fortune--2020-04-22--CEOs’ workplace revival plans don’t rely on governments

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Good morning.
Members of the Fortune CEO Initiative met virtually yesterday to discuss plans and protocols for getting employees back to the workplace. The meeting was held under the Chatham House rule, so I can’t quote CEOs by name. But what surprised me was their general determination to make their own decisions about the health and safety of workers, and not be driven by governments. As one said: “We aren’t going to return just because the government says it’s okay.”
The CEO of one global company, with tens of thousands of employees around the world, said he expects most of his workforce to continue to work from home “until Christmas.” Another CEO said her company, with hundreds of thousands of workers, would move gradually, starting with around 20% of workers in the first phase. She called the Christmas prediction “pretty accurate.” One West Coast CEO said it will be the second half of 2021 before a return to “true normalcy”. Another said: “I don’t think we will ever get back to normal.”
All seemed to have given great thought to phasing the return to work and creating new protocols at the office, such as social distancing, intensive cleaning, personal protective equipment, A/B teams, temperature checks, and, in some cases, in-office testing. But one CEO said what was still needed was “interoperability agreements”—protocols for sales and service people whose jobs depend on paying visits to clients and customers in other companies.
The participating CEOs mostly discussed the challenges of professional workers—many of whom have successfully adjusted to work from home. Largely undiscussed were the greater challenges facing workers who have no choice but to leave home to do their jobs—factory workers, maintenance workers, restaurant and retail staff, transportation workers, and so on. For them, the discussion of when to return to the work reflects a high-class problem.
For more on “Business in the Coronavirus Economy”, check out Fortune’s special report, which you can find online this morning here. Other news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Stimulus package
The Senate yesterday approved a $484 billion bill containing aid for small businesses and hospitals; House approval is expected tomorrow. President Trump supports the legislation, which includes funding for increased coronavirus testing but not for state and local budgets—better luck next time. Fortune
Oil price
Oil futures continue to tumble, with Brent futures for June delivery down 12% to just $17 at one point this morning—that's a level not previously seen this century—and WTI futures little north of $11 a barrel. The markets fear the glut that caused Monday's historic minus $40.32 price for WTI is not going away. OPEC+ ministers held an unscheduled conference call yesterday, but don't seem to have agreed on any new policy measures to combat the problem. Bloomberg
Facebook investment
Facebook has invested $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms, controlled by India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani. The deal will plug together Facebook's WhatsApp and the ecommerce venture JioMart, so customers can connect with businesses. Netting Facebook a 10% stake in Jio Platforms, it's the social network's biggest purchase since that of WhatsApp some six years ago. Fortune
Facebook censorship
Vietnamese authorities reportedly strong-armed Facebook into boosting its censorship of "anti-state" posts by getting telecoms firms to strangle Facebook's local traffic. According to Reuters, the tactic saw Facebook's local servers knocked offline for seven weeks or so, making its website occasionally unusable. Facebook says it reluctantly complied with the government's restriction requests. Reuters
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
U.K. deaths
The Financial Times has crunched numbers from the U.K.'s Office for National Statistics and estimates COVID-19 has killed up to 41,000 people in the country—that's more than double the official death toll of 17,337 that ministers released Tuesday (a figure that only counts those who died in hospitals after testing positive for coronavirus infection). FT
Beijing gyms
Beijing's gyms, which were only allowed to reopen in recent weeks, have been forced to close again. The move on the weekend was sparked by official concerns over a new case of COVID-19 in the Chinese capital—a Chinese man who had just returned from studies in Florida. According to analysis from business information firm Qichacha, almost 7,000 Chinese fitness businesses went under or suspended operations in Q1. Now the survivors face another closure. CNBC
Military thinking
"Why do we have stockpile upon stockpile of arms and matériel for combat against human foes, but only a paltry supply of weapons against pathogenic enemies that could potentially claim millions more casualties?" ask epidemiologist Michael T. Osterholm and documentarian Mark Olshaker in a Fortune essay. "It comes down to this: We have failed to prepare for a war against microbes with the same urgency and resolve as we do a conventional war. And the difference shows in the business models we bring to each fight." Fortune
Earth Day
Yale's Jeff Sonnenfeld and Dan Esty write for Fortune about how America's leadership has largely shifted its thinking about the environment, on this 50th anniversary of what became known as Earth Day. They describe a virtual summit—it would have had a greater carbon footprint if not for COVID-19—in which a series of CEOs "explained how a sharpened environmental focus helped their businesses to cut costs, reduce risks, expand sales, and add value to their bottom line." Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-04-22--Stocks rebound, but cheap oil looks here to stay

Why scientists are touting coronavirus ‘ herd immunity ’ for India when it didn ’ t work for the U.K @

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Good morning, and Happy Earth Day. Fittingly, I’m seeing plenty of green on the screens. Oil traders though are singing the blues this morning.
Let’s see where investors are putting their cash. Hold onto your hat.
Markets update
Asia
Asia is mixed. Japan’s Nikkei is down, but the Hong Kong and Shanghai indices rebounded in afternoon trade there.
is down, but the and indices rebounded in afternoon trade there. Oil again is in the spotlight. Futures contracts for Brent crude , the international standard, fell to a 21-year-low during Asian trade. The markets’ rejection of oil may seem like an Earth Day stunt. If only.
, the international standard, fell to a 21-year-low during Asian trade. The markets’ rejection of oil may seem like an Earth Day stunt. If only. To India now where Facebook cannily sealed a $5.7 billion investment in Jio Platforms, one of the world’s fastest growing tech companies in one of the fastest growing markets. Facebook is popping in after-hours trade.
Europe
European bourses all opened in positive territory with the benchmark STOXX Europe 600 Index up nearly 1% .
bourses all opened in positive territory with the benchmark up nearly . From lockdown to restarts. The focus is now on the latter as coronavirus case numbers continue to decline across the continent, particularly in Italy, Spain and France.
and Heineken this morning laid out the thorny path to recovery exporters face. Coronavirus sank beer volumes in March. That was expected. But the brewer also admitted it’s getting hit with an FX shock from emerging markets.
U.S.
The Dow , S&P 500 and Nasdaq look to open in positive territory today after two consecutive days of declines. The Dow fell 631 points yesterday.
, and look to open in positive territory today after two consecutive days of declines. The Dow fell yesterday. Yesterday’s earnings calls again revealed it’s not all doom and gloom out there. Netflix, Texas Instruments and Snap reported sales beats. Coca-Cola, meanwhile, withdrew 2020 performance guidance.
again revealed it’s not all doom and gloom out there. Netflix, Texas Instruments and Snap reported sales beats. Coca-Cola, meanwhile, withdrew 2020 performance guidance. Some relief for SMEs: The Senate agreed to $480 billion in additional coronavirus aid, which includes $310 billion in paycheck protection funds. Fortune‘s Anne Sraders lays out what you need to know about the bill.
Elsewhere
Gold is up again.
is up again. The dollar is down.
is down. Crude buyers are hard to find today. WTI and Brent June futures contracts are again testing new lows this morning. The turmoil in the oil markets prompted OPEC+ to convene an emergency call yesterday. The oil powers then issued a nothing-to-see here statement.
Crude math
As global oil prices plunged in recent weeks, we focused largely on one big culprit: the Saudi-Russian price war. The two oil giants, combined, bumped up production even as demand collapsed in the wake of a global economic lockdown. Not smart. You know what else wasn’t too smart? The actions (or lack of action) by American suppliers, the Refinitiv oil analyst Yaw Yan said in a research note yesterday.
“The US benchmark WTI May contract’s collapse into negative territory is a consequence of the US government’s refusal to regulate oil production and impose mandatory cuts, despite calls to do so during the G20 recent meeting that had led to historic cuts of 9.7 million bpd by the OPEC+ alliance,” Yan wrote.
“As of the week of Apr 12, the US was still producing vast amounts of crude at 12.3 million bpd, according to figures from their Energy Information Agency, down from 13 million bpd in March. This is still the largest production figure in the world, and in a pre-production cut environment at that.”
So as it became clear the global markets were swimming in oil, what did American producers do? They continued to pump full blast. Yes, plenty of rigs were shut down, but overall production continued at a break-neck pace. Now WTI futures contracts as far out as August are under pressure, and the global benchmark, Brent, is also sinking.
The Saudis and Russians wanted to put the squeeze on U.S. shale producers. Mission accomplished. But U.S. producers appear to have made matters even worse.
Usually, U.S. crude producers can fairly easily find a buyer, no matter the price. But with overseas markets overstocked, it’s become an impossible sell. As Vincent Elbhar, co-founder of Swiss hedge fund GZC Investment Management, told the Wall Street Journal, “the world doesn’t want to take U.S. barrels.”
Postscript
Yesterday, Rome quietly celebrated a birthday. As the story goes, the Eternal City was founded 2,773 years ago—probably the last time the place was this quiet.
As the Rome-based reporter and frequent Fortune contributor Eric J. Lyman wrote in USA Today, “Italy’s ancient capital has endured dozens of plagues and pandemics, but also invasions, sackings, civil war, fires, floods and earthquakes. And now, of course, coronavirus.”
The Circus of Maxentius, a fourth-century structure built by Emperor Maxentius. Bernhard Warner
Happy birthday, Rome. I miss her more every day.
***
Have a nice day, everyone. I’ll see you here tomorrow.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
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Today's reads
...and chill. Netflix added a record 15.8 million subscribers in the first quarter—more than double Wall Street estimates—as viewers confined to their homes by the coronavirus outbreak searched for entertainment, Fortune’s Aric Jenkins reports. Shares initially surged as much as 11% in after-hours trading, but, as of this writing, are little changed as investors focused on Netflix’s cautious outlook.
Time to talk taxes. The gigantic new spending enacted to combat coronavirus is set to add trillions of dollars to America’s national debt, bringing the day when the debt burden will have to be tackled far closer. Probably within the next decade, the U.S. will need to impose monumental tax increases. What America’s leaders aren’t saying is that it’s the middle-class Americans working today, the autoworkers, nurses, and deli owners, and not just future generations, who'’ll foot most of the bill, warns Fortune’s Shawn Tully.
Super (storage) tankers. About 80 supertankers are being used to store oil rather than carry it to distant ports, Saudi officials now acknowledge. It’s a consequence of Saudi Arabia’s oil-price war with Russia which flooded the market with crude at a time when demand had dried up and buyers are hard to find due to the coronavirus pandemic. A looming shortage of storage space is forcing producers to consider new measures to stop the rout, including to store the stuff at sea, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Market candy
This day in history
On April 22, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon rig drilling in a BP-operated oil prospect in the Gulf of Mexico sank two days after an explosion and fire on board killed 11 workers. It was the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, causing one of America’s worst environmental disasters. BP, which pleaded guilty to criminal misconduct over the spill, has paid out around $65 billion in compensation and other costs.


