But the 72nd Emmy Awards is still holding onto Sept. 20. The 78th Golden Globes does not yet have a date.
Even as the country begins to “open up,” studios are still making decisions to delay releases. Just Friday, Warner Bros. announced that it was pushing back what was supposed to be the first major movie in theaters, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, by two weeks.


fortune--2020-06-15--Ex-eBay executives are charged with lurid stalking campaign

Two former top eBay security executives and four other ex-employees face federal conspiracy charges of stalking the staff of an e-commerce newsletter by sending them live cockroaches and a funeral wreath.
Federal prosecutors claim James Baugh and David Harville led the elaborate harassment campaign, which also included trying to place a GPS tracker on a vehicle belonging to the married couple who own the small newsletter and sending them a bloody pig Halloween mask, according to the FBI.
“We are going to crush this lady,” one executive texted another, according to an FBI affidavit filed in court. The executive wasn’t named in the filing.
The indictments may offer clues to the circumstances of former eBay chief executive officer Devin Wenig’s abrupt departure in September.
EBay said in a statement that “neither the company nor any current eBay employee was indicted” and that it “was notified by law enforcement in August 2019 of suspicious actions by its security personnel toward a blogger, who writes about the company, and her husband” and “immediately launched a comprehensive investigation.” As a result, eBay said, it “terminated all involved employees, including the company’s former chief communications officer, in September 2019.”
The company said there were “a number of considerations” that led to Wenig’s departure.
“While Mr. Wenig’s communications were inappropriate, there was no evidence that he knew in advance about or authorized the actions that were later directed toward the blogger and her husband,” it said.
Baugh, 45, was eBay’s senior director of safety and security. Harville, 48, was the company’s director of global resiliency. Both have been arrested. Neither immediately responded to LinkedIn messages seeking comment on the charges.
The affidavit portrays a conspiracy driven by revenge for the newsletter’s reporting on eBay, which included a story on executives’ compensation.
“We have not seen something like this before,” Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, said at a news conference.
In meetings with staff, Baugh “referred to having executive support for these actions” and stressed that the campaign be kept secret, the FBI said. In one staff meeting, the FBI said, he showed a photo of what he called a Samoan gang and claimed he would send the gang to the publisher’s home if the harassment didn’t silence the newsletter.
The defendants also face charges of obstructing justice during the investigation by allegedly deleting evidence.


fortune--2020-06-15--What today’s historic Supreme Court ruling means for LGBTQ workers, and for employers

The Supreme Court issued a momentous decision on Monday morning that makes it illegal for most employers to discriminate against gay or transgender workers.
The 6-3 decision means gay and trans workers will now be protected by the same federal law that forbids discrimination on the basis of gender, religion or race. The case is arguably bigger than the court’s 2015 decision allowing same-sex marriage since the scope of employment discrimination is so broad. Here’s what the decision means for workers, and employers.
What was the case all about?
The case known as Bostock v. County of Georgia was about a government worker named Gerald Bostock who was fired for joining a gay softball league. He argued that this was illegal based on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination on the basis of sex.
The Supreme Court heard his appeal along with those of Don Zarda, a skydiving instructor (now deceased) who lost his job after saying he was gay, and Aimee Stephens, who was fired from a funeral home for being transgender.
How did the Supreme Court make its decision?
It all came down to the phrase “because of sex” in the 1964 law. The employers in the case argued that Congress intended the phrase to refer to discrimination over gender—not sexual orientation.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the opinion, disagreed and said the words of the statute clearly cover gay and trans people, and it does not matter what lawmakers meant at the time.
Did the court split on liberal vs conservative lines?
Yes, but only in part. Justice Gorsuch is a conservative appointed by Trump and he wrote the opinion in favor of gay rights. The four liberals on the court joined his opinion and so did Chief Justice John Roberts who is also a conservative.
Three other conservatives—Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh—disagreed. The latter wrote a long dissent that accused Gorsuch of betraying the legacy of the late conservative legal hero, Justice Antonin Scalia.
What does this mean for gay workers and their employers?
It means that a company or government agency that discriminates against a worker for being gay can face the same legal penalties as they would in other cases of discrimination. Those penalties range from $50,000 to $300,000, depending on the size of the employer.
For gay or trans workers, it means they now have federal law on their side if they face discrimination. Until now, they were only protected by state laws in certain parts of the country—while some states offered no protections at all.
There is, however, one hole in the law: It applies only to employers with 15 or more workers. This means gay or trans workers at very small companies may have to turn to state laws or elsewhere for protection.
Did the Trump Administration take a side in the case?
Yes, the Department of Justice, in a reversal of the Obama Administration’s position, had filed a brief to say the Supreme Court should leave the decision about extending protections to gay workers to Congress. Today’s ruling, however, ends the debate.
More politics coverage from Fortune:


fortune--2020-06-15--Why a person of color should be the next Treasury secretary

The Lazarus-like resurrection of former vice president Joe Biden’s presidential campaign rests on his strong support in the Black community—specifically from Majority Whip James Clyburn and the South Carolina Black community, who helped deliver Biden’s first major primary victory, and from Black women in particular. In recent months, the focus by many Black elected officials and activists has been to urge Biden to select an African-American woman as his vice presidential nominee.
Biden has already said he will pick a woman as his running mate, and fortunately there is a deep bench of capable women to choose from, including a number of women of color. But while the role of vice president is hugely significant, I believe that if you care about addressing the barriers that have kept America’s Black and Brown communities from closing the wealth and income gaps, the much more important and impactful position is the secretary of the Treasury.
Given the extraordinary fiscal challenges this nation currently faces—a pandemic of a severity unseen in 100 years, and racial unrest of an intensity unseen in 50 years—the need for thoughtful financial public policy is greater than ever. The current moment necessitates that the Treasury secretary not only understands the needs of the most disenfranchised, but also symbolically projects to the rest of the world that America is the land of opportunity for all.
Access to capital—or more accurately stated, the lack of access to capital—is the single most important challenge historically disadvantaged communities collectively face. It’s largely responsible for the host of economic disparities that continue to bedevil our society. The Great Recession of 2007–09 highlighted and aggravated those disparities. Before the crisis began, the average Black family earned $55,265 a year, just 64% as much as the average non-Hispanic white household. During the recession itself, Black American unemployment exceeded 16%—compared with a little under 9% for whites. African-American family incomes and net worth also suffered more than those of white households during the crisis, due to a variety of factors ranging from student debt to the rate of homeownership.
The current pandemic is replaying that script, with the Black community once again suffering disproportionately. The Black unemployment rate, which at 5.8% in February was at the lowest level since records began in 1972, tripled to 16.8% in May, according to the Labor Department. African-Americans have also been at a far higher risk than other ethnic groups of dying from COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in part because economic disparities make them more likely to have underlying health conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, and less likely to have health insurance and access to medical care.
If there is to be an economic renaissance in the Black/Brown community, Black and Brown leaders must be in a position to influence and control the tools to promote economic development. When it comes to wielding those tools, Treasury is the single most important cabinet post.
The Treasury Department impacts the domestic economy even as it projects American influence and power abroad. It combines the soft power of the State Department with the hard edge of the Defense Department. And many of its branches are particularly well positioned to deliver economic support to Black and Brown communities. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, for example, regulates banks and thrifts. It can influence their lending practices, making sure they eliminate practices that have excluded communities of color. The OCC can also encourage banks to provide financial literacy in these communities—offering lessons in how to save, how to invest, how to start a business, and other pivotal skills.
Under Black or Brown leadership, the Treasury Department might be more likely to make sure that emergency programs to assist economic stability, such as today’s Paycheck Protection Program or the Troubled Asset Relief Program, established after the Great Recession, are targeted to help Black/Brown businesses. The department could also address some disparities in the finance community. The federal government currently manages approximately $854 billion in pension assets, for a workforce that’s more than 18% Black. But Black/Brown-owned asset management firms manage less than 2% of those federal dollars.
Among the public policy failures coming out of the Great Recession was the lack of inclusion by those most affected by the downturn. The pandemic has created enormous challenges for small-business owners in general, and Black and Brown business owners in particular; those entrepreneurs need a person and team that understand and represent their interests. Just as Biden courageously pledged to have a woman as a running mate, he should pledge to choose a person of color as Treasury secretary.
There are a number of qualified candidates to choose from, including Robert Smith, CEO of Vista Equity Partners; Ray McGuire, vice chairman of Citigroup; Mellody Hobson, co-CEO of Ariel Capital Management; José Feliciano, managing partner of Clearlake Capital Group; and Kenneth Chenault, former CEO of American Express, to name a few. And diversifying the Treasury Department shouldn’t stop at the top: Each of these individuals has relationships with a cadre of proven, talented, and accomplished men and women of color in finance, whom the next secretary could empower to assist in the effort of creating a fairer economy.
Access to opportunity is vital to securing the American dream. Equal opportunity, not equal outcomes, for all citizens—in education, safe and clean neighborhoods, health care, employment/entrepreneurship, and practicing one’s faith—is the American dream. Access to capital is an important expression of that endeavor.
Therefore, I would strongly encourage the many of us from all walks of life who care about race, not to be singularly focused on the shiny object of the vice presidency. Let’s seize this historic moment of leverage to demand the Treasury seat—to stabilize and elevate our communities, and thereby the nation and the world.
Kneeland Youngblood is founding partner and chairman of Pharos Capital Group, a health care–focused private equity firm.


