fortune--2020-11-10--Michelle Wie West on her golf comeback plan: I want my daughter to see me play

Michelle Wie West thought she would retire from golf when she had children. Then, she gave birth to her daughter.
The athlete, who played her first major as a professional when she was 13 years old, welcomed daughter Makenna in June—amid the coronavirus pandemic and about a year after she played her last tournament and then stepped back from the sport owing to injury.
The family milestone changed her view of her athletic future in two important ways. First, “When my husband and I decided we wanted to have kids, I’ve always had this fear that my body was going to let me down again,” Wie West says, referencing her wrist injury. “I didn’t have a lot of faith in my body. But going through a healthy pregnancy and a healthy labor and giving birth to a very healthy child—I definitely have this newfound respect for my body.”
Second, the athlete adds that raising a girl of her own motivates her to continue her career in the sport. “When I found out that I was having a girl, my whole perspective on my career and my life completely changed. Now my goal is: I really just want to show her that I can play at the highest level,” she says. “Now, everything I want to accomplish in my golf career from now on is really for her.”
Wie West is still navigating a future beyond the course; among other projects, she is dipping her toe into startup investing. Her first investment was in the fitness brand Tonal and her latest is in the beverage brand Oxigen.
Wie West spoke to Fortune about her goals as an investor, her future in golf, and her experience as a new mother. This interview has been edited and condensed.
Fortune: What interests you as an investor? What attracted you to these two companies as you were making your first bets?
Michelle Wie West: Health and lifestyle has been a huge part of my life. Being an athlete, I’ve always searched for things that helped me to perform better at a higher level or more efficiently.
Efficiency these days has definitely taken on a premium since I’ve gotten pregnant and now have a baby. Time is so, so precious. I thought time was precious to me before as an athlete, but as a new mom, it’s just even more so. I don’t have the time to waste a minute on anything, but I’m still trying to train and still trying to perform at a higher level and do my rehab with my wrist. I’m trying to find anything that can boost my energy.
What was your experience like with pregnancy, giving birth, and becoming a new mom during the pandemic?
It’s terrifying. Your baby being very high risk is even more isolating. Thankfully, we were really lucky to quarantine together as a family so the baby was able to see the grandparents. But not being able to really hang out with your friends while you’re pregnant, not being to have a baby shower, just those little stupid, silly things that actually don’t matter—looking back, it was just really isolating.
But I was very fortunate. The doctors and the staff at the hospital were so amazing. We weren’t able to leave the room at all for four days straight. I was really scared to give birth while wearing a mask—but I was really glad that I didn’t have to do that. For the most part, I was really happy that I felt pretty safe.
What are your typical schedule and lifestyle like right now, working on these projects, still in some degree of quarantine, and with your daughter?
A lot of Zoom calls. I’ve always kept my plate pretty full. Even when I played golf, I was in school at the same time. I always had more than one thing going. That’s just how I operate. But right now my life is just really dependent on her nap times. And she’s had, like, a pretty big four-month regression where naps really don’t happen anymore. I’m watching her try to go back to sleep right now.
How has your experience with injury affected how you thought about the new investment you made in Oxigen—the beverage brand’s slogan is “recover and rise”—as you start working with the company more?
With having an injury, I spent so many years really not feeling well. I needed more of a holistic approach to wellness. Sometimes, I was super, super strict on diet and whatnot. And now I’m taking more of a holistic approach where I make sure I put really, really good ingredients in my body.
As an athlete, how has childbirth and new motherhood affected or changed how you feel about your own body and what it can do?
I just have a high respect for my body. [After my wrist injury] there was definitely a time where I was very unforgiving to my body, I was just really disappointed by my body.
When my husband and I decided we wanted to have kids, I’ve always had this fear that my body was going to let me down again. I didn’t have a lot of faith in my body. But going through a healthy pregnancy and a healthy labor and giving birth to a very healthy child—I definitely have this newfound respect for my body, where I’m like, “Wow, I actually created her from scratch, from a couple of cells.” And that just blows my mind, it completely is so cool. And I really, really just respect my body so much.
How do you feel like the sport is treating female athletes who become mothers and who want to continue playing after going through pregnancy? Do you feel like there are the right measures in place, or is there more that golf as an institution should be doing?
I think that there’s a lot of recent changes that have been made that have been so wonderful for female athletes. In the past, it wasn’t as great. Recently, there have been a couple of pushes in our organization, with pregnant players, and players who are moms who stood up for us and said, “This is not right.”
Recently, they changed the maternity wear you get—and the whole year that you’re pregnant, you can play as many times as you want and it won’t negatively affect your ranking. And you also have two years afterwards to come back. So if you say, “I don’t want to play” for the first two years of your child’s life, then you can elect to do so—whereas before that was really not the case. Even with sponsors and whatnot, it’s gotten a lot better. Can there be more improvements made—in our organization and outside of athletes? Yes. But I think we’re moving in the right direction.
What other improvements do you think would make a real difference?
Our tour has a day care, where we can leave our kids. My husband, at his organization, they have a day care for us as well. But I hear my friends who aren’t athletes—they work in the corporate world—and I always thought that day care was free. I always thought it was just part of the company. And some companies do do that. But day care is just so expensive that, a lot of times, friends say they have to get a second job to afford day care. It makes them choose between having to raise a kid or to go to work.
I just hope that there are measures put into place where they don’t have to choose. I just don’t want that decision to be forced upon us. Sports organizations are definitely making a lot of big changes, to make our lives better and to make it easier. And I would love to see nonathletic organizations take that leap.
Over your professional career, do you feel like the amount of attention given to the women’s tour compared to the men’s has improved?
With tennis, you see a huge difference. In our sport as well—we’re definitely getting more coverage. Every year, we’re getting more tournaments added to our roster. Our purses are getting bigger. Are we making that huge, huge leap where we’re really closing the gap between the men? Probably not, but it’s a hard battle to be fought.
To get more attention—more time and coverage from the networks—it’s a long process. The gap is not going to be closed overnight. But we are making progress, and we can’t lose sight of that.
Are there other athletes who have forged careers in business and investing whom you’ve admired as you’ve thought about the next few decades of your own career?
The traditional route of being an athlete was to find sponsors. I have had these amazing long-term relationships with my sponsors. But more so now I see athletes really getting involved in the process and investing in companies that they believe in—and maybe they don’t have the marketing budget to afford to pay an athlete.
Serena Williams has made a lot of investments on her side. Steph Curry has an incredible portfolio. Draymond Green as well has a really cool investment that he’s made. I’m a total newbie in this, but just really learning what the process is has been so much fun.
Last year you said there was still so much you wanted to accomplish, speaking specifically about your golf career. What does that statement mean to you now, both in the sport and outside it?
It’s definitely changed now. With my injuries—before, it was just so disheartening to me. I would look down at the golf ball and be terrified. It was just so painful. I stepped away from the game.
There were definitely doubts—there’s obviously so much I want to accomplish in my golf game. It’s not something where I stepped away because I felt accomplished; just physically, I couldn’t do it anymore. And then I got pregnant.
I always was thinking that I was going to stop playing once I got pregnant. I filmed the [now defunct Quibi show Iron Sharpens Iron] with Kerri Walsh Jennings, and she has three beautiful kids and performed at the highest level. We’ve talked about how you can do it—it’s possible—and about the mothers that we have on our tour, and seeing how well they play, and how they balance everything.
Then when I found out that I was having a girl, my whole perspective on my career and my life completely changed. Now my goal is: I really just want to show her that I can play at the highest level. I can show her old coverage, or I can show her old YouTube videos, but it’s so different when she sees it with her own eyes—me training for something that I am really passionate about. Because one day I want her to throw herself into something that she’s really passionate about. Everything I want to accomplish in my golf career from now on is really for her.
A few months ago, you told the New York Times that you were keeping your eye on how the pandemic unfolded over the next few months as you considered a return to competitive play. How are you feeling about that now?
I would love to play a tournament before the year ends. I’ve been trying to train—I haven’t been able to do much—but I’ve tried to find free time that I can to train and practice. But, honestly, I thought I would feel a lot more comfortable flying with her at this point. I’m just not sure. It’s a day-to-day evaluation of how safe I feel. But I’m really hoping that there’s a breakthrough. I’m a very positive person, so I really hope that there will be a medical breakthrough very soon.