fortune--2020-04-22--How the oil rout could bust U.S. shale patch and end Trump’s ‘American Energy Dominance’

A historic crash in crude prices is driving U.S. shale into full-on retreat with operators halting new drilling and shutting in old wells, moves that could cut output by 20% for the world’s biggest producer of oil.
For shale companies, the price of West Texas Intermediate crude went from hunker-down-and-ride-it-out mode to crisis mode in just a few days, with many now unsure whether there will even be a market for their oil. Some 1.75 million barrels a day is at immediate risk of shutting down while the number of new wells being brought online is forecast to plunge almost 90% by the end of the year, according to IHS Markit Ltd.
In short, it’s a swift and brutal end to the shale revolution, which only last year had President Donald Trump proclaiming “American Energy Dominance.”
West Texas Intermediate crude prices turned negative for the first time in history on Monday, meaning at one point sellers had to pay buyers to take it away. Then, the financial squeeze on the May contract spilled over to June and into the wider market, with prices now trading around $10 a barrel, well below the daily pumping cost in large swaths of America’s oil industry.
Even at $15, “everything back in the field, except the newest and most productive wells, is losing money on a cash-cost basis,” said Raoul LeBlanc, a Houston-based analyst at IHS Markit. “At this price you’ll start shutting in large amounts of production.”
It’s a bloodbath whichever way you look.
Operators are switching off wells, retiring one in three drill rigs, abandoning fracking, laying off 51,000 workers, slashing salaries and even going bankrupt just six weeks after the latest price plunge began. Now, with the coronavirus pandemic destroying demand, storage is just weeks away from filling up, a further factor choking back output.
Publicly-traded companies have axed more than $31 billion from drilling budgets, while distressed debt in the U.S. energy sector has jumped to $190 billion, up more than $11 billion in less than a week. Oil companies made up five of the top 10 issuers with the most distressed debt as of Tuesday.
The potential for zero revenues in the second and third quarters this year may mean that large U.S. oil explorers burn through $7 billion in liquidity, according to a Webinar hosted by Evercore ISI. By the end of it all, as many as 30% of publicly traded shale explorers could be forced to exit the market one way or another, the Evercore analysts said.
For Gene Ames, an 85-year-old, fourth-generation oilman who was born in the East Texas oil rush during the Great Depression, when crude traded for 5 cents a barrel, it’s the worst crash he’s ever seen. “I’ve been through about six major busts and so far this is going to be the worst,” he said by telephone. “It’s the most intense, quickest and deepest collapse.”
Houston Economy
In Houston, America’s oil capital, the pain is set to reverberate across the broader economy.
”The oil and gas industry pays so well in Houston. It’s the best paid industry that there is. It pays better than the medical profession,” said Patrick Jankowski, an economist at the Greater Houston Partnership. “Someone who works on the blue-collar side can make $100,000 a year, so when those jobs go away it has a disproportionate impact on the economy.”
Now, the region needs to find its next growth engine, according to Jankowski. “Energy will still be important, but it’s going to be less important than before,” he said.
There’s little chance of relief any time soon. Oil traders are on a desperate quest to find somewhere — anywhere, really — to store their crude as tanks from Texas to Siberia fill to capacity. Virtually all commercial onshore storage in the U.S. has been booked since the end of February, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
It will likely take months to clear the oversupply, with no clear end in sight for the pandemic’s effects.
Unforeseen Period
”We’re all having to anticipate revenues that are significantly cut or just completely cut for an unforeseen period of time,” said Kyle Armstrong, president of Armstrong Energy Inc., a closely held producer on the New Mexico side of the Permian Basin. “Whether it’s negative $37 or $5, to me it doesn’t matter,” he added. “It’s effectively zero because I can’t operate wells productively at those prices.”
The first taps to be turned off will likely be the 1.75 million barrels a day from older, conventional U.S. wells that produce just a few dozen barrels a day each, according to IHS Markit’s LeBlanc. Producers will seek to ride out the storm with more productive wells providing some cash flow, even if made at a loss, in part due to the costs associated with shut-ins.
“The U.S. oil market actually gets worse fundamentally over the next month,” said Paul Sankey, a veteran oil analyst, in a note to clients. Producers have “nowhere to go with the inexorable production that takes weeks and months to reduce to zero.”
But the bigger problem for the shale industry is the lack of new wells being drilled. Shale wells decline by more than 60% in the first year, meaning new ones are needed to replace production from old ones.
With few new wells coming online, IHS sees U.S. oil production declining to 10.1 million barrels a day by the end of the year, from 12.8 million barrels a day at the start. That will likely drop further to somewhere around 8.5 million barrels a day in 2021 to 2022, according to Noah Barrett, a Denver-based energy analyst at Janus Henderson.
“A good portion of production, particularly areas of the Bakken and Oklahoma, will go away completely,” said Barrett, whose employer manages $356 billion. “Fresh capital will be needed to grow off that lower base. But there’s zero appetite for that in the foreseeable future.”
More must-read energy sector coverage from Fortune:
—Why the coronavirus crisis could make Big Oil greener
—How Global 500 companies are responding to the coronavirus
—IEA warns of “staggering” demand drop in global oil markets
—Crude math: Why $10 oil could be worth less than nothing—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: PSEG CEO on climate change action: “It should have been done yesterday”
Subscribe to The Loop, a weekly look at the revolutions in energy, tech, and sustainability.


fortune--2020-04-22--A push toward telehealth during the coronavirus pandemic has exposed fraud risks