fortune--2020-06-15--Here’s what Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will be grilled about by Congress

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Sunday said through a lawyer that he is willing to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, which is examining antitrust issues at big tech companies.
The House wants to talk to Bezos, who acquiesced to attend only after the threat of a subpoena, according to the New York Times, over concerns about Amazon’s dominance of e-commerce, its expansion into other businesses like physical grocery stores that may stifle competition, and its acquisition of would-be competitors. Amazon is under particular scrutiny for alleged misuse of its powerful platform to give its own products an edge against third-party sellers.
Based on those concerns, critics say that Amazon should be subject to antitrust action, which could include fines or, at the most extreme, a forced spinoff of parts of the company.
No House hearings are currently scheduled, but if and when they are, Bezos could be joined by representatives from Google and Facebook, who have also faced criticism on antitrust grounds.
In addition to antitrust, a number of other issues are likely to come up during a hearing. Unions complain that Amazon’s dominance of the labor market depresses wages in areas where it operates and about its treatment of warehouse workers during the coronavirus pandemic. Additionally, Amazon’s avoidance of corporate taxes is a frequent target.
If he ends up testifying, Bezos would need to convince Congress, and the public at large, that Amazon benefits consumers and that those benefits would be less if members clipped its wings. Antitrust regulators focus primarily on the harm powerful companies cause to consumers, though there is rising concern that the standard is not broad enough to include all the harms that Big Tech causes.
One likely talking point for Bezos is that while Amazon dominates e-commerce with a 44% market share, its share of all U.S. retail is much lower at around 6%, according to one recent analyst estimate. In other words, if a consumer doesn’t like Amazon, they have plenty of other options, online or off.
The company has faced antitrust pressure from a variety of agencies and governments in the past. The U.S. Department of Justice launched a broad antitrust probe of big tech companies last year, with the department’s antitrust lead Makan Delrahim alluding to Amazon in describing big tech companies as “digital gatekeepers” with few competitors.
The Federal Trade Commission has taken charge of the portion of the probe that is focused on Amazon. That has included interviewing small merchants about their dependence on the company.
Just last week, the European Union was reported to be planning formal antitrust charges against Amazon. Those charges would reportedly focus on Amazon gathering data from third-party sellers on its platform, then using that data to compete against the sellers, including by launching its own products. Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) had previously expressed “deep concern” over reports of those practices, making them a likely major focus of any hearing.
Bezos could be hit with a different, perhaps even more uncomfortable set of questions from Republican committee members loyal to President Trump. For years, Trump has lobbed a variety of accusations at Bezos and his company, including that it has underpaid for delivery from the U.S. Postal Service.
Trump’s attacks on Amazon may be motivated by Bezos’s ownership of the Washington Post, which has frequently published unflattering articles about the President. Amazon has even alleged that Trump’s animus led the President to interfere with the bidding for a $10 million cloud-services contract, for a program known as JEDI, from the Department of Defense.
At least three members of the House Judiciary Committee—Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, and ranking minority member Jim Jordan—are prominent Trump advocates. They could use a high-profile hearing to air the President’s attacks again or even go after Bezos’s influence over the Post’s coverage. Bezos has been largely restrained in his response to the President’s complaints, and he may take a similar tack in hearings.


fortune--2020-06-15--DocuSign’s CEO on managing through the pandemic, Zoom burnout, and George Floyd’s death

Despite the coronavirus pandemic pushing many companies into financial distress, business software company DocuSign has managed to soar.
The company specializes in technology that lets people sign documents electronically, which is just what many businesses now need. Shelter-in-place orders have turned tens of millions of people into remote workers while general fears about COVID-19 have put a stop to most in-person business meetings.
The result: More memos, term sheets, and legal documents must be signed electronically than ever before. For DocuSign, this translates into a big opportunity.
Its first-quarter sales ending April 30 jumped 39% year over year to $297 million. And while many companies have stopped giving financial guidance, citing uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic, DocuSign raised its sales forecast for fiscal 2021 to $1.32 billion from $1.27 billion.
In contrast to most stocks, DocuSign’s has nearly doubled since mid-March, when shelter-in-place orders began taking effect.
Dan Springer, DocuSign’s CEO, said the company hasn’t implemented any layoffs during the pandemic and is instead on a hiring spree, specifically for salespeople.
In a month, DocuSign plans a trial reopening of its offices in Tel Aviv and Sydney, where lockdowns have eased considerably. If those reopenings go smoothly, then the company will consider turning the lights on in its bigger offices in cities like San Francisco and Seattle.
But echoing recent comments made by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Springer acknowledged that the routine for workers in reopened offices will be vastly different than it had been before the pandemic. Employees may be separated by three desks, for example, and they’ll likely have to wear masks. He also plans to monitor any challenges employees face in returning to work, such as commuting by public transportation, which many workers may be reluctant to use.
Already, Springer said DocuSign has held some in-person gatherings as a test. For instance, he and a few other executives got together last week in a large conference room—with appropriate spacing—for the company’s quarterly earnings call with investors. Physical meetings still hold an important place, he explained, even in a world in which video calls have quickly become the norm.
“We see a lot of people talking about Zoom burnout,” Springer said about the overdose of videoconferencing. While Zoom “has worked pretty well” during the pandemic, there are a few things he finds lacking in virtual meetings. It’s difficult to see everyone during large gatherings and nearly impossible to read their body language, which can be a subtle form of communication.
As for industries that are spending more on business technology during the pandemic, Springer said that “financial services have grown substantially.” DocuSign has also benefited from customers that manage the federal loan programs created during the pandemic needing digital signature technology. “New York State, at one point, was making 21,000 connections” to DocuSign’s electronic signature service every minute to help with processing unemployment claims, Springer said.
Business from banks, on the other hand, has taken a hit, Springer explained. “If you’re Bank of America, and you’re opening new loans and doing it at the branch on an iPad, that’s not there anymore,” he said.
A similar phenomenon has also affected T-Mobile, which has closed its retail outlets, which in turn impacted DocuSign’s business. Until then, T-Mobile stores created customer accounts using tablets and DocuSign.
“So that volume, when they closed all their stores, obviously went to zero,” Springer said.
He also noticed that while companies are using electronic signature services more frequently, they are pausing some of their more ambitious digital transformations or tech upgrade projects involving DocuSign. These longer-term initiatives, which involve the complicated process of organizing and managing digital documents, typically generate no immediate income or savings, so corporate customers feel they can delay them until the pandemic ends.
Springer also acknowledged the mental challenge to his employees of the pandemic and the police killing of black Minneapolis resident George Floyd. “It’s hard,” Springer said about communicating with his workers about the upheaval. The company recently had an all-hands meeting at which, he said, executives “tried to be as straightforward as possible.” Although the company is doing fine, Springer said, “it’s incredibly stressful, and we’re pushing people to get mental health support.”