fortune--2020-11-10--Will pandemic-era travel bubbles be filled with ‘Airspace’?

Parler is the new Twitter for conservatives .
Here ’ s what you need to know

Monday’s announcement that a vaccine developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech is more than 90% effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19 bouyed sentiment throughout the global economy. Cheers were especially enthusiastic from the travel industry, which has been devastated by the pandemic.
Airlines, hotels and travel agencies, and the hundreds of millions of workers whose livelihoods depend on serving tourists and business travelers, are praying the industry will begin to rebound in the second half of 2021. That looks likely, but the strength of any recovery is unclear.
In the meantime, industry leaders are grappling with a host of challenges they’ll need designers to help them solve: How will they reassure travelers it’s safe to take to the skies and stay in hotels again? What kind of experience will those travelers demand once they get back out on the road? And what will it take for all of us to rediscover the magic of unfamiliar people and places?
Travel in a post-pandemic world may be hard to envision in places like Europe where, in many countries, daily new cases of the virus have spiked to record highs, or the United States, which reported its 10 millionth coronavirus case on Sunday and where new cases have soared above 100,000 a day.
But the promise of travel seems less distant here in Asia, where many countries have succeeded in containing the spread of the coronavirus. China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, are actively discussing forming “travel bubbles” by reopening borders to visitors from other countries with low infection rates.
Meanwhile, The Economist this week sounds the alarm that travel in those post-pandemic bubbles may involve an altogether different peril. In an essay entitled “Flat White World,” it warns: “A new design aesthetic is taking over the world, spread not via brands or FDI, but through social media and the Internet. Even as formal trade slows, the globalization of taste is rampant. Starbucks may not have reached large chunks of the world, but there are very few large cities in the world now in which a visitor cannot order a latte surrounded by exposed wood and vintage light bulbs. Kabul boasts no McDonalds, but you can get a decent burger and fries at Burger House, a restaurant that would not be out of place in San Francisco.”
The reference to “exposed wood and vintage light bulbs” is an echo of a jeremiad penned by American writer Kyle Chayka for The Verge in 2016. Chayka argued that the proliferation of tech platforms like Instagram, Foursquare, and Airbnb are, wittingly or not, producing a uniform style he calls “Airspace” that is replicating itself in coffee shops, bars, startup offices, and co-working spaces everywhere in the world.
Edwin Heathcote, the Financial Times’ architecture critic, lamented the spreading sameness of this new design aesthetic in an August essay that found particular fault with Airbnb, a company born of the desire to make travel more diverse and authentic. He wrote: “The irony is that in looking for a trip, a change of scenery, we have found anonymity repackaged as cool and now we aspire at home to the placelessness of a reimported banality.”
Personally, I have missed traveling this year far less than I thought I would. Then yesterday I stumbled upon Architectural Digest’s write-up of the new Hotel the Mitsui Kyoto, which opened this month right across from the amazing Nijo Castle. It features the work of four brilliant designers—Shunsaku Miyagi, Yohei Akao, Akira Kuryu and Hong Kong’s Andre Fu—and looks anything but banal. For a moment, I was almost tempted to search for my suitcase.
More design news below!
Clay Chandler
— clay.chandler@fortune.com
NEWS BY DESIGN
Solid
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world-wide web, is launching a new initiative that looks to redesign how user data is stored and utilized online. Called Solid, the decentralized-data initiative allows users to store their data in personalized “pods” which companies—such as Google or Facebook—can only access with permission. The first version of Solid was released Monday.
Maya Angelou
Last year, the San Francisco Arts Commission commissioned Lava Thomas to design a monument commemorating civil rights activist Maya Angelou, but the selection was overturned by the City Supervisor sponsoring the commission. The u-turn sparked outrage within the city's artistic community who questioned the opaque selection processes for commissioning public sculptures. Now the city has reversed course again and re-commissioned Thomas for the work.
Passport
Norway’s Neue studio unveiled designs for the country’s new passports, completed with classic Scandinavian minimalism. Norway’s government commissioned the redesign to improve passport security while celebrating Norway's natural beauty. Neue met the challenge by deploying UV markings to create transitory pictures. Under normal light, Neue’s offering depicts Norwegian scenery in daytime; under UV light, the landscape transitions to night and the aurora borealis shines through.
Header
Hugh Pearman is stepping down as editor of architecture magazine The RIBA Journal, published by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Pearman has spent 14 years in the role and will be leaving in December, making him one of the longest-serving editors of the influential mag. Executive editor Eleanor Young is taking over as acting editor.
One more thing
Apple is hosting its addendum to the iPhone 12 series launch today. The One More Thing event is expected to unveil the first Mac computer manufactured with an Apple-designed processor, built on Arm architecture. Previous Macs ran on Intel, but Apple ended that partnership in June.
EVENTS BY DESIGN
November
The AIGA Design Conference is being hosted online November 9-14. The event, hosted by the U.S. professional association for design, is pitching “building bridges” as the theme for its festival
Canada’s annual graphic design fest, DesignThinkers, is running online this year, November 10-21—the first time in the event’s 20-year history that it hasn’t been held in person.
Dubai’s inaugural architecture festival, d3 Architecture Festival, will run November 11-13 on the sidelines of Dubai Design Week. The event will focus on sustainability—an existential issue for the desert city.
Barcelona Design Week, bringing together architecture, tech, industrial and graphic design, is being held both online and on-site November 17-26.
Hong Kong’s Business of Design Week (BODW), billed as “Asia’s premier annual” event on design, will be in person and online from November 30 until December 5. Like many others, the event looks to provide guidance in a pandemic era.
December
Seoul Design Festival, a celebration of South Korea’s young designers and upstart design brands, is running December 9-13.
The National Gallery of Victoria’s art, design, and architecture exhibition, the NGV Triennial, will run from December 19 to April 18, 2021 in Melbourne, Australia.
QUOTED BY DESIGN
“The awful advent of COVID-19 should provoke a hard look at our inefficient and needlessly complicated system—and serious ideas for reforming it. Ideally, we want a system that will take care of all of us, including those who have had COVID or post-COVID symptoms over the long haul.”
Carolyn Barber, physician and author of a new book on the commercialization of the U.S. healthcare system, writes in Fortune. Barber points out that while the pandemic is still raging in the U.S., the long-term effects of COVID-19 could create a health crisis that lasts much longer than the pandemic itself. Now is an “auspicious” moment to think about what the future of American healthcare looks like, and whether the insurance-led model should be replaced by a “single-payer” system, funded by the government.
This week’s edition of BxD was curated by Eamon Barrett. Email him tips and ideas at eamon.barrett@fortune.com