On March 17, Medicare chief Seema Verma stepped to the podium at a White House coronavirus briefing and unveiled a “historic action” to promote virtual medical care, or telehealth.
Verma temporarily lifted a variety of federal restrictions on the use of the service, which had been limited to rural areas. She praised telehealth, saying it could handle routine care for an older patient with diabetes, without risking a visit to a medical office. She said a Medicare recipient with mild flu-like symptoms could receive advice from a doctor at home “instead of leaving the house and sitting in a waiting room full of other vulnerable people.”
But the Trump administration’s action also raised concerns that it could inadvertently unleash a wave of billing fraud and abuse and risk patient safety—especially if officials yield to industry pressure to make many of the emergency policy changes permanent.
“There are unscrupulous providers out there and they have much greater reach with telehealth,” said Mike Cohen, an operations officer with the Health and Human Services Inspector General’s Office, which investigates health care fraud. “Just a few can do a whole lot of damage.”
Telehealth, or telemedicine as it’s also known, covers a broad range of services via video, telephone or email. CMS in early March approved dozens of new billing codes to allow medical professionals to bill for these services. That means patients can consult with doctors about everything from flu symptoms or a backache to a psychiatry visit.
Federal officials also allowed telemedicine providers to waive patient deductibles and copayments during the emergency. Under normal conditions, these actions can be construed as a kickback because they discourage patients from complaining about charges or can lead to overuse of medical services. Such tactics normally can lead to civil or criminal penalties.
Cohen said anti-fraud “guardrails have been removed under this epidemic. The concern is that things will never go back to what they were. … There will be a lot of pressure on CMS to make at least some of these changes permanent.”
Officials worry that some telemedicine companies may take advantage of Medicare patients they contact at their homes. Some of the largest recent Medicare fraud cases have implicated this sort of marketing, often for bogus genetic testing, or prescribing unnecessary pain creams or delivering unwanted medical equipment. In some cases, the companies have employed telemarketers to call thousands of people on Medicare and offer them a free service to obtain their patient ID numbers, which can be used to bill the government.
These fraudulent activities can become massive because phone rooms operating anywhere in the world can target thousands of patients and Medicare may have difficulty differentiating improper bills from those submitted by a legitimate telehealth operation.
In September 2019, the Justice Department charged 35 people in connection with a telemedicine scheme that allegedly ripped off more than $2.1 billion from Medicare, among the largest such frauds in U.S. history.
Cohen said investigators already are seeing “tons” of fraud cases linked directly to COVID-19, including using patient accounts to bill for “coronavirus emergency kits” that contain nothing but gloves and hand sanitizer or bogus testing kits. Once marketers obtain a patient’s billing numbers, they often tack on thousands of dollars in genetic tests that are of no value to the medical case, investigators said.
Other rollbacks in telehealth regulations could prove controversial and affect patient safety—from relaxing restrictions on opioid prescriptions via video to easing licensing requirements for doctors who practice across state lines.
In a statement to Kaiser Health News, CMS said it is “instructing its payment and audit contractors to review claims during this public health emergency based on all agency waivers and flexibilities that have been put into place. This includes claims for services furnished under the telehealth flexibilities.” CMS said it would put “a strong emphasis” on program integrity and cost in considering whether to make any telehealth changes permanent.
The telemedicine industry argues that its operations are no more prone to billing abuses than any other branch of health care.
“A crisis always spawns fraudsters,” said Krista Drobac, executive director of the Alliance for Connected Care, which advocates for telehealth.
She said the alliance hopes “to show the value of telehealth” and help win wide acceptance of virtual visits to doctors. The group wants to see some of the regulatory changes made permanent in order to assure the industry’s viability once things return to normal.
Telehealth advocates also argue they have successfully stepped in to fill a void caused by many doctors temporarily shutting down their offices.
The coronavirus has “stopped [the medical] profession in its tracks, and we need to adapt to a new reality,” said Dr. Joseph Kvedar, a Harvard Medical School professor and president-elect of the American Telemedicine Association, a nonprofit that promotes access to the technology.
Kvedar said virtual visits at Partners HealthCare, where he is a senior adviser, have jumped from 1,600 virtual visits in February 2019 to 90,000 in March.
He said other health networks have reported similar spikes, in one case in New York City ramping up from zero to 5,500 visits in a single day. “There’s a lot more interest now that people have to stay home.”
Congress did much to speed acceptance of telehealth as part of the $2 trillion stimulus package. The CARES Act awards $200 million through the Federal Communications Commission to medical groups to help them install the technology and fund broadband installations. The groups also can apply for $27 billion in a public health emergency fund.
In the March 17 briefing, Verma added that CMS wanted to give medical professionals relief from regulations that could take time away from treating patients.
“In an emergency, those on the front lines shouldn’t have to worry about federal rules and red tape hamstringing them when they need flexibility above all else. And we’re doing everything in our power to make sure that that doesn’t happen,” Verma said.
CMS also is allowing Medicare Advantage plans, which together treat more than 22 million Americans, to use telehealth to help set payment rates. On March 30, CMS said it would suspend some efforts to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in overpayments made to the health plans.
Lindsey Copeland, federal policy director for the Medicare Rights Center, said her group agreed that telehealth could help ensure that people on Medicare would “not be forced to put themselves in harm’s way to obtain needed care.”
Copeland said making some of the telehealth changes permanent might make sense. But she said, “We urge caution in rushing such policymaking.”
By contrast, the industry sees itself as on a roll. InSight + Regroup, a national telepsychiatry company, noted that it “feels strongly about advocating to keep the telehealth-friendly regulations that were rapidly put into place in response to COVID-19.”
“Telehealth is going mainstream,” said company CEO Geoffrey Boyce. “It has been on the fringes for a number of years. We’re at the point now where there is no going back.”
His company also wants to reverse Medicare’s prohibition on doctors living outside the U.S. treating patients here using telehealth. Boyce said the company would use only doctors who trained and are certified in this country.
There’s little doubt that the coronavirus crisis has brought telehealth to the forefront of medicine, something that years of lobbying in Washington couldn’t accomplish.
The Alliance for Connected Care, a group that advocates telehealth and whose more than three dozen members range from Amazon to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, spent more than $1 million on lobbying from 2016 to 2019, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
But now “the numbers of [virtual] visits are astounding,” said Drobac, the alliance’s executive director.
Update: This story has been updated with a comment from CMS on its telehealth policies.
Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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—How live-event companies pivoted to building temporary hospitals and testing sites
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—The comfort economy gains momentum during the coronavirus pandemic
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—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.


fortune--2020-04-22--An Earth Day CEO summit shows how dramatically corporate values have changed

Fifty years ago, smog choked cities from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles; a recent oil spill had blackened Santa Barbara’s beaches; and Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River had caught fire. In the face of widespread industrial degradation across the country, the public rose up in outrage. At that time, most companies saw environmental problems as a side issue, or even an obstacle to their real business of making and selling goods for a thriving nation.
But the world is very different today—in no small part because on April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans took to the streets demanding reduced air pollution, improved water quality, and better waste management. They argued that the world needed to wake up to environmental degradation and change its ways. Over the past half-century, American corporate leadership has largely shifted its thinking about the environment, from seeing pollution and resource management as a matter of conflict and annoyance to recognizing sustainability as a strategic business value.
This week marks the 50th anniversary of those nationwide environmental celebrations and “teach-ins” that came to be called Earth Day. From the largest 1970 gathering, in Fairmont Park in Philadelphia, to smaller marches and events in many other cities and towns, we ourselves witnessed the spirit of protest in song and speech that signaled the launch of the modern American environmental era.
A crowd attending the first Earth Day celebration, at Fairmont Park in Philadelphia. (Photo by H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images)
To commemorate this anniversary, Yale University’s School of the Environment, School of Management, and Law School jointly convened the Yale Business Sustainability Summit. The program was originally scheduled as a live event on the Yale campus for 125 top leaders; in light of COVID-19, the summit was recast as a virtual gathering of nearly a thousand online participants. Holding the summit via Zoom, we could boast that the carbon footprint of the event was near zero, in sharp contrast to the conference travel that would otherwise have occurred. (You can watch a recording of the summit here.)
More important than the change in travel and technology, we observed a notable shift in tone. Instead of seeing environmental issues as concerns about land conservation and industrial pollution controls as a business burden, the participating corporate leaders talked about how environment sustainability had become a core element of day-to-day business strategy.
One after another, the CEOs from leading companies, including Alan Jope of Unilever, Darius Adamczyk of Honeywell, and Steve Voorhees of WestRock, one of the nation’s largest producers of packaging, explained how a sharpened environmental focus helped their businesses to cut costs, reduce risks, expand sales, and add value to their bottom line.
Even leaders in challenging and energy-intensive industries laid out a picture of the transformative change that is underway. Ralph Izzo, CEO of utility PSEG, discussed how his company has invested over $2 billion in solar power and close to that amount in offshore wind, as well as making major investments in energy efficiency. “We’re trying to create a future where customers use less energy; the energy they use is cleaner; that cleaner energy is delivered with a greater degree of reliability and resiliency; and that electricity is used to power the economy more broadly than it powers it today,” Izzo told the summit.
In an equally dramatic turnabout from past decades, top officials from leading environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Global Reporting Initiative, and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board highlighted their work with companies. While those NGOs continue to push for more ambition from their corporate partners, their ongoing engagement with companies across the nation demonstrated that progress toward a sustainable future will arrive more quickly if the innovative capacity and financial strength of the business world can be harnessed.
A new position in the C-suite
Perhaps no greater signal of the environmental focus that now permeates the business world could have been offered than the presence in our event of dozens of chief sustainability officers—a job title that did not exist 30 years ago, much less 50. The CSOs from companies in a wide range of industries—including Walmart, Goldman Sachs, PepsiCo, UPS, and Patagonia—all laid out ambitious game plans.
Both Walmart and HVAC-maker Trane have launched “gigaton initiatives” to reduce 1 billion metric tons of emissions by 2030. Walmart’s Jane Ewing shared that in 2018, the company powered 28% of its operations by renewable energy and diverted 81% of its waste to landfills. Other companies are working to dramatically reduce the amount of energy used in their industries. CEO Darius Adamczyk described how Honeywell’s use of technologies in more than 10 million commercial buildings worldwide not only makes these buildings safer, more secure, and more comfortable, but it also makes them up to 40% more energy efficient. Companies have bought into the concept of a “circular economy” and have set ambitious goals to reduce the amount of waste going to landfills, particularly from packaging.
In addition to these business and environmental leaders, our Earth Day@50 event drew an impressive array of government officials, engineers, scientists, public health experts, and historians, as well as professors, students, and others eager to assess the legacy of Earth Day—and to highlight how their fields would be contributing to the mounting push to address society’s remaining sustainability challenges.
While activism in the immediate aftermath of the original Earth Day led to legislation regarding clean air, safer drinking water, toxic substances, surface mining, and endangered species, the purpose of this summit centered on whether and how business had changed. Had corporate America become a constructive force over the past 50 years in moving the United States and the world toward a more sustainable future? The consensus answer was yes—albeit with significant qualifications.
Today, no business can go forward without a profound appreciation for what is required to maintain what management experts call its “social license to operate.” Every company must continually demonstrate its legitimacy and show that it adds value to society, not simply profits to its own shareholders. In this regard, we heard repeatedly from corporate leaders, such as Boston Consulting Group CEO Rich Lesser, that companies are rapidly shifting from business models based on shareholder primacy to a stakeholder perspective that recognizes obligations to employees, customers, suppliers, and communities.
Pedestrians pass a map of the street closures on Broadway during Car Free Earth Day 2019 in New York City, April 27, 2019. (Photo: Xinhua/Michael Nagle via Getty Images)
We see this trend intensifying in the next few years. In particular, we envision what one of us has called an “end to externalities,” meaning that any enterprise whose profits depend on sending pollution up a smokestack or otherwise spilling harm onto society at large can expect to be challenged. We anticipate that the public will demand an end to such emissions—or at the very least insist that the company pay for the harm it is causing.
In this regard, Nobel Prize–winning Yale economist Bill Nordhaus told our summit that the best way to confront climate change would be through carbon charges of some kind. Calls like this have been a frequent feature of environmental debates over the years. But the wide support for such carbon pricing among the corporate leaders who spoke reflected a very new attitude from the business world.
Over the past 50 years, most businesses have come to recognize the need to be part of the solution to sustainability. And sustainability has become part of the mission and culture of most companies, if not all. As Mike Lamach, the CEO of Trane, proclaimed: “Our belief is that one company can change an industry, and an industry can change the world.” And it is true that today, organizations of all sorts and sizes set out sustainability goals, report on a series of metrics that track progress, and hold their executives accountable for environmental performance. Most enterprises have launched multiple sustainability-related initiatives and are making significant investments in support of these efforts, and many are launching new businesses focused on delivering sustainability solutions to their customers.
But despite the changes in attitudes over the past 50 years and the progress that has been made, the damage to the Earth continues. Businesses must therefore play an even greater role in working with government to deliver the transformative changes needed to move society toward a clean energy future and a sustainable trajectory more broadly. Many summit participants expressed the hope that in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, there will be an increased willingness to take greater collective action on sustainability.
In closing the summit, Indra Nooyi, former CEO and chair of PepsiCo, declared: “Maybe, just maybe, we can emerge out of this pandemic with a view to the longer term and a more sustainable form of capitalism.” We share that hope.
Jeff Sonnenfeld is senior associate dean and Lester Crown Professor of Management Practice at the Yale School of Management and president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute. He authored the pioneering sustainability book Corporate Views of the Public Interest and also The Hero’s Farewell and Firing Back.
Dan Esty is the Hillhouse Professor at Yale University and the editor of the recently released book A Better Planet: 40 Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future. He served in various senior roles at the Environmental Protection Agency in the 1980s and 1990s and as commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection from 2011 to 2014.
More must-read energy and environmental coverage from Fortune:
—Why the coronavirus crisis could make Big Oil greener
—How Global 500 companies are responding to the coronavirus
—IEA warns of “staggering” demand drop in global oil markets
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: PSEG CEO on climate change action: “It should have been done yesterday”
Subscribe to The Loop, a weekly look at the revolutions in energy, tech, and sustainability.