fortune--2020-06-15--As the coronavirus deficit soars into the trillions, a tax plan targeting the likes of Amazon and Ap

As the coronavirus deficit soars into the trillions, a tax plan targeting the likes of Amazon and Apple gains steam

As governments reel from cost of the coronavirus pandemic—$10 trillion and counting—some top economists and tax activists are zeroing in on the accounting acrobatics of giants like Amazon and Apple, which they say have skirted billions in taxes for years, and whose rocketing profits could now help pay for the deepest downturn in generations.
“The pandemic ironically has helped the very companies that have been the tax avoiders: The Internet companies,” Columbia University economics professor Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate, told reporters on a Zoom call on Monday, as he and other economists published proposals for sweeping new global tax measures. “The 2008 crisis made us aware of the tax avoidance of the multinationals,” Stiglitz said. Compared to that recession, he said, “This is 100 times worse.”
The report, published by the International Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation, an independent group of top economists, argues for a global minimum corporate tax rate of 25%, as well as proposing that the super-rich pay more taxes in the countries where they live. The minimum corporate tax, they say, would halt the practice of companies funneling revenues into low-tax jurisdictions, like Ireland and Luxembourg, through a set of complex financial maneuvers.
The group’s proposals are hardly new—but the scale of crisis surely is. And so, the group has seized on the pandemic as a rare chance to gain traction for their ideas, at a time when governments face ballooning debt, and when there is rising popular anger over inequality and unfairness—including in the Black Lives Matter protests. All that, they sense, could provide unusual impetus to finally reform the world’s tax system.
“The view that nobody will have to pay for anything, which some politicians are trying to push, is simply not credible,” French economist Thomas Piketty said on the Zoom call on Monday. “A more equitable tax system will have to be part of the solution.” The current system, he said, “is not only immoral but also unsustainable.”
A decade in the making
If the economists’ hunch is correct, the downturn could potentially break years of deadlock over how to tax digital companies. Those efforts have sputtered on and off since 2011 in countless rounds of talks, overseen by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. The meetings have continued even through months of lockdowns. A weeklong marathon of Zoom meetings began on Monday, with 25 members of the steering committee for the tax group logging on to talks overseen by the OECD, as they attempt to nudge forward a global agreement. The meetings are scheduled to last until Friday.
While years of negotiations have ground on, the companies have grown to become the world’s biggest corporations in history, with revenues far outstripping the GDP of some smaller countries.
Take Amazon, for example, whose market cap was just $197 billion in June 2015. Five years on, is market cap is now about $1.26 trillion—about $260 billion more than it was barely five months ago. Revenues have soared as billions of people, under lockdown and working from home, have taken to ordering a raft of items online.
“The fact that companies are making money from people stuck under lockdown, and experiencing grave inequalities, and the fact that those companies are not paying taxes, all that is making people really angry,” Alex Cobham, chief executive of the Tax Justice Network, an activist organization in London, told Fortune. “There is a broad political shift that we are seeing.”
That tone of annoyance is heard far beyond the activists. France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire told the French Senate last week that his country would push through a tax on tech giants by the end of this year, no matter whether the OECD process results in a global agreement.
U.S. opposition
The French measure, nicknamed the “GAFA tax,” for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, is among about 20 national digital taxes which countries are planning to introduce, having grown tired of waiting for an international agreement. Le Maire told senators that the U.S. Administration was “the last state that is blocking an agreement on digital taxation at the OECD.”
Indeed, President Trump has vowed to impose $2.4 billion in tariffs on French cheeses, wine, and luxury goods if Le Maire follows through on his promise. “We will announce substantial reciprocal action on [French President Emmanuel] Macron’s foolishness,” Trump tweeted last July, when the French government first announced its digital tax plan. “American wine is better than French wine!” the teetotaler U.S. president added. The French government backed off, delaying the plan until the end of 2020, saying it was waiting for a global agreement at the OECD.
But Trump’s threats have not swayed the opinion of regular Europeans. “They clearly see that tech giants make a lot of money in every country in the world where they do not pay taxes,” Daniela Ordonez, chief economist in Paris for the global forecasting company Oxford Economics, told Fortune.
Even so, she says that since the Internet giants are American, “it is easier for Europeans to have these opinions,” she says. “If Europe created a company like Apple or Google, the dialogue would be different.”


fortune--2020-06-15--BET Awards to air on CBS for the first time

Drake is the leading nominee at the 2020 BET Awards, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary later this month.
BET announced Monday that Drake is nominated for six honors, including video of the year and best male hip-hop artist. For both best collaboration and the viewer’s choice award, Drake is nominated twice thanks to the hits “No Guidance” with Chris Brown and “Life Is Good” with Future.
The 2020 BET Awards will air live on June 28 across ViacomCBS networks, including CBS for the first time. The show, which will be a virtual celebration because of the coronavirus pandemic, will also air on BET and BET HER.
Breakthrough rappers Megan Thee Stallion and Roddy Ricch follow Drake with five nominations each. Megan Thee Stallion, who recently topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart with her Beyoncé-assisted “Savage” remix, is nominated for video of the year, best female hip-hop artist, best collaboration, the viewer’s choice award and album of the year for “Fever.”
Ricch, who won his first Grammy Award earlier this year, also topped the pop charts with his upbeat hit “The Box.” The video for that song is nominated for video of the year alongside DaBaby’s “Bop,” DJ Khaled, Nipsey Hussle and John Legend’s “Higher,” Doja Cat’s “Say So,” Megan The Stallion’s “Hot Girl Summer” and Chris Brown and Drake’s “No Guidance.”
Beyoncé, Minaj, Brown, Lizzo and DaBaby earned four nominations each.
Kanye West, who released a gospel album last year, is nominated for the Dr. Bobby Jones best gospel/inspirational award. He will compete with Kirk Franklin, the Clark Sisters, Fred Hammond, John P. Kee and PJ Morton.


fortune--2020-06-15--A new coating could protect ATMs from spreading diseases like COVID-19. But will it work?

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The leading maker of automated teller machines, NCR, knows people are worried about using the devices right now for fear of contracting COVID-19.
So the company has developed a new antimicrobial coating that can be applied to touch screens, button pads, and other parts of ATMs, self-checkout terminals, or other machines with surfaces that could become contaminated with viral droplets.
The coating has to be applied by a trained technician, and one application can last for about six months. The coating makes it difficult for viruses and bacteria to stay alive on the treated surfaces, though NCR still recommends that such surfaces also be cleaned regularly.
“While no one can claim 100% protection against today’s specific viruses, a significant proportion of everyday sicknesses are spread through hand contact, meaning an antimicrobial coating can be an easy way to add extra protection for your staff and customers,” NCR notes in a release about the new coating.
The COVID-19 pandemic—which has so far infected 8 million people and killed over 400,000 worldwide—can spread on surfaces, although aerial transmission is thought to be the more common way that the disease spreads. A trace of the virus can survive on untreated plastic or stainless steel for up to 72 hours, although it degrades quickly, according to widely cited research published in the New England Journal of Medicine in March. And the CDC has said touching contaminated surfaces “is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.”
Still, without scientific testing of the specific coating NCR is offering, scientists say it’s hard to know how effective NCR’s treatment will be at preventing COVID-19 from spreading via ATMs.
NCR did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Fortune will update this story if a response is received.
“The effort is commendable, but it is hard to judge,” Eugene Chudnovsky, a professor of physics at the City University of New York who has studied viral transmission mechanisms, tells Fortune. “It is not clear how specific it is to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and whether it was researched at all by NCR.”
“In theory, it sounds great, but is it practical?” asks Erin Bromage, a biology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, who has been writing frequently about the COVID-19 pandemic.
A major question is how long the coating takes to make the virus inactive after someone infects a surface. “Most technologies like this require contact for one to two hours for inactivation,” Bromage explains. “So putting it on a high-use surface—one used every few minutes—would not provide meaningful protection to people touching that surface. If the technology inactivated the virus in minutes, then it’s a different story.”