fortune--2020-11-10--What to know about the Supreme Court’s case on the constitutionality of Obamacare

The Supreme Court hears arguments Tuesday in a case that could invalidate the entire Affordable Care Act. If that’s the Justices’ decision, it would likely—and instantly—become the largest business and economics story of 2021.
The hearing on Tuesday will provide early hints of which way the Justices are leaning. The plaintiffs—18 states with Republican governors, led by Texas, plus two individuals—argue that the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is unconstitutional. A ruling to that effect would upend U.S. health care, the largest sector of the world’s largest economy, accounting for 18% of America’s GDP. More than 20 million people would lose their health insurance, says the American Medical Association. Coverage of pre-existing conditions, including COVID-19, would no longer be guaranteed. Adult children would no longer be guaranteed coverage under their parents’ insurance until age 26.
Drugmakers, insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, nurses, device makers, and the other members of America’s $3.6 trillion health care sector would be suddenly untethered from the rules they’d lived by for years, with no clear guidance on what comes next. Having built a huge economic structure on the foundation of the ACA, which was passed 10 years ago, they wouldn’t be sure what would collapse when the foundation suddenly disappeared. In theory the resulting changes could be addressed in private markets, but the health care industry needed years to adapt to the ACA. After a decade it could not quickly revert to the pre-ACA world. Bottom line, concludes an analysis by the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy, “a Supreme Court decision to strike down the ACA would create chaos in the health care system.”
Disruption of public health care—Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs—would be especially severe, and the response “is likely to be quite chaotic,” says the analysis. The problem is that myriad rules, regulations, and laws now in effect “presupposed the existence of an ACA provision,” says the analysis, and “those new rules are fully ‘baked in’ to Medicare’s policies for making $800 billion in annual payments.” Figuring out what all those rules and laws mean in a world without the ACA “would likely take months or years” and “would likely spur additional litigation given the financial stakes involved.” More years.
While the weight of expert opinion is that the ACA will probably survive the case before the court, the fact that this case has made it to the Supreme Court is surprising and introduces a jolt of uncertainty. Even some right-leaning legal experts dismiss the case’s argument. Political analyst Yuval Levin, writing in National Review, said that though hardly anyone is “more opposed to Obamacare than I am,” the plaintiffs’ logic “doesn’t even merit being called silly. It’s ridiculous.” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, another stalwart ACA opponent, argued in 2018 that a lower court’s decision in the case, that the ACA must be repealed, should be and would be overturned; in fact it was sent back to the lower court for reconsideration of whether the entire act had to go, and from there it has reached the Supreme Court.
The plaintiffs’ argument, extremely condensed, focuses on the “individual mandate,” the requirement that most people must buy health insurance, and on the ACA’s monetary penalty for not doing so. The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that the penalty-enforced mandate was constitutional because the penalty was a tax. Then, in 2017, Congress reduced the penalty to zero. The plaintiffs argue that if the penalty is zero then it isn’t a tax, so the court’s 2012 reasoning no longer applies, and the mandate is unconstitutional. The plaintiffs argue further that the entire ACA is therefore unconstitutional—that the individual mandate is not “severable” from the rest of the law, so the court could not merely excise that provision and let the rest of the law stand.
Much of the health care industry will be listening on Tuesday to see if the Justices seem skeptical of those arguments. The conservative majority makes the court potentially more anti-ACA than it was a few years ago, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will endorse the plaintiffs’ reasoning. Chief Justice John Roberts, the court’s most centrist member, wrote the 2012 opinion allowing the individual mandate, and conservative Justice Samuel Alito has written in favor of setting a high bar for arguments against severability. The newest justice, conservative Amy Coney Barrett, testified in her confirmation hearings last month that “the presumption is always in favor of severability.”
The court’s decision, like nearly all of its most important decisions, is expected in June.


fortune--2020-11-10--Barr authorizes DOJ inquiries into alleged voting irregularities as Trump contests vote