fortune--2020-04-22--Facebook invests $6 billion in digital assets of India’s richest man

Facebook Inc. will invest $5.7 billion in the digital assets controlled by India’s richest man, as the U.S. social-networking giant seeks a broader foothold in its biggest global market.
The U.S. company will buy about 10% of Jio Platforms, becoming the largest minority shareholder, Reliance Industries Ltd. said in a statement Wednesday. Separately, Facebook said the deal would bring together JioMart, an ecommerce venture of Mukesh Ambani and its WhatsApp platform to enable people to connect with businesses.
The deal values Jio Platforms at a pre-money enterprise value of about $66 billion, the Indian company said.
The partnership with Jio would allow Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to step up his expansion in a country that is rapidly embracing online payment and e-commerce as more people get smartphones. Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. burst onto the Indian wireless telecommunications market about four years ago, quickly moving into a position of dominance by offering free plans and undercutting rivals. Working with Facebook would be a boost to the ambitions of Ambani, until recently the richest man in Asia, who has been remaking his energy conglomerate as India’s first titan of e-commerce.
The purchase is Facebook’s biggest since its 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp and an unusual bet for a company that typically buys into media and online properties. It underscores the potential it sees in India, which unlike China is an open market with an exploding smartphone population. Facebook may benefit from a well-connected ally in the country, where Facebook’s Whatsapp is trying to launch a payments service but has run afoul of regulatory scrutiny over fake news and privacy concerns.
Alluring Market
“This investment underscores our commitment to India, and our excitement for the dramatic transformation that Jio has spurred in the country,” Facebook said in its statement.
Zuckerberg has long aimed to roll out a digital currency as well as tools that let users make payments and buy and sell products over the social network’s messaging services in India.
With its half-billion internet users, the South Asian country is an alluring market for the world’s largest technology companies, including Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. In India, Facebook has about 250 million users, while WhatsApp has over 400 million.
While India will be a testing ground for WhatsApp payment services — currently in pilot — Zuckerberg is also separately looking at the market for his crypto-currency project called Libra. Zuckerberg has said that payments and commerce are a priority, representing a major business opportunity for the company moving forward.
For Ambani, 63, the deal with the technology giant comes as a boost at a time when his group is battling the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and a slump in demand for crude oil. He has also been seeking to reassure investors that he will honor a pledge to reduce the group’s net debt to zero.
The Indian company spent almost $50 billion — mostly borrowings — to build Jio Infocomm, the mobile carrier, leading to a net debt of more than $20 billion as of March 2019. In August, he told shareholders that he planned to sell a stake in Reliance Industries’ oil-and-chemicals division to Saudi Arabian Oil Co. as part of a road map to cut net debt to zero by March 2021.
With the Aramco negotiations dragging on for months, the global health crisis and the crash in oil prices have also raised doubts if that deal will be signed. As a result, shares of the Mumbai-based conglomerate plunged as much as 45% from their Dec. 19 record, before rebounding from their March 23 low.
After building a wireless carrier and a retail business, Ambani has said he plans to rope in “leading global partners” before initial public offerings as he readies an e-commerce business that would rival Amazon and Walmart Inc. in the South Asian country.
The new businesses are likely to account for 50% of Reliance Industries Ltd.’s earnings in a few years, versus a little more than 32% now, Ambani told shareholders in August.
Jio Platforms, a wholly owned unit of Reliance Industries, brings together Jio’s digital apps, ecosystems and the wireless carrier’s platform under one umbrella, according to Reliance Industries.
Reliance Industries and Facebook denied an Indian media report last week that they are considering creating an app similar to WeChat, the Chinese mobile messaging and payment service run by Tencent Holdings Ltd.
“The intent is not to build another app, the intent is really for the two companies to collaborate,” said Ajit Mohan, vice president and managing director for India at Facebook.
Now that the deal has been formally announced, the companies will start working with Indian regulators to seek approval, said Anshuman Thakur, Jio’s head of strategy.
Facebook has not been consistently welcomed by Indian regulators in the past. It ran into opposition while trying to launch a payments feature inside WhatsApp in 2019, and has also faced pushback around content regulation on the app, which is encrypted. Facebook tried — and failed — to bring a service to India in 2015 called Free Basics, which would have made some internet services, including the social network, free to use on mobile devices. Critics said the app violated the concept of net neutrality by prioritizing some services over others.
“Given the intent of this collaboration and the nature of this partnership, we expect people to be welcoming,” Thaku said.
More must-read international coverage from Fortune:
—Controversy around privacy splits Europe’s push to build contact-tracing apps
—Crude math: Why $10 oil could be worth less than nothing
—Why China will recover faster from the coronavirus pandemic than the U.S.
—Coronavirus lockdown diets look the same the world over
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: The global crisis in recycling
Subscribe to Fortune’s forthcoming Eastworld newsletter for expert insight on what’s dominating business in Asia.