fortune--2020-06-15--Supreme Court rules LGBTQ workers protected under federal job discrimination laws

A divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal law protects gay and transgender workers from job discrimination in a pair of decisions that give millions of LGBT people new civil rights.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four liberals in a 6-3 majority, interpreting the longstanding federal ban on sex discrimination in the workplace to cover bias on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
The decisions could have a broad practical impact. More than half the U.S. states don’t cover sexual orientation and gender identity through their own anti-discrimination laws. More than half the nation’s 8 million LGBT workers live in those states, according to the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute.
The victory for LGBT rights comes even after the Supreme Court shifted to the right with two appointments by President Donald Trump.
The cases tackled a central irony in the fight over LGBT rights. Even though the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015, LGBT people still could have been fired from their jobs in much of the country.


fortune--2020-06-15--George Floyd protests, coronavirus face masks pose challenges for facial recognition

In early June, civil liberties groups voiced alarm at a leaked memo showing the U.S. Justice Department had authorized the Drug Enforcement Administration to conduct covert surveillance and other investigations of those protesting the police killing of George Floyd.
The document, obtained by BuzzFeed News, doesn’t say exactly how the DEA would conduct this surveillance, but technology publication CNET speculated that the agency might deploy facial recognition technology. For its part, the DEA, along with other federal agencies, has refused to answer questions about whether it uses facial recognition and, if so, how.
In October, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Department of Justice to force it to reveal more. The case’s progress through the courts has been delayed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a May 15 court filing.
The potential use of facial recognition technology to identify those involved in the George Floyd protests is a sensitive topic because studies have demonstrated that most such systems are less accurate when trying to identify dark-skinned people. One reason is that camera technology isn’t good at light-balancing for different skin tones, especially if they are present in a single frame. But, more significantly, blacks are underrepresented in the data sets used to train facial recognition algorithms.
IBM, which had been spearheading efforts to create more inclusive facial data sets to train facial recognition algorithms, said on June 8 that, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, it would stop marketing, developing, and researching facial recognition technology and would actively oppose its use for mass surveillance or racial profiling.
Amazon said Wednesday that it was instituting a one-year moratorium on selling its facial recognition software, which is called Rekognition, to U.S. police departments.
The following day, Microsoft president Brad Smith said the company would also cease selling facial recognition technology to U.S. police departments “until we have a national law in place, grounded in human rights, that will govern this technology.”
On top of this, the coronavirus has thrown in an additional factor with the potential to derail companies selling facial recognition systems: the widespread use of face masks. Tech companies have been scrambling to retrain their algorithms to cope with people wearing masks. But whether such software can ever achieve the same accuracy as with uncovered faces is a topic of debate among researchers—and a cause for alarm among civil liberties groups already worried about the technology.
Most facial recognition software works by analyzing data points on the face and the distance between them. Cover lots of those points with a mask and suddenly the algorithm doesn’t have enough data to make an accurate identification.
That’s what happened with Apple’s Face ID system for the iPhone, for instance. Users found that when wearing a mask, Face ID no longer worked. “Face ID is designed to work with your eyes, nose, and mouth visible,” Apple said in a statement.
In late May, Apple updated its operating system, enabling users to quickly bypass Face ID and enter a numeric pass code instead to access the phone. But it hasn’t introduced a way for users to use Face ID while wearing a mask.
Some companies that sell facial recognition technology say they’ve been able to get their software to work with mask wearers. Amazon had said, prior to its decision to stop offering the software to law enforcement, that its Rekognition algorithm could cope with the added complication. China’s SenseTime—which has become one of the world’s most valuable A.I. companies through selling facial recognition software but which has also been controversial for its work with the Chinese government—says it too has tweaked its software to recognize masked people. Several other companies, including NtechLab, a Russian facial recognition firm, and Corsight, an Israeli facial recognition company, also say their technology still works if people wear face masks.
Stuart Greenfield, spokesman for Facewatch, a U.K. company that sells facial recognition software that businesses use to identify known shoplifters or pickpockets, says the firm retrained its system to work by focusing primarily on the area around the eyes and the distance between them. He says the software now achieves about the same accuracy—93.5%—that it does with an unmasked face. The only difference, he says, is that it takes Facewatch’s software a few milliseconds longer to make an identification than with an unmasked face.
But others, like Los Angeles company TrueFace, whose software is used by such customers as the U.S. Air Force, say they are still trying to gather enough images of masked people to update their algorithms.
Experts warn that how well the technology actually works depends on how it’s used. Greenfield says one reason Facewatch was able to create a system that is not stumped by masks is that it’s intended to be used only with security cameras installed indoors at head-height, where the cameras can capture a close-up, full-face, head-on view of a person in relatively stable lighting conditions. It’s not designed for picking an individual out of a large crowd in a public space—and Facewatch does not sell its technology to police departments for that reason.
Ben Ziomek, the cofounder and chief technology officer at Actuate AI, which makes software for security cameras that detects whether someone is holding a firearm, says that the problem with using facial recognition systems in busy public spaces is twofold: First, are the cameras being used at a high-enough resolution that an algorithm can capture an image of a face that is at least 300 to 500 pixels per foot. Below that resolution, he says, most algorithms struggle to make highly accurate identifications. He thinks that with the right training data and images of this quality, algorithms will be able to cope with people wearing masks.
But the second issue, he says, has to do with how many people the system is being asked to screen. Even with a 99.9% accuracy rate, a facial recognition system still has the potential to misidentify a lot of people if used in a busy public place. For instance, in New York’s Grand Central Terminal, which before COVID-19 had an average of 750,000 people passing through it each day, a 99.9% accurate algorithm would still mean 750 false positives daily and 750 people possibly drawing police scrutiny unnecessarily.
In the U.K., the London Metropolitan Police in January began using facial recognition in several busy areas of the city to spot criminal suspects. But the system was criticized by privacy advocates, such as the group Big Brother Watch, for throwing off too many false-positives—and that was before anyone was wearing face masks. In fact, in one test of the system, the police arrested a man who they alleged was deliberately wearing a mask in order to avoid being identified by the camera system.
“We now face the situation that, for many months ahead, the wearing of masks, scarves, and face coverings will be commonplace in public places in London. Even the staunchest advocates of facial recognition technology must surely accept that this is not the right time to be rolling out the use of this technology,” London Assembly member Caroline Pidgeon says. She is one of two London Assembly members who have formally asked the Met Police to stop using facial recognition. In response the police department has said it is considering “pausing” its use of the technology.
The software the Met Police is using is made by Japan’s NEC, whose software is also used by several U.S. law enforcement agencies, including Customs and Border Protection.
Benji Hutchinson, a vice president with NEC’s U.S. division, has told reporters that NEC’s software is trained on people wearing face masks, since they were often worn by people in Asia during flu season, but that “doesn’t mean it’s all perfect.”
Several groups of researchers have made data sets of people wearing masks freely available on the code repository GitHub for people to use to train facial recognition algorithms. But how these facial data sets are obtained is also a controversial issue.
For instance, in May, the ACLU also filed a lawsuit against Clearview, a controversial facial recognition startup that has marketed its software to U.S. police departments, accusing the company of violating Illinois’s stringent biometric data privacy law. The suit alleges Clearview broke the law by holding people’s biometric data without permission. Clearview has acquired many of the 3 billion facial images it claims to have by scraping Facebook, Pinterest, and other public social media sites, sometimes in violation of those sites’ service terms.
Beyond how the training data is obtained, there are also so far no standards or benchmarks to judge how well facial recognition systems for people wearing masks work.
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, which does provide the test against which most companies benchmark their facial recognition algorithms, has said that it plans to create a test for judging how well algorithms perform on masked faces. But because its projects have been delayed by the pandemic, the new test may not be ready anytime soon.
Clare Garvie, a researcher at the Georgetown University Law School’s Center on Privacy and Technology who has investigated law enforcement’s use of facial recognition, says face-mask wearing compounds her concerns about the software.
The uniqueness of facial data has never been scientifically established, she says. In addition, there’s little independently verifiable information about how accurate these systems are overall, let alone how accurate they are in any specific identification of an individual, she notes. Police departments have been reluctant to reveal this kind of technical information to defense lawyers. “There’s never been an evidentiary reliability hearing on the technology,” she says, adding that every time defense lawyers have asked for technical information on the software as part of the discovery process, prosecutors have opted to either drop or settle the case.
Most law enforcement agencies do have rules that a match from a facial recognition algorithm is alone insufficient to establish probable cause for an arrest, Garvie notes. It can be an “investigative lead,” but officers are supposed to have other evidence to establish probable cause before searching someone or making an arrest. And yet, she adds, in practice, there have been many cases in which officers have not followed these guidelines and have used the facial recognition software’s match as the sole basis for a search or arrest.
Garvie is also no fan of the use of facial recognition by stores and other businesses to prevent theft or shoplifting. She says there’s too little transparency and accountability over whose face winds up in a “watch list” data set and how that data is collected and used.
But she’s not optimistic that the widespread wearing of face masks owing to the pandemic will do anything to slow the adoption of facial recognition software. In fact, some companies selling the technology have, since the pandemic began, started marketing their software as a way to help governments or companies do contact tracing for infected individuals. “The surveillance company model is one of crisis profiteering,” she says. “And this is certainly a crisis.”