Attorney General William Barr has authorized Justice Department officials to open inquiries into potential irregularities in the presidential election, while acknowledging there’s no conclusive evidence.
Barr issued a memo on Monday evening allowing U.S. attorneys across the country, as well as his top lieutenants, to “pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certification of elections in your jurisdictions in certain cases.”
“While serious allegations should be handled with great care, specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims should not be a basis for initiating federal inquiries,” Barr wrote. “Nothing here should be taken as any indication that the department has concluded that voting irregularities have impacted the outcome of any election.”
After the memo was released, Richard Pilger, who led the Justice Department’s Election Crimes branch, resigned from that post on Monday night.
His decision was reported by the New York Times and confirmed by his email announcing it, which was tweeted out by Vanita Gupta, who headed the department’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama
In the email, Pilger said he was stepping down because Barr’s new policy “abrogated the forty-year-old non-interference policy for ballot fraud investigations in the period prior to elections becoming certified an uncontested.”
Barr has been one of the most ardent and aggressive supporters of President Donald Trump, and his message comes as Trump and his legal team make so far unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud.
A Justice Department official said that neither Trump nor anyone at the White House had asked Barr to take the action, although some Republican lawmakers have urged him to intervene.
Before the election, Barr had echoed Trump’s unsupported claims that widespread use of mail-in ballots was subject to fraud, including ballots that might be cast by foreign adversaries seeking to influence the election. But the attorney general had remained silent in the days just before and after last week’s election, until now.
Bob Bauer, a top lawyer for the Biden campaign, responded in a statement that “it is deeply unfortunate that the Attorney General Barr chose to issue a memorandum that will only fuel the ‘specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims’ he professes to guard against. Those are the very kind of claims that the president and his lawyers are making unsuccessfully every day, as their lawsuits are laughed out of one court after another.”
Barr indicated that in authorizing the inquiries he broke with department policies, which he said require consultation with the agency’s public integrity officials in some instances.
He argued that time was of the essence, as those officials generally counsel that overt investigative steps shouldn’t be taken until the election outcome has been concluded.
‘Prudent’ to Probe
That’s “never been a hard and fast rule,” he said, and “such a passive and delayed enforcement approach can result in situations in which election misconduct cannot realistically be rectified.”
Barr said it “will likely be prudent to commence any election-related matters as a preliminary inquiry, so as to assess whether available evidence warrants further investigative steps.”
After his announcement, Gupta tweeted: “Let’s be clear — this is about disruption, disinformation, and sowing chaos.”
“Trump is furious, demanding all ‘his’ lawyers take action,” she wrote. “They have no evidence so they’ll push the PR. Doesn’t change the result.”
Earlier Monday, Barr met with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at the Capitol. Barr left without making any comments to reporters when asked what they had discussed and whether it pertained to election inquiries.
Afterward on the Senate floor, McConnell defended Trump’s right to challenge ballot counts in pivotal states.
“We have the system in place to consider concerns, and President Trump is 100% within his rights to look to allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options,” McConnell said.
The Justice Department official declined to say if Barr discussed his plan to allow voting probes with McConnell.
Trump’s campaign has filed a flurry of legal challenges to vote counts in battleground states after projections by the Associated Press and all the major television networks showed that Democrat Joe Biden has won.
Several of the lawsuits allege that the Trump campaign wasn’t given sufficient access or a close enough view to monitor vote counting and catch any fraudulent ballots.
Democrats have called the lawsuits baseless efforts to muddy the election outcome. Throughout the campaign, Trump claimed without evidence that the increased use of mailed-in ballots because of the pandemic would lead to widespread voter fraud and suggested the election would have to be decided in the U.S. Supreme Court.
–With assistance from Tyler Pager and Laura Litvan.


fortune--2020-11-10--A different breed of leader

A different breed of leader

This is the web version of CEO Daily. To get it delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning.
I’ve written here many times about the pressure CEOs feel from employees, consumers and even investors to improve their positive contributions to society. But on reflection, I’ve probably underplayed the change that comes from within the CEOs themselves. There is a different breed of leader in business today. They look at success differently. And that’s part of what’s driving change.
Nike CEO John Donahoe—who Ellen McGirt and I hosted on our podcast Leadership Next this week—is one of those. I’ve known him casually for at least a decade. But my most memorable conversation with him came five years ago. He had been CEO of Bain & Co. and then CEO of eBay. And at the age of 55, he had decided to take a year off, to contemplate how he wanted to spend the rest of his life. His “wisdom journey” included a visit to a Buddhist retreat and conversations with more than 50 wise, older people, whom he asked: How do you maintain vitality, how do you stay young at heart, and how do you remain happy as you move into old age?
I won’t spoil the podcast, but Donahoe shares the five big takeaways that came from that wisdom tour. One of them was to not lose sight of your gifts, and understand what animates you inside and makes you happy. And when his year was over, he decided to return to what he knew he was good at—the job of CEO—but to do it with an increased devotion to “service-based leadership.” That, he said, “is what animates me inside.” He became CEO of ServiceNow before taking the Nike job in January.
So why Nike? “When Mark Parker and Phil Knight and the Nike board came to me and said, ‘Would you consider being our next CEO,’ what struck me was this: The world is more polarized than at any time in my adult life. Polarization is in. Division seems to be in. Sport is one of the few things that still brings people together. Sport brings people together within countries, sports brings people together across countries, sport brings people together on the ultimate level playing field…I feel like the world needs sport more today than at any time in history.”
Of course, even sports has its moments of divisiveness. I asked him about Nike’s decision, made before he took over, to feature controversial athlete Colin Kaepernick in its ads. His answer says a lot about the changing nature of business. It’s worth listening to. Catch it on Apple or Spotify.
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Amazon antitrust
The European Commission is reportedly hitting Amazon with formal antitrust charges over the way it uses data about the merchants using its platform, to compete against them. Amazon is also under antitrust investigation in the U.S. Financial Times
Pfizer vaccine
Pfizer and BioNTech's big announcement yesterday, that preliminary trial data shows their candidate COVID-19 vaccine is at least 90% effective, sent the markets soaring and pandemic stocks (Zoom, Peloton) plummeting. Optimistic exuberance, perhaps—final data is still needed, some unknowns remain, and production and logistics challenges stand in the way of a speedy rollout—but infectious diseases experts are genuinely excited. And, by the way, the U.S. government's "Operation Warp Speed" did not fund this effort, as some (Mike Pence, Ivanka Trump) have suggested; it was the German government, if anyone. Fortune
China vaccine
Less positive news when it comes to the vaccine being touted by China's Sinovac: Brazil's health regulator has suspended phase III trials because a participant suffered a "severe adverse event." Such is the way with trials—AstraZeneca and J&J also had to pause their trials at some point because of adverse reactions—but in this case, the vaccine has already been used to inoculate tends of thousands of people outside clinical trials, in China. Fortune
EU tariffs
Despite reports that the EU might hold off on levying WTO-approved tariffs on U.S. goods, in the context of Joe Biden's victory, the bloc went ahead and did it anyway. Appropriately given the fact that this is all about illegal airplane subsidies, the tariffs include 15% on Boeing aircraft (though who's buying planes right now?), while a 25% duty is being slapped on things like tractors, gin, video game consoles and shellfish. Seems the EU didn't want to hold off until Biden's trade team has truly bedded in, around a February-March timeframe. Washington Post
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
COVID-19 team
President-elect Biden has named his transition's COVID-19 advisory board, which is looking pretty diverse: 38% female, 69% minorities. The task force will "consult with state and local officials to determine the public health and economic steps necessary to get the virus under control, to deliver immediate relief to working families, to address ongoing racial and ethnic disparities, and to reopen our schools and businesses safely and effectively." Fortune
Brexit agreement
The U.K.'s House of Lords massively defeated Boris Johnson's government over clauses in a new bill that would have allowed the government to breach international law over the issue of the Irish border. Former Conservative Party leader and Brexiteer Michael Howard (who is a lord), said: "I want the independent, sovereign state that I voted for to be a country which holds its head up high in the world, that keeps its word, that upholds the rule of law and which honors its treaty obligations." Politico
A.I. Regulations
The lack of A.I. safety regulations is actually hindering innovation in the space, argues Will Hunt, a research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, in a piece for Fortune. He lays out two major issues: without standards and regulations, companies have to build their own safety cases for A.I. applications entirely from scratch; and rules are inevitable, so companies would rather build for compatibility with those rules now, as opposed to later down the road. Fortune
Cypriot Schmidt
Former Google boss Eric Schmidt is reportedly finalizing a plan to become a citizen of Cyprus, an EU country that essentially sells its citizenship to wealthy people—it's a popular scheme for Russian oligarchs, and so scandalous that it's being shut down. It is not clear why Schmidt has chosen to (in the words of Apex Capital Partners founder Nuri Katz) "diversify his citizenship" in this way. Recode
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-11-10--Value stocks in, growth stocks out—has the mighty 2020 bull market rally hit an inflection point?