fortune--2020-04-21--Netflix earnings: 16 million new subscribers, amid pandemic

Netflix added nearly 16 million subscribers in the first quarter of the year—more than double the estimate of Wall Street analysts—reflecting immense growth for the company as customers worldwide grappled with coronavirus lockdowns.
The precise subscriptions figure, 15.8 million, blew past what Netflix told investors to expect for the first quarter, 7 million, though that forecast was given before the COVID-19 pandemic forced governments around the world to issue shelter-in-place orders. Total global paid memberships in Q1 rose to nearly 183 million worldwide, up from 163 million the previous quarter. Year to year, subscribers increased roughly 23%.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings began his letter to shareholders in a solemn tone, speaking of the “terrible crisis” that has unfolded in recent months before acknowledging Netflix’s current strategic position.
“At Netflix, we’re acutely aware that we are fortunate to have a service that is even more meaningful to people confined at home, and which we can operate remotely with minimal disruption in the short to medium term,” Hastings wrote. “Like other home entertainment services, we’re seeing temporarily higher viewing and increased membership growth.”
The chief executive added that Netflix expects viewing time and membership growth to decline when lockdowns come to an end. Despite a record for quarterly gains, the company projects 7.5 million new global subscribers in the second quarter—more in line with previously expected numbers—though it cautioned the forecast was “mostly guesswork” given the uncertainty of how long home confinements will persist.
Netflix in the first quarter did take some hits to its business despite the staggering subscriber growth. The appreciation of the U.S. dollar amid the coronavirus pandemic resulted in diminished revenue growth internationally, the company said. Total revenue in Q1 came out to nearly $5.78 billion, in line with the consensus estimates. Net income equaled $709 million, or $1.57 a share, just under the $1.65 figure projected by Wall Street.
“After record subscriber additions, Netflix is and will continue to be the media company least impacted by COVID-19,” said Marketer forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom. “Their business is a near perfect fit to a population that is suddenly housebound. Netflix faces some headwinds moving forward from a poor economic environment, but a significant chunk of consumer entertainment budgets have been opened up from the closures of movie theaters, sporting events, restaurants, and bars. Netflix will likely see minimal if any negative impacts moving forward.”
As for the pop culture’s breakout hit of the first quarter, the viral true-crime documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, Netflix projects that 64 million households will have chosen to watch the series in its first four weeks. The series debuted on the streamer on March 20.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Why Sonos launched a radio station
—The verdict on Quibi (so far)
—Why Mrs. America and the 1970s fight over the Equal Rights Amendment are more relevant than ever
—Coronavirus, continued: How concert venues are handling ticket refunds
—The best streaming services in 2020


fortune--2020-04-23--Sanofi CEO: How we can prevent being caught off guard by a pandemic like the coronavirus ever again

What Seattle and San Francisco can teach us about mitigating the scourge of COVID-19

As a global society, we struggled to get ahead of the curve of the coronavirus pandemic. In the few months since the first case was reported, it’s become clear that there are three major challenges we must solve in order to save thousands of lives: developing and rapidly scaling vaccines, finding effective treatments for both the moderately and seriously ill, and flattening the curve.
While we’re tackling these urgent challenges, we also can’t afford not to think long term. In all likelihood, we’ll see a wave of the virus return this fall, and we certainly cannot dismiss the possibility of a new pandemic emerging at any time. What can be done today to ensure that we’re never again caught off guard?
It’s a daunting task, but we should be inspired by the current moment of shared purpose that stemmed from this pandemic. We don’t yet have a vaccine, but many organizations are on the hunt.
There are currently around 75 vaccines under investigation. At Sanofi we’re exploring multiple technologies—including traditional recombinant DNA and newer approaches such as mRNA—to try to find one. China’s Wuhan Institute of Biological Products and Sinovac have both been approved to test on humans inactivated vaccines that could potentially trigger an immune response. And Oxford University will begin human trials for its own vaccine later this week.
Having many shots on goal increases the likelihood not only of finding a vaccine quickly, but also the chances of having more than one vaccine on the market. This is critical, as we’ll likely need billions of doses to make a difference. If manufacturing at this scale is a roadblock, manufacturers will need to partner with governments and even competitors to achieve the volumes necessary.
There are also myriad companies testing various potential treatment approaches, from antiviral medications to immunosuppressants to anti-inflammatory drugs. Combined with parallel efforts to explore antibody-based treatments and diagnostics, no stone will be left unturned.
But even as hotspot cities begin to show glimmers of hope for flattening curves, now is not the moment to take our foot off the pedal. Rather, we must begin to solidify the important measures we’ve already begun to implement, shifting from crisis mode to a more constant state of global preparedness.
We can start by making sure we maintain our shared energy and urgency. Typically, a vaccine can take up to 10 years to develop. We’re on track to do it in about 18 months, with one approach building on an advanced preclinical SARS vaccine candidate that could protect against COVID-19.
That’s an incredible acceleration. We can all continue that momentum if we lay the groundwork for better coordination between pharma companies, academia, and the regulatory bodies that oversee clinical trials and drug approvals.
When we combine the scientific expertise and manufacturing capabilities of private companies with the resources of public agencies, we create solutions that will help bring lifesaving drugs to patients much more quickly. With COVID-19, we’re already seeing the creation of flexible but safe clinical trial guidelines. Add academia into the equation, and we’ll drastically increase the size of our databases and maximize research capabilities.
As we maintain this breakthrough-breeding energy and collaboration, we must simultaneously look for ways to revive the economy and safeguard it from such severe dips in the future. Countrywide shutdowns have had a serious impact on the global workforce. Indeed, the International Labour Organization predicts that an astounding 195 million jobs could be lost in the second quarter of this year alone.
But we can’t just open the floodgates and tell people to get back on the job. In fact, 80% of economists believe that stopping strict lockdowns too early will result in greater economic damage, according to a survey by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business’s Initiative on Global Markets.
To get people back to work quickly without harpooning containment progress, we need technology that expands diagnostic capabilities. Antibody testing will be critical, for example, in helping us see who already fought off the virus and is able to safely return to work.
Pharma companies, governments, and others must also work with the technology sector to track the virus’s spread. Consider how powerful smartphone apps can be, for instance, in tracking and even diagnosing the virus. At Sanofi, we’re collaborating with a healthtech startup called Luminostics to build a self-testing app. Apple and Google are working together to establish a voluntary contact tracing network using short-range Bluetooth communications. Those who download the app will be alerted if they were in close contact with someone who has fallen ill with COVID-19.
Data from cell phones is already helping to track and inform people of possible exposure in Israel, South Korea, and Taiwan. Privacy is of course a concern, but tech companies, academics, and government entities can work together to devise a system that doesn’t compromise privacy. Health care and technology were already converging; now we need to accelerate and fully leverage technology tools.
Finally, COVID-19 has made us acutely aware that viruses know no borders. This global battle will require global solutions. We must push past the tensions already emerging between countries and continue to strengthen our global coordination on virus-related science, tracking, and predictive modeling. We also need to improve regional planning to make sure everyone has a sufficient amount of supplies, vaccines, and treatments.
In the U.S., the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) exists to coordinate stockpiling and planning situations like this, as well as managing vaccine manufacturing and the distribution of medical equipment. Currently, Europe has no BARDA equivalent, meaning that the EU has limited vaccine manufacturing capabilities and countries are independently responsible for stockpiling medical supplies and medications. This leads to competition for scarce resources. We can do better; I’ve called for the creation of a European BARDA equivalent to help us build regional capacities.
It is possible that as the weather warms, the virus could potentially enter a “cease-fire” phase. But we must take advantage of the months ahead and not fall into complacency. We cannot return to any semblance of normalcy until we have a vaccine. Let’s maintain this powerful energy, double down on collaboration, and approach pandemic response and preparedness with a global mindset and a commitment to information sharing.
The scale of lives at risk is daunting. Because so much depends on us, we cannot fail in this endeavor.
Paul Hudson is CEO of Sanofi.
More opinion in Fortune:
—To fight tomorrow’s pandemic, we need to think like the military today
—Prescription drug costs are spiraling, but price controls are the wrong solution
—The Fed may have fundamentally altered the nature of risk in the stock market
—Why the U.S. needs a new corporate bailout structure—one that doesn’t rely on loans
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: CEO of Canada’s biggest bank on the keys to leading through the coronavirus
Listen to our audio briefing, Fortune 500 Daily


fortune--2020-04-22--Apple iPhones, iPads are vulnerable to hackers through flaws in email app

Sanofi CEO : How we can prevent being caught off guard by a pandemic like the coronavirus ever again

Apple plans to release a patch after the cybersecurity company ZecOps found vulnerabilities that may have allowed hackers to exploit iPhones, devices used by hundreds of millions of people.
San Francisco-based ZecOps discovered two “exploitable vulnerabilities” in Apple’s mail app and alerted the company, which released a beta update this month. The company confirmed that a full update is forthcoming to fix the bug.
The vulnerability can be exploited when a specially crafted email is opened on the mail app by an iPhone or an iPad, said Zuk Avraham, the founder and chief executive officer of ZecOps.
ZecOps has “high confidence” that the flaws may have been used in attacks conducted by “an advanced threat operator,” according to a Wednesday report by the company. Among the victims were “individuals from a Fortune 500 organization in North America” and “an executive from a carrier in Japan,” as well as “a journalist in Europe,” the report said.
The vulnerabilities may have been exploited by attackers since January 2018, according to ZecOps. The bugs were disclosed publicly when Apple issued the beta update, and attackers “will likely use the time until a patch is available to attack as many devices as possible,” ZecOps predicted in the report.
Users can protect themselves by applying the beta patch, or avoiding the mail app and temporarily switching to alternatives that aren’t vulnerable to the bugs, ZecOps said in the report.
More must-read tech coverage from Fortune:
—As businesses adapt to remote work, tech isn’t their biggest problem
—Thermal-imaging tech is on the rise. Can it help fight the coronavirus?
—More surveillance and less privacy will be the new normal after the coronavirus
—AMD CEO Lisa Su on supercomputing and leading a global company through a pandemic
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: Best earbuds in 2020: Apple AirPods Pro Vs. Sony WF-1000XM3
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-04-22--An internship during the coronavirus pandemic is a crash course in adaptability