fortune--2020-06-15--Black Lives Matter banner removed from U.S. embassy in Seoul after it displeased Trump and Pompeo

A large “Black Lives Matter” banner draped on the front of the U.S. embassy in Seoul was removed on Monday after it was brought to the attention of President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, according to people familiar with the matter.
Pompeo and Trump were both displeased about the banner, the people said. A large, multicolored “pride” banner recognizing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people was also removed on Monday. They were replaced with a banner commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Korean War.
The embassy unfurled the “Black Lives Matter” banner on its mission building on Saturday to support worldwide anti-racism protests that have followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody last month.
The U.S. Embassy “stands in solidarity with fellow Americans grieving and peacefully protesting to demand positive change,” the embassy said Saturday on Twitter, posting a picture of the banner. “Our #BlackLivesMatter banner shows our support for the fight against racial injustice and police brutality as we strive to be a more inclusive & just society.”
But on Monday, after the banners were removed, the embassy said that U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris did not intend “to support or encourage donations to any specific organization. To avoid the misperception that American taxpayer dollars were spent to benefit such organizations, he directed that the banner be removed.”
Harris said earlier in a re-tweet of the embassy’s tweet about the banners, in Korean, that “USA is a free and diverse nation… from that diversity, we gain our strength.” He also quoted former President John Kennedy.
The U.S. Embassy stands in solidarity with fellow Americans grieving and peacefully protesting to demand positive change. Our #BlackLivesMatter banner shows our support for the fight against racial injustice and police brutality as we strive to be a more inclusive & just society. pic.twitter.com/Y4Thr2MRdw — U.S. Embassy Seoul (@USEmbassySeoul) June 13, 2020
The embassy had displayed the large rainbow flag in support of “LGBTQ Pride Month” last year, despite an order of the State Department not to hoist the banner.
Harris was nominated for his post by Trump in 2018 after a Navy career in which he was the first Asian-American to hold a four-star rank and the first to head U.S. Pacific Command. He was the Joint Chiefs’ representative to the secretary of state from 2011 to 2013 under President Barack Obama.
An anti-racism protest took place in Seoul on June 6, with more than 100 people marching in black clothes through the city’s central shopping district of Myeongdong.


fortune--2020-06-15--Amazon foes Walmart and Shopify team up to take on common rival

Walmart’s online marketplace has a new partner in its quest to better compete with Amazon in the e-commerce wars: Shopify.
Some 1,200 companies that sell online using Shopify’s tech will be able to sell on Walmart’s U.S. marketplace by the end of the year, the companies announced Monday morning. The news was first reported by Bloomberg News.
The partnership comes at a time when Walmart’s marketplace, first opened in 2009, is finally finding momentum, but it needs to expand the variety of products available for sale there, which currently number 75 million. During the first quarter, its growth outpaced Walmart’s overall 74% increase in U.S. online sales, spurred by a pandemic-fueled surge.
“This integration will allow approved Shopify sellers to seamlessly list their items on Walmart.com, which gives Walmart customers access to a broader assortment,” said Jeff Clementz, vice president of Walmart Marketplace.
In recent years, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon expressed disappointment with the marketplace’s performance and last year named a new executive, Jeff Shotts, to run it. He’s also made it a priority to improve e-commerce’s economics: While Walmart has established itself as a solid No. 2 to Amazon in U.S. e-commerce, the $22 billion business loses money. However, third-party sales on a marketplace are typically more profitable as the sellers pay a fee to list items and often bear the delivery costs.
Under Marc Lore, CEO of Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce division, the company has mimicked Amazon’s efforts to boost third-party sellers by offering shipping services and giving them access to its logistics infrastructure, which includes its 4,700 stores. As Lore put it at Walmart’s annual investor day this winter: “We need to start playing offense.” At that same conference, McMillon said that the company hadn’t done enough “to support marketplace sellers in terms of the tools and services that we have available.”
For Shopify, the deal is a way to offer its sellers a much bigger potential client base and bolsters Shopify’s value proposition that sellers don’t need to turn to Amazon: Walmart’s website gets about 120 million visits per week. The tie-up follows a partnership with Facebook, announced last month, that incorporates Shopify customers into the social media company’s new Shops e-commerce effort.
Shopify merchants in the U.S. will have to apply to sell through Walmart.com. If approved, they’ll connect their Shopify store to their Walmart Seller Account, which will sync their product catalogs and create product listings on Walmart.com. This will keep inventory and order management, as well as listings, on their Shopify supported site and Walmart.com harmonized.
Shopify told Fortune last month that the number of new stores using Shopify’s e-commerce platform rose 62% in the first six weeks of the lockdowns begun in March, compared with the six prior weeks, as many small retailers were unable to operate their stores and were compelled to go online.
By providing such companies, as well as larger brands, with state-of-the-art tech to handle orders, logistics, and financial management challenges, Shopify has grown from a quiet Canadian tech company to a major Amazon challenger with a market cap of nearly $100 billion. The Walmart partnership aims to build on that.
“Our expertise in multichannel commerce, combined with Walmart’s reach, will allow us to create better online shopping experiences for merchants and consumers alike,” Satish Kanwar, Shopify’s vice president of product, wrote in a blog.


fortune--2020-06-15--After coronavirus, bicycles will have a new place in city life