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
Good morning, Bull Sheeters. To those of you who decided to dump tech stocks for cruise stocks late last week, complimenti!, as they say around here. The cigars and champagne are in the mail (once I can get management to approve the purchase).
Seriously, if any of you unwound your WFH pandemic portfolio on or around Election Day, drop me a line. I have a lot of questions for you.
The Monday rally in 2020’s misfit stocks—the likes of airlines, banks and energy—was fueled of course by Pfizer’s “game changer” news of a vaccine trial breakthrough. At one point, the Dow was up 1,600 points yesterday before closing the day 3% higher.
Alas, yesterday’s investor euphoria is petering out on Tuesday, with stocks and futures mostly flat. But there are some sectors that are still solidly in the green, including big banks and Big Oil.
Let’s check in on the action.
Markets update
Asia
The major Asia indexes are mostly higher in afternoon trading with the Hang Seng up 1.1% .
are mostly higher in afternoon trading with the up . Not all vaccines are the same, apparently. China’s frontrunner, Sinovac’s Coronavac , was halted in Brazil after what health officials there are describing as “a serious adverse event.”
, was halted in Brazil after what health officials there are describing as “a serious adverse event.” The D-word—deflation—is suddenly being murmured in China as consumer price inflation threatens to go negative. One big culprit: plunging pork prices as the country’s swine stock recovers from African swine fever. (I may have mentioned this before here on Bull Sheet: ASF, or pig ebola as it’s known, is nothing to mess with.)
Europe
The European bourses are mixed with London and Paris up, and tech-heavy Frankfurt down. That’s after Germany’s DAX closed up nearly 5% on Monday and France’s CAC 40 did even better, closing more than 7.5% higher.
are mixed with London and Paris up, and tech-heavy Frankfurt down. That’s after closed up nearly on Monday and did even better, closing more than higher. Here’s something we don’t see every day. Shares in Adidas are down 0.8% after the company reported a bottom-line beat thanks to strong growth in its home market, Europe.
after the company reported a thanks to strong in its home market, Europe. Norwegian Air was one of the few airline stocks to falter yesterday, plunging more than 11% on news Oslo won’t give them any more pandemic relief dough.
U.S.
Dow futures are in the green, while S&P and Nasdaq futures are down again in up-and-down trade this morning. That’s after the blue chip Dow scored its best one-day performance since June 5. I get into the big winners and losers below.
are in the green, while and are down again in up-and-down trade this morning. That’s after the blue chip Dow scored its since June 5. I get into the big winners and losers below. McDonald’s did not make it onto yesterday’s big gainers list (nor was it a big decliner, for that matter). But it did make news as the fast-food giant announced a new plant-based burger , the McPlant… Spoiler: it’s no “royale with cheese.”
, the McPlant… Spoiler: it’s no “royale with cheese.” Online trading platforms did not have a great day yesterday. Several “around the world broke down or were unavailable on Monday as individual investors tried to take advantage of heavy trading,” Bloomberg reports.
Elsewhere
Gold is rebounding modestly, trading around $1,875/ounce .
is rebounding modestly, trading around . The dollar is down.
is down. Crude is mixed after a stellar Monday when both Brent and WTI soared on the Pfizer news.
is mixed after a stellar Monday when both and soared on the Pfizer news. Bitcoin bulls are no fans, it seems, of promising vaccine trials. The cryptocurrency is down nearly 3% at $14,880.
***
The winners and losers, vaccine edition
Investors knew V-day would come. Eventually.
Kudos to those of you who wagered it would land yesterday, the first trading day after a new president is announced. (If you have an angry conspiracy theory about the timing, don’t send them to me… unless they’re really preposterous. You can send me those.)
All kidding aside, we shouldn’t be that surprised by what we saw yesterday. The vaccine trade was something we discussed in this space a few times. A refresher: once there’s legit progress on a vaccine, it’s time to recalibrate (or at least rethink) your long positions, the thinking goes. In are the beaten-down value stocks, the Wall Street pros say; out are inflated growth stocks.
And, on cue, the Europe Stoxx 600 Banks index is up more than 3% in early morning trade again this morning. That makes sense. The banks, a bellwether for the larger economy, have posted decent results this quarter only to get punished by investors. It’s hard to make a similar analysis about the cruise and casino stocks, but there they are topping the list (or near the top) of Monday’s big gainers.
And the losers? They include stay-at-home stocks like Zoom Video, plus DIY retailers such as Lowe’s, plus Clorox and Biogen.
But does this really mean it’s time to ditch the likes of big cap tech and health care stocks? Not so fast, analysts are saying.
Here’s why: Even if these vaccines prove effective—a sizable if—it could take several months to get meaningful distribution. And, more immediately, much of the world faces a deadly second wave that’s getting worse by the day. As such, world leaders are cautioning this is no time to let down our guard.
Alas, the 2020 bull market has been one of FOMO-led rallies. As I glance again at the markets, investors continue to give a thumbs-down to tech and pile into previously unloved value stocks.
***
Postscript
Here’s a touching story from the North of Italy, once again a region rocked by COVID.
81-year-old Stefano Bozzini’s wife has coronavirus. And, of course, he cannot visit her while she’s hospitalized. And so he props his chair in the courtyard outside her window and serenades her, playing his fisarmonica.
The video is really sweet.
***
Have a nice day, everyone. I’ll see you here tomorrow.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
As always, you can write to bullsheet@fortune.com or reply to this email with suggestions and feedback.
Today's reads
Pfizer pfunding. It's inevitable that politicians will want to take credit for promising vaccine breakthroughs. On cue, such self-congratulations came from the White House yesterday after the Pfizer news broke. There's only one problem with such claims: crucial funding came from Berlin, not Washington.
You think your Monday was bad? Zoom founder Eric Yuan saw his personal wealth fall by a cool $5 billion yesterday following the company's stock plunge, according to Bloomberg.
Some of these stories require a subscription to access. There is a discount offer for our loyal readers if you use this link to sign up. Thank you for supporting our journalism.
Market candy
25
In late October, when Election Day jitters were high, J.P. Morgan shared with investors their list of 25 stocks to follow—or even dive into—in the event of a big vaccine breakthrough. Fortune's Lee Clifford breaks down here the aptly named list of "COVID-19 Vaccine Tactical Short Candidates."