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Clarissa Garcia began her internship before COVID-19 hit. Her job at WishSlate Inc., an e-commerce app, was focused on PR and media relations. Unsurprisingly, her tasks quickly rendered incredibly difficult due to the immense focus that the media is having on the virus.
“It’s been pretty frustrating for me,” she considers. “I’ve had no success so far”. But while difficult, this unique situation is giving her an unexpected insight in navigating a start-up during a crisis. Tuning into weekly Skype meetings with the company’s CEO has kept her well informed as to how the company is navigating everything. “I find it helpful, and it keeps me and the rest of the interns engaged,” she says.
Interns like Garcia are used to work hard to prove themselves in temporary positions, but doing that remotely—and in the middle of a global health crisis—definitely add to the challenge. Some of the high schoolers, higher education students, and those who are in full-time, post graduation internships during the school year are lucky enough to make the remote transition. Others are even more fortunate, with their employers offering full-time positions upon graduation. But many are completely left without the experience—and sometimes money—they counted on having.
Laina Milazzo, a second year law student at Touro Law Center, was working as a legal extern at the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office in New York in the district court bureau. Once COVID-19 hit, all externs were told not to return until further notice. The next day, the courts closed indefinitely. “Since it was an externship we get credit for, they needed to find somewhere for us in order to actually receive credit for all the work we had already done,” says Milazzo.
She was reassigned to the appeals bureau, which allowed her to do research assignments from home. And she’s adapted: “The research is so different from the work I was doing in the district court bureau,” she says. “But now I have hands-on experience in two totally different bureaus—and I think overall it’ll help my career.”
Some of the students in Milazzo’s class weren’t able to switch to another department. Although they won’t substitute the hands-on experience of an actual internship, their professor is creating new assignments for them to do in order to still gain knowledge and receive credit for the time they put in already.
Zaria Wilson faced a similar disappointment. A graduating high school senior, she’s been interning at the National Institutes of Health in the Department of Cellular Development and Neurobiology since last June. With her work taking place completely within a lab, the internship had no way to translate to remote work. Plus, her schedule was tied to her Maryland-based school, so the day it shut down, the internship ended.
While Wilson is fortunate to have interned since June, she’s being proactive to make up for the last few months at the lab that she’s losing. “I’ve been doing my best to make up for the last months of the internship by doing some online courses and staying aware of the science field and biology.”
However optimistic, adapting may seem too far-fetched for some. Wilson is worried about how losing her internship stipend will affect her paying for college. While keeping up with her reading and online courses, she’s applying for scholarships. And Sammy, who had graduated from high school last June, wouldn’t be starting college until the fall.
He had been working as an intern in an investing firm in New York City for less than a month when his office was suddenly shut down due to COVID.19. Since then, Sammy hasn’t worked for them, or for anyone else, for that matter.
“I know that people like me (interns) are going to be amongst the last to be hired back,” he fears. “I hope that my school will be well equipped to deal with helping us find opportunities. There aren’t really many for me to pursue right now.”
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More must-read careers coverage from Fortune:
—How Fortune 500 companies are stepping up during the pandemic
—3 ways to put your best foot forward on a video job interview
—Everything you need to know about furloughs—and what they mean for workers
—The coronavirus could change how freelancers work in the long term
—Accenture and Verizon work to help furloughed or laid-off workers find new jobs
—WATCH: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
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fortune--2020-04-22--What Seattle and San Francisco can teach us about mitigating the scourge of COVID-19

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Seattle and San Francisco have managed to weather the coronavirus pandemic better than many other U.S. cities.
Part of the reason these tech-savvy metropolises are experiencing less coronavirus-related fallout can be attributed to effective government policies, Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky and Erika Fry said during an online discussion on Wednesday.
Although Lashinsky wrote an article in February about the “dysfunction of San Francisco government,” as he put it, he’s now “happy to be eating my words” considering that the city has had only 20 confirmed COVID-19 related deaths. While each death is a tragedy, “that’s also obviously a public health triumph,” Lashinsky said.
“The mayor’s office has responded very well in San Francisco,” he said.
Regarding Seattle, Fry elaborated on her recent article about that city’s response to the pandemic and explained how the Challenge Seattle organization played a major role. That organization, led by former Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, is made up of representatives from giant Seattle companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, Boeing, and Nordstrom.
Although this business consortium typically discusses regional issues like affordable housing, Gregoire instead held a Feb. 25 meeting addressing the severity of the coronavirus based on early warnings from health experts.
“These leaders had a frank, eye-opening talk,” Fry said. “They all left wanting to mobilize.”
That meeting would catalyze the business community to take the deadly virus seriously, and soon companies were discussing how soon they could send their employees home to work, thus mitigating any potential spread. With business leaders, government officials, and public health experts all coordinating and communicating the same messaging, Seattle was able to address the pandemic earlier than other cities, Fry explained.
As of April 21, there have been 373 confirmed deaths in King County, where Seattle is located, according to the Washington State Department of Health’s website.
Fry noted Microsoft president Brad Smith’s observation about how businesses and their vast supply networks and international connections can play an important role in helping governments act fast to deal with pandemics. Microsoft, for instance, was able to procure 250,000 N95 masks for Washington state, but those masks were stuck in a FedEx facility in Memphis. As Fry detailed in her article, Smith called a contact on the White’s House’s National Security Council. “They were released by the next morning,” she said.
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—These publicly traded companies took millions in PPP loan money
—How Home Depot and Lowe’s are preparing for their busy home improvement season during coronavirus uncertainty
—Which companies’ stocks will thrive after the coronavirus crash?
—Late payments soar, revealing extent of coronavirus pain on European companies
—5 veteran investors on how to approach the coronavirus stock market
—Forget “wet markets” and bats: For scientists, failing environmental policies have created a boom time for outbreaks
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—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19


fortune--2020-04-22--Hollywood artists are creating PPE for the medical community

James Bednark remembers meeting with the director, producers, and others involved with Amazon’s untitled Tracy Oliver project in New York City when it was announced that Broadway theaters were shutting down in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“We were all sitting in the meeting, kind of looking at each other, and asking, ‘Are we going to be filming this episode? What’s going to happen?’” recalls Bednark, who was previously art director for Showtime’s Ray Donovan between 2018 and early 2020. “That night, we got a phone call from the unit production manager and the producer saying that we’re shut down and the call for tomorrow was canceled…We were told we were going to be down for two weeks, and two weeks turned into indefinite.”
Bednark’s day job may have stalled, but he hasn’t been idle. Instead, he’s been busy sourcing materials for ArtCube Army, a group of largely New York–based film, television, and theater art department freelancers and related businesses making personal protective equipment (or PPE) for medical workers facing a shortage.
Bednark has been working closely with Eva Radke, a former art department coordinator, who is the CEO and cofounder of ArtCube Nation, a national networking organization for showbiz art professionals. The ArtCube Army emerged as a New York–based, pandemic-focused offshoot while unemployed film industry workers pivot in a time of crisis—a natural fit for people in their line of work, Radke and Bednark say.
“It’s a community of people who already have to source weird things, already work under pressure when there’s zero room for error,” says Radke, who was inspired to hop into action last month as news of a slow supply chain began to spread.
Members of the “Saturday Night Live” art department are among the volunteers making PPE for medical workers during the pandemic. These frontline hospital workers send a thank-you to the ArtCube Army and the “SNL” crew. Courtesy of ArtCube Nation
The group also launched a fundraiser April 3, which has so far made more than $13,000 of its $20,000 goal, to help with buying materials and delivery costs.
As of Tuesday, Radke says, volunteers have been able to produce at least 10,000 face masks; more than 6,000 face shields for New York City–area hospitals, eldercare facilities, and EMS drivers; and nearly 700 shields for other cities and states, New Orleans and Oregon, among them. The fundraiser also enabled the purchase of extra supplies such as surgical gowns and scrub caps.
About 120 people in New York City are involved in the effort, alongside fabrication shops, and even some 3D printers in New Jersey who’ve “put the word out,” Radke says.
“We’re really hyperlocal right now because that’s what we can control and those are the vendors we know,” says Radke of the group’s volunteer workforce, while adding that they’re “happy to fulfill any orders that we get in from anywhere around the country.”
Many of the local supplies they’ve made have been sent to health care workers via home delivery, a fact that Sophie Balzora, a physician at NYU Langone Health, appreciates. She reached out to ArtCube before the expected surge in coronavirus cases, worried that she and her husband—also a physician—would not have a sufficient amount of PPE.
“In preparation and as a precaution, I reached out to them to request three face shields,” she tells Fortune via email. “They were beyond fantastic and responsive—so kind and communicative. And they provided me with five face shields…I was so astounded and so incredibly grateful.”
These are some supplies ArtCube volunteers are using to create face shields for medical workers during the coronavirus pandemic. Courtesy of ArtCube Nation
Bednark has tapped his network of vendors to acquire everything from foam and elastic to marine vinyl, so that other volunteers can assemble needed face shields. But there have been times when shortages of materials have required the ArtCube crew to get creative and find alternatives that will do the job, which is something they can do because they’re a small group, as both he and Radke point out.
“We’re not worried about retooling an entire factory,” Bednark says. “We can easily change up to respond to what’s available.”
Radke is thrilled with the results of the fundraiser so far, the businesses helping her group, and the feedback from the medical community.
“Health care workers are thanking us? I can’t even accept it,” she says. “No no, this is our gratitude towards you.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—China’s movie theaters are closed again, causing anxiety for studios
—How over 100 live-event companies pivoted to building temporary coronavirus hospitals and testing sites
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fortune--2020-04-22--Inside Lyft’s coronavirus response team