Just days before New York City began lifting coronavirus-related restrictions on June 8, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control threw a wrench in the proceedings. In new guidelines, it recommended that workers commute by car rather than public transit to reduce transmission of the coronavirus.
New York officials quickly pointed out that the recommendation was unfeasible for the city and worried that the CDC guidelines might lead to more car traffic. But there is an alternative to “carmageddon”: bicycles, which let people avoid enclosed spaces, where the risk of catching the coronavirus is greater.
Workers, it appears, are adjusting their commutes accordingly. Although limited, data points to an increase in cycling and the use of bike-share services, whereby people rent bikes for short periods.
Rising demand for bicycles (and disruptions in manufacturing caused by the coronavirus) have led to bicycle shortages from New York to North Dakota. In Beijing, there has been a 150% increase in bike-share use since lockdowns there began easing, according to research firm ITDP. Meanwhile, Europe-centered bike-share operator Nextbike reported a 35% year-over-year spike in ridership in April and May. In London, the transit authority has projected a 10-fold increase in cycling. Philadelphia’s Indego bike-share service says it has seen a rise in ridership as well, although it didn’t share specific numbers.
New York City data is more complex, but it shows hints of future growth. In early March, before lockdowns went into effect, but as awareness of the coronavirus was rising rapidly, the city’s Citi Bike bike-share system saw ride volume grow 67%. In April, according to Citi Bike general manager Laura Fox, lockdowns reduced the number of rides by 60% compared with the same month in 2019. But by May, with lockdowns still in place, use was only off 20% from 2019. Fox believes that points to significant growth as the city reopens.
She also suspects that changes in commuting habits will be permanent, pointing to what happened after a 2005 New York City transit-worker strike and Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Both events severely disrupted the subway system, and increased bicycle ridership in the city by about 20%. Those increases were sustained (though those gains were for bicycling in general, not for use of Citi Bike, which was founded in 2013).
A cycling boom could be further fueled by the economic fallout from the coronavirus, according to Ken McLeod, policy director of the League of American Bicyclists. The average cost of car ownership in the U.S. is nearly $9,300, according to the AAA. Annual public transit costs range widely but are generally closer to $1,000. Pricing for bike-share systems also varies, but an annual pass for Citi Bike is just $169. If unemployment remains high, those cost differences could be widely appealing.
Even cities that have been slow to adopt bike-share services are moving to accommodate the anticipated shifts. “There’s suddenly a strong openness to figuring out how to launch a new system,” says David Spielfogel, chief policy officer for Lime, a bike and scooter-sharing company that recently acquired rival operation Jump.
Adding more bikes is only part of the battle, though, because studies have shown that people’s willingness to bike is closely linked to how safe they feel. Bike lanes, especially when physically separated from auto traffic, are widely considered the best way to keep cyclists safe.
New York has responded to its new bike-centric reality by closing some streets to car traffic and adding nine miles of new bike lanes, many leading from outlying boroughs into Manhattan to serve commuters. They are temporary, but Citi Bike’s Fox says they could become permanent. London has created several car-free zones meant to be friendlier for biking and walking and is also creating temporary cycling lanes along major corridors.
Paris may be making the most dramatic changes, with hundreds of miles of new bike lanes. That city’s mayor has further declared that cars will be permanently discouraged from entering the city center, a change already in the works but previously with a 2024 target date. Milan and Madrid are also accelerating efforts to be friendlier to bikes.
There is an additional challenge, however: Evidence has shown bike-share programs are more widely used by more well-off people. Citi Bike services, for instance, are scant in some poorer parts of the city, such as East New York and the Bronx. That’s the opposite of what the moment demands, according to Waffiyyah Murray, program manager of the Philadelphia-based Better Bike Share Partnership.
“During the pandemic, there has been a greater need for bike-share,” says Murray, “Especially [from] those who don’t have the option to work from home.” Several bike-share systems have provided free or expanded service for health care workers, for example, and Better Bike Share has found that other essential workers are increasing their bicycle commuting as well.
Citi Bike is already expanding in underserved areas of New York City. Lime, meanwhile, touts its “dockless” bicycles, which can be parked anywhere, as a more affordable way to expand access as cities face budget crunches.
“[Cities] can’t be investing millions into docked infrastructure,” says Lime’s Spielfogel. “It’s much easier to put some paint on a street and call it a preferred parking spot for dockless bikes.”
Though nascent, this raft of behavioral and infrastructure changes could have major implications for the future of cities. The decline of car traffic during coronavirus lockdowns has already given many city residents their first glimpse of clear skies in years, a preview of the possible long-term environmental benefits of increased cycling. And of course, cycling is beneficial to cardiovascular health.
“We’ve gone through this crisis together,” says Fox of Citi Bike. “More cycling is something in this moment that could be a bright spot, in terms of how we think about sustainability and our cities going forward.
“It just feels like now is a time when alternative modes of transportation have a moment.”


fortune--2020-06-15--Hertz gets approved for a truly 2020 way of financing a bankruptcy

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Though shares of Hertz could be worth nothing, a U.S. bankruptcy court approved the car-rental company’s one-of-a-kind request to sell up to $1 billion equity amid its bankruptcy process.
Seizing on the recent run-up in its stock price owing in part to speculative trading and government stimulus, Hertz has filed to raise $500 million in common stock. The judge who gave the sale the green light said on Friday it was still unclear whether the stock will be worthless by the end of Hertz’s bankruptcy proceedings.
And the risks disclosed in Hertz’s filing for the stock offering aren’t exactly hopeful.
Given that shares are typically subordinate to debt, Hertz shares may be effectively worthless unless there is “a significant and rapid and currently unanticipated improvement in business conditions to pre-COVID-19 or close to pre-COVID-19 levels,” the filing read (bolded for emphasis). Not to mention, shares of Hertz are currently facing delisting threats from the NYSE, a move that would make it significantly more difficult for investors to sell shares. Oh, and, the filing itself mentions the exact word “worthless” seven times.
What’s more, Hertz shares, alongside the wider market, are falling on news of a slow economic recovery in China and a resurgence of Covid-19 cases in the United States.
But then again, it’s 2020, when anything goes. Speculative investors went against conventional wisdom and bought shares of Hertz and other bankrupt companies just a few days ago. Who’s to say they won’t snap up more now?
The numbers inside Quibi: The video-streaming app created for on-to-go consumers has struggled to hit its targets, which could make it much harder to raise additional funding. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company expects that it will have spent $1 billion by the third quarter, and will have to raise at least $200 million in additional funding by the second half of 2021.
$200 million sounds, well, not insane for a business that has already raised $1.75 billion and budgeted $350 million in spending for content alone for 2019, per the Journal. But it’s a sizable bet on a company that, by the second half of 2021, will have a product that’s been in the public for just over a year. Read more.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Bit Bio, a Cambridge, U.K.-based seeking to increase the production of human cell lines, raised $41.5 million in funding. Investors include former National Cancer Institute Director Richard Klausner, Foresite Capital, Blueyard Capital, and Arch Venture Partners. Read more.
- SuperAnnotate, a San Francisco, Calif.-based AI-powered annotation platform for data scientists, raised $3 million in seed funding. Point Nine Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Runa Capital and Fathom Capital.
- Trade Hounds, a Boston, Mass.-based platform aiming to be the LinkedIn of the construction industry, raised $3.2 million in seed funding. Corigin Ventures and Brick and Mortar Ventures led the round, and were joined by investors including Suffolk Construction and CCS Construction Staffing.
- Codi, a San Francisco company that turns homes into coworking spaces, raised $2.9 million in funding. The company previously raised from investors including NFX. Read more.
- Quolum, a Dublin, Calif.-based company tracking SaaS spend for other firms, raised $2.8 million in seed funding. Investors include Sequoia’s Surge and Nexus Venture Partners.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Reliance Jio Platforms raised $850 million from L Catterton and TPG. L Catterton will invest $250 million for a 0.39% stake while TPG will invest $600 million for a 0.93% stake, giving Platforms a $65 billion valuation.
- Blackstone’s life sciences division will invest as much as $377 million in Medtronic’s (NYSE:MDT)’ Diabetes Group.
- RedBird Capital plans to invest $80 million in Ardent Leisure Group (ASX: ALG)’s Main Event Entertainment, a U.S.-based operator of bowling and laser tag locations. RedBird will take a 24.2% interest in the company.
- Searchlight Capital Partners acquired Global Risk Partners Limited, a U.k.-based insurance intermediary. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- McLarens, a portfolio company of Lee Equity Partners, acquired Lloyd Warwick International, a London-based provider of global specialty loss adjustment for the insurance industry.
- A consortium of investors led by Warburg Pincus and General Atlantic took 58.com (NYSE: WUBA), a Beijing-based classifieds company, private in a deal valuing the firm at $8.7 billion.
OTHERS
- Ovo, an Indonesian digital-payments company, and Dana, an Indonesian digital-wallet provider, have agreed in principle to merge to rival GoJek’s GoPay, Bloomberg reports citing sources. Read more.
- VF Corp, an apparel maker behind Vans and Timberland, is eyeing more acquisitions, per the Financial Times. Read more.
- A group of investors backed by Tencent agreed to take Bitauto Holdings (NYSE: BITA), Chinese car comparison website, private for $1.1 billion in cash.
- AT&T is discussing a sale of its Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment gaming division in a deal that could be worth $4 billion, per CNBC. Potential bidders included Take-Two Interactive, Electronic Arts, and Activision Blizzard. Read more.
- China’s Zijin Mining plans to acquire Guyana Goldfields (TSX:GUY), a Canadian gold miner, for C$323 million ($238 million). Read more.
- Sinch (STO: SINCH) agreed to acquire ACL Mobile, an Indian customer communications platform, for about $70 million (INR 5,350 million) in cash.
BREAKUPS, HANGUPS, AND BANKRUPTCIES
- Cineworld Group (LON:CINE) abandoned its $1.65 billion deal to buy Cineplex Inc (TSX:CGX), a Canadian operator of cinemas, citing breaches in the merger agreement between the two. Cineplex denied the claims. Read more.
- 24 Hour Fitness, a San Ramon, Calif.-based gym chain, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Firms including AEA Investors, Farol Asset Management, and Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan back the company.
- Skillsoft, a Dublin-based e-learning company, filed for pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Charterhouse Capital backs the firm.
IPOS
- Amlak International, a Saudi Arabian real estate financing firm, plans to offer 30% of its shares in Riyadh via an IPO, the exchange’s first since the coronavirus outbreak. Read more.
EXITS
- Metro is in early talks to buy RateSetter, a U.K.-based peer-to-peer lender. RateSetter is backed by Artemis Ventures, Moulsford Capital, and others. Read more.
F+FS
- Facebook is establishing its own “multimillion dollar” venture arm, per Axios. Read more.
- Endeavour Capital plans to raise $850 million for Endeavour Capital Fund VIII. Read more.
- Insight Partners is set to acquire the fifth fund of Gemini Israel Ventures, an Israeli venture firm, for $500 million, per Calcalist citing sources. Read more.
PEOPLE
- Underscore VC named Brian Devaney as a senior investment associate. Devaney was previously at First Round Capital.
- McNally Capital promoted Ravi P. Shah to principal and Mike Ember to vice president.