fortune--2020-11-10--Nike CEO John Donahoe went on a vision quest. Here’s what he learned

A few years before becoming Nike’s CEO, John Donahoe took a long and welcome sabbatical from board meetings and conference calls. He had worked nonstop for three decades at consulting firm Bain and then at eBay, serving as CEO at both companies during some of that period, and wanted to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.
Donahoe’s path to personal enlightenment? A yearlong “wisdom tour” during which he met with 50 people—many of them on the north side of 65—who shared their ideas about how to stay vital despite the inevitability of Father Time (Donahoe was then 55).
“It was one of the most rejuvenating years of my life,” Donahoe said on Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast.
The lessons Donahoe learned were many. But they can be boiled down into a few nuggets that, while the frequent fodder of self-help books, are easy to forget.
“No. 1, attitude’s everything,” Donahoe said. “As we get older, we get gray hair or hair falls out, our knees hurt or our backs hurt—you sort of feel the signs of physical aging. I feel all of that. Yes, we all do. But our brains don’t necessarily get older.”
Therefore, Donahoe said, quoting one of his wisdom-tour mentors, business management author Jim Collins: “Your fifties and your sixties and, God willing, your seventies should be the most creative and productive years of your life. Because you had the wisdom of your experience. And you had the freedom to apply that wisdom where you want to do it, and you can do it out of service and not out of ego.”
Another of Donahoe’s key learnings was to spend at least some time with younger people to soak up their vitality. Many of the 50 people he talked to did so, either through coaching or volunteering, and felt far better off for it.
“Every time I hang out at the golf club with guys my own age, all we do is bitch about how bad our golf swings are and brag about what kind of red wine we drank the night before,” Donahoe said, quoting another mentor. “That makes me old. I like being around young people.”
And as a parting thought, here’s one more of Donahoe’s North Stars: “Find things in your life for which you have accountability and there’s consequence. It doesn’t have to be one big thing, but find meaningful things in your life.”


fortune--2020-11-10--Many workers who lost their jobs due to COVID need help finding health coverage

Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
Michelina Moen lost her job and health insurance in April. Only weeks earlier she had begun to feel ill and not her usual energetic self—in what she describes as a textbook case of “really bad timing.”
The Orlando, Fla., resident sought treatment in May. After a series of tests, doctors told Moen she had a rare kidney condition that would require months of treatment.
“Losing the coverage ended up being worse than losing the job,” said Moen, 36, a dancer who had worked for both Walt Disney World and Universal Studios. “It was very stressful.”
Moen rushed to find replacement coverage. With help from a social service agency, she enrolled in a plan through healthcare.gov, the federal Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace. Because she and her husband, Brett, were not working—he had been laid off by Disney, too—they qualified for federal subsidies, so the coverage cost her just $35 a month. Most of her medical expenses, which involve traveling frequently to Jacksonville for specialty treatment, are covered.
Moen’s husband recently found a job, however, and the increase in the couple’s income likely means her subsidy will fall and she’ll have to pay more for health insurance. Moen said she’ll evaluate her options and may switch plans during this year’s ACA open enrollment period, which began Nov. 1 and ends Dec. 15 for coverage starting Jan. 1.
“A priority is to continue seeing my medical team in Jacksonville,” Moen said.
Moen is one of millions of Americans who have been dropped from their jobs and their employer-provided health insurance since March, when the coronavirus first ravaged the economy. Although no official tally exists, studies indicate that at least 10 million workers lost their insurance but that about two-thirds of them found alternative coverage—through a new job, Medicaid, a spouse’s or parent’s plan, or the ACA marketplaces.
That leaves at least 3 million people without coverage, the most added in a single year since accurate record-keeping began in 1968. And experts are worried that, as the virus continues to play havoc with the economy, new rounds of business closings and layoffs could add to that number.
Navigators want more resources
The unprecedented situation has health insurance counselors (called navigators), ACA marketplace staff members and insurers scrambling to assist a possible surge of people looking for health insurance during open enrollment.
For the 36 states that rely on the federal ACA enrollment platform—healthcare.gov—the Trump administration awarded grants totaling $10 million for marketing and outreach this year, the same level as in 2019. In 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, navigator grants totaled $63 million.
Many navigator organizations say they don’t have the resources from the federal government to do the job as they would like.
“I’m trying not to panic,” said Jodi Ray, executive director of Florida Covering Kids & Families. “We’ve seen substantially more people needing coverage and help in recent months compared to last year, and more are new to being uninsured.”
Ray said her team is booked with appointments well into November. But she bemoans the fact that she has a third of the counselors she had a few years ago—50, compared with 150—and only a tiny ad budget.
Like Ray, Jeremy Smith, program director at First Choice Services in Charleston, W.V., said his team is expecting “tens of thousands more people” needing help compared with last year—but no bigger budget to serve them. First Choice provides telephone-based enrollment assistance in West Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Montana with a federal grant of $100,000 per state.
“We are talking to a lot more people who have had job-based coverage for years,” Smith said. “This is the first time they are having to find insurance elsewhere. They don’t know what to do or who to trust.”
In Wisconsin, the governor shifted $1 million into health insurance outreach, in part to make up for a lack of federal funds, said Allison Espeseth, managing director at Covering Wisconsin, the state’s navigator agency. She said the money will go to radio and TV spots, billboards, bus ads and small grants to community organizations.
“A lot of people who lost jobs and insurance didn’t know they could enroll before open enrollment, so we are hoping to see them now,” Espeseth said.
Toula Barber, 60, is happy to be among those who got clear and useful help. “I’m not that savvy with computers and figuring all this stuff out,” said Barber, who lives in Manchester, N.H.. After she lost her job as a waitress in August, Barber’s health insurance lapsed at the end of September. A First Choice Services navigator helped her find a plan with coverage that started Oct. 1. She pays $200 a month after subsidies.
Because that plan has a $6,000 deductible, however, Barber said she would look for something better during open enrollment, in consultation with the same navigator.
An analysis published last summer found evidence of a shortage of enrollment assistance. It also pointed out that people who turned to insurance brokers rather than independent navigators for help sometimes were presented with the option of plans (such as short-term policies or cancer-only policies) that don’t meet ACA standards.
“The bottom line was that nearly 5 million people who sought help during the last open enrollment could not find it,” said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at KFF and one of the authors of the study. “I’m concerned that people will face barriers to finding help this year, too.”
Some states are pushing harder
In contrast to the states that use the federal website, healthcare.gov, many of the 15 states that run their own ACA marketplaces are committing more resources to outreach and marketing this year to meet the higher demand.
“We market aggressively,” said Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, that state’s marketplace. “We want everyone who needs coverage to get it.” Of Covered California’s $440 million budget this year, Lee said $140 million will go for marketing and outreach. In addition, California is inserting information about the marketplace and subsidized coverage in all unemployment checks.
Just short of 300,000 Californians have enrolled since the pandemic began, and about half did so because they lost employment-based coverage, said Lee.
At the same time, however, about 1 in 4 Covered California enrollees dropped out this year, higher than the normal turnover as some newly qualified for Medicaid and an unknown number could no longer afford the premiums. Still, enrollment was at an all-time high of 1.5 million as of June.
In New York, state officials and private groups have been helping people enroll in Medicaid, marketplace plans or other state-supported programs.
“We’ve been super busy since April,” said Elizabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York, an independent advocacy group for low-income residents. “Our governor prioritized this, so it’s going well.”
One challenge Benjamin noted: “Our clients keep asking whether the ACA will still be around next year. We reassure them it will.”
Madeline McGrath, 27, sought insurance help from the service society in May after her coverage through the Peace Corps expired. The corps laid off all its overseas staff in March. Madeline was in Moldova. She returned home to Chazy, New York. She qualified for Medicaid, and just in the nick of time: A few weeks earlier, she had been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a chronic digestive disorder.
“I’ll stick with Medicaid since my co-payments are very low,” said McGrath, who is pursuing a graduate degree.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.


fortune--2020-11-10--Eli Lilly is granted emergency approval for COVID-19 antibody drug by the FDA