Inside Lyft’s coronavirus response team

Before corporate offices closed nationwide, Lyft cofounder John Zimmer called upon his company’s vice president of global operations, Angie Westbrock.
In February, Zimmer tasked Westbrock with setting up a war room to navigate Lyft’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which was already rattling U.S. companies—and suggesting that Lyft’s core business, which depends on putting a driver and passenger in close proximity, would be at risk. Now, what started as a team of fewer than 10 has grown to 30—who meet every morning over Google Hangouts—with new Lyft employees across functions pulled into the task force every day. The ride-share company’s process for building a dedicated coronavirus response team provides a peek into how companies across corporate America have reacted to the growing threat.
A quick pivot
Westbrock’s usual job involves leading the 850 people who make up Lyft’s field teams in cities across the country. Now, she reports directly to Lyft’s cofounders—a change in her reporting structure—to provide daily updates on the crisis.
Her task force is the “quarterback”: identifying problems and assigning the best people and teams to make decisions about how to solve them. Then, once there’s a plan in place, the task force decides what part of the company is best positioned to execute on the solution.
The Lyft coronavirus task force meeting on Zoom in April. Credit: Courtesy of Lyft
One of the first decisions the group made was how to get hand sanitizer to Lyft’s drivers—from determining the budget needed to execute the task to setting up no-contact delivery of the sanitizer. More recently, the product marketing employees on the task force put together updates for drivers on the latest Centers for Disease Control guidance, CARES Act financial relief eligibility, and new delivery jobs—intended to replace some of Lyft’s usual, slowed ride-share business. On the internal side, the task force reviewed all work-from-home and travel policies, as well as standards for communicating with drivers.
About 75% of the day is spent on specific responses to the outbreak; the other 25% is spent on “how to operate in the new world order,” says Heather Freeland, vice president of marketing and another early member of the task force. Key players in the group come from operations, legal, marketing, internal and external communications, and safety and security.
Who’s managing the task force
As the team grew, its members noticed a trend: Two-thirds of task force employees were women. “It’s not surprising to me. When you think about the skills women bring to the table—being very empathetic, understanding the complexity of the situation, being gracious with one another; traits that come out of an incredible amount of multitasking and empathy—it makes women well suited for this,” Westbrock says.
But it’s not a totally organic trend; most members of the group were asked to join by management—and were required to leave their old jobs behind for the time being. Is the gender breakdown of Lyft’s coronavirus task force simply the continuation of a trend that places women in “operator” roles—rather than the very top jobs? “I would’ve raised my hand regardless,” says Freeland. “Throughout my career, I’ve been on front lines of crises. I came from Facebook, where I was on front lines of the Cambridge Analytica issue. I feel like I have the mental playbook and stamina to withstand pressures.”
Long-term lessons
A task force built to manage workflows and decision-making during a crisis can’t solve the crisis itself; Lyft, like all companies, faces enormous pressure as consumer spending plummets and business travel comes to a halt. Some decisions—like cofounders Zimmer and Logan Green agreeing to take no salary until June—are above its pay grade. But the group may be well equipped to move Lyft beyond the crisis.
“The working models we’ve built to move fast, with agility throughout the crisis—they enable us to move fast with tight teams, not too many stakeholders, and clear approval processes,” Freeland says. “We’re excited we will be able to apply them elsewhere as well.”
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—The trillion-dollar question: How far will GDP fall?
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fortune--2020-04-22--Earth Day photo essay: How far have we come in 50 years?

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, founded in 1970 by a mix of senators and young activists, marked with a protest of 20 million people across the U.S. Coming in the years after the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which prompted widespread alarm over the impact of human activity on the natural world, that first protest marked an explosion of environmental activism—and helped spur a rapid expansion of government legislation to protect animals, water sources, air, and people, the bedrock of environmental protections in the U.S.
The obvious question, half a century later, is: How far have we come since then? The answer, scores of climate experts will tell you, is not nearly far enough. Last year, the Trump administration officially gave notice that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the largest global commitment the world has made to avoid the worst results of climate change, but many states said they would continue to honor the agreement.
The spread of COVID-19, and the ensuing global lockdowns and financial crisis, now claim our full attention—often at the expense of our efforts to limit climate change. At first glance, it may seem natural that our current crisis overrules the ongoing crises of changing temperatures and biodiversity loss, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Virologists and scientists say that our broken relationship with nature is at the very heart of this pandemic. Accelerating biodiversity loss—caused by a mix of pollution, over farming, urbanization, and changing temperatures—has made complex ecosystems much simpler and more unstable. That makes it easier for viruses to jump from animals to people, as they have begun to do with alarming frequency.
There is no simple solution to COVID-19. There is also no simple solution to turning back the clock on 50 years of rising temperature and lost ecosystems. But even in the months and years before the global pandemic turned daily life upside-down, demands from regular people were gaining greater momentum, forcing governments to reimagine energy and food systems and businesses to redesign vast supply chains—in a push to get emissions to effectively zero by 2050.
Frequently, those demands have been the loudest from young people, who last September once again took to the streets worldwide in millions. But central bankers, finance ministers, and CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies have also joined the chorus of voices demanding dramatic change. Some of those voices represent remarkable turnarounds: Last week, the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell—the world’s largest publicly held oil and gas company—said it, too, would cut emissions to “net zero” by 2050.
The horror of the COVID-19 pandemic has shaken global health systems and economies. It has also overturned expectations of what the future will look like—and how, as the world reopens, businesses and communities will rebuild. That offers a chance: not just to try to turn the clock back to “business as usual,” but back to the vision set out by organizers and politicians on April 22, 1970. After all, half a century after the world marked the first Earth Day, the world is facing the prospect of not having another fifty years to wait.
Scroll below to explore the history of Earth Day through photographs. Biologist and author Rachel Carson reads in the woods near her home in 1962. Her book Silent Spring prompted widespread alarm and spurred environmental activism. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images The Boston City Hall, still under construction, is almost lost in smog on Nov. 25, 1966. J. Walter Green—AP Images Environmental Protection Agency technicians take deep soil samples from the lawns and streets of Times Beach, Missouri for possible dioxin contamination in the water. The Water Quality Act, passed in 1965, expanded federal control over water quality. Bettmann/Getty Images Earthrise by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders taken in December 1968. For the first time ever, our planet was photographed from the moon, showing just how fragile the earth really is, which gave momentum to the environmental activism movement. Courtesy of NASA View of hard-hatted workers as they deploy straw bales to clean up an oil spill on a beach in Santa Barbara, California in 1969. The spill, which began on January 28, was the result of a blowout on an offshore Union Oil drilling platform. Vernon Merritt—The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images The first Earth Day celebrated on April 20, 1970 in New York City. Earlier that year in January, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act, which meant the impact on the environment had to be considered for future legislation. Santi Visalli—Getty Images Beachgoers are sprayed with DDT as a new machine for distributing the insecticide is tested for the first time in 1945. DDT was later banned in 1972. Bettmann/Getty Images Children ride their bicycles to field trips and school during the gas crisis in the winter of 1974. National Archives/Getty Images President Jimmy Carter delivers his solar message to Congress in 1979, laying out his plan to get 20% of the country’s energy from renewable sources by 2020. Bettmann/Getty Images After reports came out that her town’s high rate of birth defects, which impacted her son, were caused from a chemical company’s toxic waste dump, Lois Gibbs holds EPA official Dr. James Lucas hostage in the Love Canal Homeowners Association building in May 1980 in New York. Joe Traver—Liaison/Getty Images Workers point their hoses on oiled rocks as part of the Exxon Valdez Oil spill cleanup in 1989 at McPherson Bay on Naked Island. Erik Hill—Anchorage Daily News/Tribune News Service/Getty Images Hundreds of people attend the Earth Show in May 1992 in Rio de Janeiro ahead of the opening of the UN conference on environment and development. AVANIR NIKO—AFP/Getty Images More than 1,200 students from across the U.S. assemble a five-story globe on the National Mall in Washington on Earth Day 1995. JOYCE NALTCHAYAN—AFP via Getty Images The Kyoto Protocol, which commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, was signed and adopted at the COP3 of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate in Kyoto in 1997. Kyodo via AP Images The 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”, which won two Academy Awards, tries to raise awareness of climate change. Courtesy of Paramount Classics/Everett Collection Pelicans caught in the BP oil spill wait to be cleaned at the Fort Jackson Bird Rehabilitation center, near Venice, La. on June 11, 2010. Christopher Morris—VII/Redux An aerial view of the Gulf of Mexico more than 50 miles southeast of Venice on Louisiana’s tip where an oil slick is seen as the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig burns in 2010. Gerald Herbert—AP Images The ozone layer is Earth’s natural sunscreen, shielding life from excessive amounts of ultraviolet radiation. In 1979, Earth’s ozone layer was damaged near Antarctica by well-intentioned chemicals—chlorofluorocarbons, used for refrigerants and aerosol spray cans—that have the unintended consequence of destroying ozone molecules. An international treaty called the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987 to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals. Courtesy of NASA People at a rally for the environment to protest against President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord on June 4, 2017 in Westport, Connecticut. Signed in 2017, the Paris Agreement’s goal was to limit emissions to levels that will prevent temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius by end of the century. Spencer Platt—Getty Images Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks at the 2019 United Nations Climate Action Summit at U.N. headquarters in New York City on Sept. 23, 2019. Thunberg’s “Fridays for Future” movement goes global, largely with protests by young people against inaction on climate change. Carlo Allegri—REUTERS Activists gather in John Marshall Park for the global climate strike protests on Sept. 20, 2019 in Washington D.C. In what could be the largest climate protest in history, inspired by the teenage Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, people around the world took to the streets to demand action to combat climate change. Samuel Corum—Getty Images More must-read energy sector coverage from Fortune: —Why the coronavirus crisis could make Big Oil greener
—How Global 500 companies are responding to the coronavirus
—IEA warns of “staggering” demand drop in global oil markets
—Crude math: Why $10 oil could be worth less than nothing—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: PSEG CEO on climate change action: “It should have been done yesterday”
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fortune--2020-04-22--Furlough vs. layoff? As more workers lose their jobs, here’s what to know about your rights and bene