fortune--2020-06-15--Senate Republicans to restrict choke holds in emerging police reform bill

Driven by a rare urgency, Senate Republicans are poised to unveil an extensive package of policing changes that includes new restrictions on police choke holds and other practices as President Donald Trump signals his support following the mass demonstrations over the deaths of George Floyd and other black Americans.
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the sole African American Republican in the Senate, has been crafting the package set to roll out Wednesday. While it doesn’t go as far as a sweeping Democratic bill heading toward a House vote, the emerging GOP legislation shares similar provisions as Congress rushes to respond.
With Trump set to announce executive actions on law enforcement as soon as Tuesday, the crush of activity shows how quickly police violence and racial prejudice are transforming national party priorities.
“I think we’re going to get to a bill that actually becomes law,” Scott said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Scott said the choke hold, in particular, “is a policy whose time has come and gone.”
The GOP package is one of the most extensive proposed overhauls to policing procedures yet from Republicans, who have long aligned with Trump’s “law and order” approach but are suddenly confronted with a groundswell of public unrest in cities large and small over police violence.
Over the weekend, the shooting death of Rayshard Brooks during a routine stop by a white officer in Atlanta led to an outcry, more protests and the police chief’s swift ouster.
The Republican bill would create a national database of police use-of-force incidents, encourage police body cameras and include a long-stalled effort to make lynching a federal hate crime.
Additionally, the GOP package is expected to restrict the use of choke holds by withholding certain federal funds to jurisdictions that continue to allow the practice, according a Senate Republican unauthorized to discuss the pending bill and granted anonymity.
Democrats have said the GOP package doesn’t go far enough in the aftermath of Floyd’s death and the outpouring of protests and Black Lives Matter demonstrations over the number of black Americans killed at the hands of law enforcement.
In particular, the Republican bill does not address the issue of “qualified immunity,” as the Democrats’ bill does, which aims to enable those injured by law enforcement personnel to sue for damages. The White House has said that is a line too far. As an alternative, Scott has suggested a “decertification” process for officers involved in misconduct.
“This is not a time for lowest common denominator, watered-down reforms,” said Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., a co-author of the Democratic bill, on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “It’s a time to stop the problem.”
Yet Democrats signaled a willingness to look at the Republican approach for areas of common ground.
“I never call anything a nonstarter,” said Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the House’s third-ranking Democrat.
Democrats face criticism over activists’ calls to defund the police, and party leaders in Congress have distanced themselves from that approach. The defund movement describes a range of options, from dismantling departments to shifting policing resources to other community services. The Democratic bill does not go that far, but would instead provide grant money to departments that want to consider new ways of policing.
“Nobody is going to defund the police,” Clyburn said. “We can restructure the police forces, restructure, reimagine policing. That is what we are going to do.”
The House Judiciary Committee is set to consider the bill midweek, and House lawmakers are scheduled to return to Washington next week for a vote.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, whose state has been roiled by the death of Breonna Taylor after police entered her Louisville home, has signaled his interest in legislation.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to consider policing issues on Tuesday.


fortune--2020-06-15--How to jump from corporate lawyer to Peloton’s top instructor

This is the web version of Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
For companies and people, it’s time to make a plan. There was a time for freaking out, a time for learning to cope, and now a time to think about what’s next. Though the pandemic will last longer than quite a few overly optimistic people believe it will, it won’t last forever. When it ends, will you be ready?
Last week, I interviewed an executive at one of the technology world’s hottest companies: Robin Arzon, vice president of fitness programming for Peloton, the digital workout boutique. Arzon also is Peloton’s head instructor, and if you’ve ever taken one of her cycling, strength, or other classes you’ll know her as one of the toughest coaches you’ve ever encountered.
The main reason I interviewed her, though, wasn’t to learn about Peloton’s business or her approach to fitness programming. Rather, I wanted to hear the story of her extraordinary career shift, from corporate litigator at the old-line firm Paul Hastings to professional fitness coach and social-media influencer. Arzon had fallen hard for running and decided she couldn’t sit behind a desk anymore. She created vision boards, visual representations of her goals that helped her map out what she was after. She set up informational interviews with sports journalists, figuring that’s one thing she’d like to do. She scheduled recurring reminders on her calendar to spend as little as 10 minutes a day figuring out how to make money while running rather than lawyering.
There’s more, including the inspired and gutsy way Arzon found her way to Peloton and its CEO, John Foley. The point is that she had a plan. And she executed it.
Adam Lashinsky
@adamlashinsky
adam.lashinsky@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
Failure is an orphan. The adventures of KBerg and the Whit, aka former Dreamworks boss Jeffrey Katzenberg and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, are getting deliciously close to Adam-Neumann-at-WeWork-level entertaining. After Katzenberg gave a goofy interview to the New York Times last month blaming COVID-19 for the struggles of their short video service Quibi, now the Wall Street Journal is on the story. Anonymous sources tell the paper that Whitman almost quit early on after dealing with all of KBerg's nonsense (including that he wanted to name the service "Omakase" after high-end sushi!) and that now she's disappointed with the coverage his interview generated. Disappointed, indeed.
Tail between the legs mode. When New York City demanded in 2018 that Airbnb hand over detailed data about hosts in the metropolis, the company loudly objected and filed a lawsuit. On Friday, Airbnb quietly settled and agreed to provide the data, which will help the city enforce a ban on what it calls "illegal hotel operators."
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story. An engineer at Facebook who publicly challenged a colleague over not supporting Black Lives Matter was apparently fired. Brandon Dail, who had tweeted that “intentionally not making a statement is already political,” said he was let go on Friday. Facebook declined to comment. Meanwhile on the other side of the globe, Facebook pushed back against Australia's new law requiring the company to pay to carry news links. Few users look to Facebook for news, thus "if there were no news content available on Facebook in Australia, we are confident the impact on Facebook's community metrics and revenues in Australia would not be significant," the company wrote in a comment to the government.
You've got space mail. We are getting very, very close to finding out whether Elon Musk's vision for Internet service from space will be a real thing or just another in a long line of failed attempts. Musk's SpaceX lofted 58 more satellites for its Starlink constellation on Saturday, bringing the total count in its orbiting Internet platform to 540. Though the ultimate plan is for 12,000 or more, service can begin in the U.S. when Starlink reaches 800 satellites, Musk has said.
A raft of dollars. Insurance software startup Duck Creek Technologies said last December it was filing to go public. Perhaps it's taking longer than expected, because last week the company raised another $230 million of private backing from investors led by Kayne Anderson Rudnick and Whale Rock Capital.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
The debate over how social networks like Facebook and Twitter are overseeing the flow of information–and disinformation–on their platforms often focuses on a single law: Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1996 grants the companies some legal protections from liability. President Trump wants to repeal it. Fortune tech reporter Danielle Abril examines what might happen next.
Changing Section 230 would not only affect companies like Facebook and Twitter. It would also apply to any Internet company that publishes user content, including comments on news articles and reviews of products, restaurants, and hotels.
“You would have much less ability to post views, or controversial views on any entity,” said Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment lawyer who defended the New York Times in a landmark case in 1964 for publishing an ad that allegedly defamed an Alabama public safety commissioner. “It would be a major step, which would likely lead to less speech rather than more.”
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Can Nikola Motor’s big battery promises be true? By David Z. Morris
How Bytedance is trying to consolidate TikTok’s user base in India By Eamon Barrett
Big investors like Bitcoin for the wrong reason By Robert Hackett
Why every company needs to ‘reimagine’ their workplace, according to PwC’s U.S. CEO By Lee Clifford
A kind of ‘Magic’: One nerd’s quest to shake up video games and create a $1 billion market By Robert Hackett and Jeff John Roberts
Adobe’s CEO on how the company is posting record results amid economic chaos By Lance Lambert
Facebook contest shows just how hard it is to detect deepfakes By Jeremy Kahn
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. There is a 50% discount for our loyal readers if you use this link to sign up. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
Last night's mid-season cliffhanger on Showtime's entertaining hedge-fund romp Billions was a high-tech storyline with echoes of Elon Musk and a cameo from real-life Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon. An experimental drug intended to bring more focused thinking led Bobby Axe and his gang to consider spending $3 billion on mining asteroids for precious metals. What happens next? Production on the show shut down due to the pandemic, but will return at an unspecified date, according to Showtime's teaser-trailer.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com


fortune--2020-06-15--Black Americans are most likely to know a COVID-19 victim

African Americans are disproportionately likely to say a family member or close friend has died of COVID-19 or respiratory illness since March, according to a series of surveys conducted since April that lays bare how black Americans have borne the brunt of the pandemic.
Eleven percent of African Americans say they were close with someone who has died from the coronavirus, compared with 5% of Americans overall and 4% of white Americans.
The findings are based on data from three COVID Impact surveys conducted between April and June by NORC at the University of Chicago for the Data Foundation about the pandemic’s effect on the physical, mental and social health of Americans.
While recent surveys conducted by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research have found that black Americans are especially likely to know someone who had the virus, the new data from the COVID Impact research further details the toll the pandemic has taken on black Americans.
Pre-existing conditions and limited access to health care have been identified as reasons black Americans have been particularly susceptible to the virus. Experts and medical professionals say the longstanding effects of structural racism and generational trauma exacted upon black Americans in the centuries following slavery also cannot be ignored.
“The health inequities that we’re seeing here are nothing new, because we’re starting in a place where during slavery, we had black women who were enslaved and were being experimented on by white male physicians,” said New York-based Dr. Uché Blackstock, a former associate professor at the NYU School of Medicine and the founder of Advancing Health Equity. “So our healthcare system is founded on racism, and our communities have been essentially made sick by racism. We carry the highest disease burden in almost every parameter. We were already in a crisis.”
The COVID Impact surveys show the racial gap is equally striking in some cities and states hit especially hard by the virus. In Louisiana, 16% of black adults, compared with 6% of white adults, are close with someone who has died, according to the surveys. Black people represent about 33% of the state’s population but account for 53% of the state’s nearly 3,000 COVID-19 deaths, according to data from the state’s health department.
The differences are equally stark in several metropolitan areas: Among black adults in Atlanta, 14% have a family member or close friend who has died, compared with 4% of white adults. The comparison is 12% vs. 4% in Baltimore, 15% vs. 2% in Birmingham, Alabama, and 12% vs. 4% in Chicago.
Twenty-six percent of nonwhite New Yorkers say a family member or close friend has died from COVID-19, compared with just 10% of white adults in New York City.
Meanwhile, an Associated Press analysis of data from state and local health departments nationwide found that more than a quarter of all COVID-related deaths nationwide have been black victims — nearly double the share of the black population in the areas sampled. The data, from early June, included nearly 87,000 deaths in which the dead person’s race was known in 38 states and Washington, D.C.
In a number of states, the disparity was even more outsized — for instance, in Michigan, black deaths per 100,000 black residents were four times the rate of white deaths per 100,000 white residents.
“I think we will have a national conversation, not only about those inequities, but about how we get to solutions, because it’s not just about what’s going on right now, it’s really what has gone on for decades regarding structural racism, implicit bias, discriminatory housing policies and the like,” said Dr. Patrice Harris, the immediate past president of the American Medical Association and the first African-American woman elected president of the organization.
Harris said the AMA launched a Center for Health Equity a year and a half ago to address implicit bias at the physician and institutional level. During the pandemic, she said, many stories have emerged of black patients detailing how their needs were ignored or unmet by doctors, which some experts say is indicative of a historical mistrust of the medical system.
“We heard with COVID-19, the stories, or some of the data that says that black men in particular were more likely to take advice from another black physician or that there have been studies where our younger colleagues believe the myth that blacks did not feel pain in the same way as whites,” Harris said. “AMA is going to lead these conversations and make sure everyone has information so we can address issues around implicit bias and discriminatory practices.”
The nation must also begin to grapple with the psychological trauma of the pandemic, coupled with the economic fallout, the civil unrest in the wake of several high profile killings of African Americans and witnessing black grief on a mass scale, said University of Michigan health behavior and health education professor Enrique Neblett.
Neblett, who studies the intersection of racism and health, said many African Americans could be dealing with depression, anxiety and other mental struggles.
“It’s the confluence of all these factors where it’s not just one or two things and that is really weighing hard and heavily on the psyche of black people,” Neblett said. “We do know that when you experience loss at unexpected times, there is scientific evidence showing that that’s related to worse health outcomes later on in life. I think these impacts may be generational.”