Furlough vs. layoff? As more workers lose their jobs, here’s what to know about your rights and benefits

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Over the weekend Disney began furloughing tens of thousands of employees. This unpaid leave—with no set return date—included staff from Disney World, Hollywood movie studios, as well as employees at corporate headquarters.
These furloughed workers will join the 22 million Americans who have already filed unemployment benefit claims over the past month. Employers say they hope to rehire many of these furloughed workers once the economic storm passes. But there isn’t a guarantee that a furloughed worker will get rehired, and on paper it’s very similar to a layoff. That’s in contrast to Europe, where ‘furloughed’ workers still get paid.
“Some workers will go back. But of tens of millions of people [let-go], half of them are likely to end up somewhere else after this. It’s like a game of musical chairs with a lot fewer chairs when business starts back,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics.
Employers are using furloughs so they don’t have to start from scratch once revenues and business return. But even when the economy opens back up, it will likely take years to reach the same employment level, Zandi predicts. Here are a few answers to the most common questions about this new and increasingly common facet of the workforce.
Are furloughed workers guaranteed their jobs back?
“If the company’s fortunes turn around, they could potentially rehire them. But there is no guarantee their jobs will be there,” says Roy Cohen, a New York–based career coach (who, he told Fortune, recently recovered from COVID-19).
It is common for auto plants to furloughs staff for a set duration and bring them back once demands returns. But many of the furloughs we are seeing across the country has happening without any idea of a return date. And each company will have a different process or policy for deciding when the furloughs end.
The return of furloughed employees at Hilton will be based on business demand at individual hotels, the hotel chain told Fortune. In China, where Hilton is seeing some business return, staff are likelier to return earlier than their U.S. peers. Disney declined to note how many employees it is furloughing, or its process for figuring out who gets to return first.
Do you get different benefits if you are furloughed vs. laid off?
This is one area where every employer and employee’s situation is different, so it’s important to check with your company’s benefits administrator. Generally speaking, when an employee is laid-off, it is considered a permanent separation. During this pandemic, some employers have offered severance and extended healthcare benefits for workers who have been laid off. The thinking being, this is going to be a tough time to quickly get a new job.
For employees on furlough, the situation varies case by case. But since furloughed employees aren’t earning a paycheck, they can’t contribute to 401(k) and flexible spending accounts.
Right now, Macy’s is allowing furloughed workers to stay on the company’s health plan with the premium 100% covered by the company through at least May, the retailer told Fortune. Hilton and Disney both confirmed they’re doing something similar.
Can I get unemployment while on furlough?
As for government benefits, furloughed workers are eligible for the additional new federal unemployment benefits that were passed as part of the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill. That’s an extra $600 weekly, regardless of their previous wages, on top of their state benefits through July 31.
Unemployment insurance applications and eligibility vary by state, however, many states allow furloughed workers to ability enroll without a waiting period.
Over the weekend Disney World started furloughing many of its 75,000 employees. That wave is so big that Florida created a process to “auto-enroll” these furloughed workers into its unemployment system.
What rights do furloughed workers have?
Furloughed workers are still technically employed and protected by discrimination laws.
“If they start to recall employees, they couldn’t do in a discriminatory way…you can’t bring all the men back first,” said David Barron, an employment lawyer at Cozen O’Connor. But again, there is no law requiring employers to rehire furloughed workers.
What else can furloughed workers to do improve their odds of getting a new job?
“I would make sure you’re up to speed on job search techniques. Have your pitch down,” says Cohen. “If there are any gaps in your skills set, focus your attention on it. Make sure you’re marketable.”
Career opportunities will be created out of this pandemic, Cohen says, and out-of-work Americans and furloughed workers should ask themselves if it is a good time to jump into higher growth areas. And this is a great time to virtually network, as people are hungry for human-to-human connection, he adds.
These unprecedented job losses also mean hiring managers will be very forgiving to applicants who end up going long periods without work. “I think that no one will be chastised or punished for losing a job or making a move during or after this crisis,” Cohen says.
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—5 veteran investors on how to approach the coronavirus stock market
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fortune--2020-04-22--‘Succession’ actors get a pay raise: Report

Some of the most prominent actors from the cast of the hit HBO series Succession will receive compensation increases ahead of its third season, according to a new report.
Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin, Alan Ruck, Matthew Macfadyen, and Nicholas Braun (of Cousin Greg fame) will receive between $300,000 and $350,000 per episode, according to a report in the Hollywood Reporter published Wednesday. Brian Cox, who plays family patriarch Logan Roy, will receive more. (THR notes that most of the actors were previously making less than $100,000 per episode.)
Succession revolves around the family-controlled media empire Waystar Royco and draws inspiration from real-life media families the Murdochs (of News Corp. fame) and the Redstones (who control ViacomCBS to this day). HBO—now part of AT&T’s WarnerMedia division—has yet to announce when season three will make its debut, but most industry observers expect it to land this summer, as it has every year prior.
Missed season two of “Succession”? Read Rey Mashayekhi’s episode recaps here.
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fortune--2020-04-22--Once hot startup Magic Leap lays off half its workers

Magic Leap, the augmented-reality startup that raised more than $2 billion from high-profile investors including Alphabet and Alibaba, is cutting about half of its workforce as part of a major restructuring, according to people familiar with the matter.
About 1,000 employees will be affected, the people added. The company is planning to wind down its consumer business and will instead focus on its enterprise products, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private.
The decision to abandon its consumer ambitions represents a dramatic retreat for a company that was at one time seen as the future of at-home augmented reality.
“While our leadership team, board, and investors still believe in the long-term potential of our IP, the near-term revenue opportunities are currently concentrated on the enterprise side,” CEO Rony Abovitz said in a statement posted on the company’s website, confirming the earlier Bloomberg News report.
Abovitz said that the company made “the difficult decision to lay off a number of employees across Magic Leap,” without elaborating on numbers.
“These changes will occur at every level of our company, from my direct reports to our factory employees,” he said.
Magic Leap’s board is also considering taking on new outside investment as well as a partnership with a large health-care company, the people added.
Abovitz said that the company is in “the process of negotiating revenue generating strategic partnerships that underscore the value of Magic Leap’s technology platform in the enterprise market.”
Magic Leap had been working with advisers on strategic options and sounding out deals that could have valued it at more than $10 billion, Bloomberg News previously reported.
Efforts to command that high a valuation faltered after global economies ground to a halt amid the spread of the coronavirus, the people said.
The Plantation, Fla.-based company had already started to shift its strategy to selling its products to large companies in the health-care, industrial and financial sectors after slower-than-expected consumer adoption of the head-set it developed.
The cuts make Magic Leap the latest technology startup to shrink its workforce during the coronavirus pandemic that has seen tens of thousands of workers lose their jobs across the sector.
An estimated 273,083 employees were let go at 285 startups since March 11. That figure comes from Layoffs.fyi, a tracker that measures publicly announced job cuts. The actual total is likely far higher because not all companies have made public announcements.
A representative for Magic Leap declined to comment on further details.
Magic Leap lured investors with a promise to create a headset using spatial computing technologies that offer consumers high-end augmented reality experiences and tools to support remote working. Many big companies have been chasing the same technology, including Microsoft with its HoloLens device.
Magic Leap, founded in 2011, unveiled a $2,300 headset in 2018 after years of secretive work and has pledged to deliver technology rivaling television or the telephone in societal impact. Sales never took off and there were dozens of job cuts late last year, The Information previously reported.
Among the company’s other big name investors are Japan’s largest wireless operator NTT Docomo Inc., Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund PIF, Singapore’s state-owned investment company Temasek Holdings Pte. and AT&T Inc.
More must-read tech coverage from Fortune:
—As businesses adapt to remote work, tech isn’t their biggest problem
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