Eli Lilly & Co.’s antibody therapy was granted an emergency-use authorization by U.S. drug regulators for treating Covid-19, widening access to a treatment that early data suggest is effective in keeping people infected with the coronavirus out of the hospital.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized the experimental treatment, called bamlanivimab, for use against mild-to-moderate Covid-19 in adults, including those who are 65 and older, and pediatric patients, the agency said in a statement.
Shares of Indianapolis-based Lilly gained as much as 5.2% in late trading on Monday. Through the close, the stock had advanced 8.3% so far this year.
The clearance gives doctors an option for tackling the virus in high-risk patients before they’re sick enough to require hospitalization. Other treatments that received the regulatory go-ahead, such as convalescent plasma, a component collected from the blood of recovered Covid patients containing immune factors, and Gilead Sciences Inc.’s antiviral remdesivir, are intended for use in severely ill Covid-19 patients.
The U.S. government will pay Lilly $375 million for 300,000 vials of the antibody treatment. The initial agreement is for delivery over the first two months following a regulatory green light. The U.S. also has the option to purchase an additional 650,000 vials through next June for as much as $812.5 million.
Now begins an even greater challenge: Keeping pace with demand.
“We’re in the middle of this surge in cases, so we have to continue to try to squeeze out as much supply as we can,” Chief Executive Officer David Ricks said in an interview. “We’re loading the trucks right now, so that they can move as fast as they can. We’ve made 88,000 doses that are being loaded tonight, and we about that much inside of a week shipping out to centers across the country.”
The drugmaker has a manufacturing partnership with Amgen Inc., among others, and plans to pursue more collaboration pacts in order to increase supply, Ricks said.
“It still might not be enough,” he said.
Bridge to Vaccine
Experimental antibody treatments could become a powerful component of the arsenal that doctors use to treat the coronavirus. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious-disease official, has referred to antibody-based medicines as a bridge to a vaccine. The class of treatments was thrust into the spotlight when President Donald Trump received an antibody cocktail made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. after becoming infected with Covid-19.
The therapies, which rely on lab-made proteins that mimic the immune system’s ability to fight off the virus, also are being studied as short-term treatments that could be given to people such as nursing-home residents or staff who may have been exposed during a local outbreak to prevent them from getting sick.
Lilly approached the FDA for authorization of the single-antibody treatment it’s developing with Canadian biotech AbCellera Biologics Inc. last month. Meanwhile, U.S. regulators have yet to decide whether Regeneron’s antibody cocktail will get an emergency-use green light.
Lilly and closely held AbCellera’s monotherapy antibody treatment reduced the rate at which symptomatic patients were hospitalized or sent to emergency rooms compared with a placebo, according to interim study results released by the company in September. Trial results published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed the therapy reduced patients’ viral load at the middle of the three doses studied.
Complex Infusions
The U.S. will be responsible for allocating the therapy, Lilly said in a statement, and will make weekly decisions on where to send the product proportional to the confirmed number of cases in each state and territory over the previous seven days, based on data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The antibody therapy should be administered “as soon as possible after a positive Covid-19 test and within 10 days of symptom onset,” according to the company. It will begin shipping the antibody therapy immediately to AmerisourceBergen Corp., which will distribute it as directed by the U.S. government.
Americans will have no out-of-pocket costs for the medicine, the company said, while acknowledging that health-care facilities may charge a fee for the product’s intravenous administration.
The arrival of monoclonal antibody therapies is welcome, but administering the drugs creates hurdles for hospitals and health systems, said Nancy Foster, vice president for quality and patient safety policy at the American Hospital Association.
The therapies require infusions for patients, delivered in the same way as chemotherapy medicines, but health systems can’t use the same facilities for Covid-positive patients and cancer patients with weakened immune systems, she said in an interview Monday before news of Lilly’s authorization.
Hospitals may have to find spaces “similar to but separate from” existing infusion centers, and dedicate staff and protective gear, she said. “You have to think through, how are we going to get the infusion therapy and patient and the caregiver all together in the same room,” she said.
Terminated Trial
Infectious disease experts say antibody drugs are most likely to be useful if they are given early on in the course of infection. That idea was bolstered on Oct. 26, when a government-sponsored trial of the Lilly antibody in hospitalized patients—who tend to be sicker—was terminated due to lack of efficacy.
The FDA said Monday that bamlanivimab is not authorized for patients who are hospitalized due to Covid-19 or require oxygen therapy after contracting the disease. It said the broader class of monoclonal antibodies may be associated with worse clinical outcomes when administered to hospitalized Covid-19 patients in need of high flow oxygen or mechanical ventilation.
Lilly is also studying a cocktail of two antibodies. It expects to approach regulators for authorization in November and seek full approval in the second quarter of 2021. Early results from a trial showed the combination reduced virus levels in patients with mild to moderate Covid-19 and cut the rate of hospitalizations and emergency room visits.
Other companies testing antibody treatments include Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., AstraZeneca Plc and GlaxoSmithKline Plc and its partner Vir Biotechnology Inc.
–With assistance from Angelica LaVito and Robert Langreth.


fortune--2020-11-10--China approved early distribution of a COVID vaccine to tens of thousands—Now there are safety conce

China approved early distribution of a COVID vaccine to tens of thousands—Now there are safety concerns

On the same day that Pfizer and BioNTech released blockbuster results from the Phase III trial of their COVID-19 vaccine, Brazil threw a wrench into the plans of one of China’s most promising coronavirus vaccine candidates.
Brazilian health regulator Anvisa announced on Monday that it had suspended the Phase III clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine made by Sinovac, a Chinese pharmaceutical company. Anvisa said it had discovered that a participant in Sinovac’s trial had experienced a “severe adverse event” and that Sinovac’s trial would be delayed as it investigated the case. Anvisa did not provide additional details about the patient and did not explain why it announced the suspension more than a week after it became aware of the problem.
A spokesman for Sinovac told Fortune that after communicating with the Butantan Institute, its partner in Brazil, Sinovac does not believe the “serious adverse event” was related to its vaccine. “We are confident in the safety of the vaccine,” the spokesman said.
On Monday night, Dimas Covas, the director of the Butantan Institute, suggested that he disagreed with the government’s decision to suspend the trials. He said that a volunteer in the trials had died but not because of Sinovac’s vaccine.
“We found this Anvisa decision strange, because it is unrelated to the vaccine,” Covas told a Brazilian news channel.
The Monday announcement by Anvisa marks the first time a Chinese vaccine maker has been forced to delay the trial of a COVID-19 vaccine. Other COVID-19 vaccine makers have had to pause their Phase III trials because of unexplained health issues among participants. British pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca and U.S. drug giant Johnson & Johnson experienced trial delays, but both companies have since resumed the tests.
But unlike AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, Sinovac has already inoculated tens of thousands of people outside of clinical trials through China’s controversial emergency use program. Sinovac’s trial delay raises the prospect that China has been inoculating its citizens with a potentially unsafe vaccine and showcases the dangers of attempting to bulldoze traditional vaccine approval processes.
Process perils
Chinese vaccine makers either lead, or are involved in, five of the 11 vaccine efforts that have reached Phase III trials. Combined, they’re testing their candidates in hundreds of thousands of volunteers in over a dozen countries around the world.
Phase III trials are designed to evaluate a vaccine’s effectiveness and safety on a large scale. Each trial requires tens of thousands of volunteers so there’s a better likelihood of turning up rare side effects.
But beyond standard vaccine testing, at least three Chinese vaccine makers are involved in China’s emergency use vaccine program, which has allowed participating vaccine makers to inoculate hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens—if not more—outside the bounds of clinical trials and before the candidates are proven safe and effective.
China’s government has not disclosed how many COVID-19 vaccine doses it has distributed through the emergency use program, but vaccine makers and local governments have released some limited data. State-owned vaccine maker Sinopharm reportedly distributed over 480,000 doses of its candidate in China as of mid-October; that total may include doses that were part of a clinical trial. China’s eastern Zhejiang province, meanwhile, also said in October that it had administered 743,000 flu and coronavirus shots in 2020 without providing further details on how many of the shots were for COVID-19 or which COVID-19 vaccine candidate it used.
In August, China allowed Sinovac to distribute the CoronaVac candidate to frontline medical workers, government employees, and other essential workers in China through the emergency use program.
By September, the company confirmed that it had inoculated tens of thousands of people through the program, including 3,000 company employees, plus their families.
News reports indicate that Sinovac may already be widely distributing its vaccine across China. In October, Jiaxing, a city in eastern China, announced that it was selling the Sinovac vaccine to government workers and high-risk residents for roughly $60.
If the Brazil investigation reveals that Sinovac’s vaccine is potentially unsafe, the tens of thousands of people who have received the vaccine may have been put at unnecessary risk. Such risks are why scientists have been skeptical of China’s emergency use program for COVID-19 vaccines from the start.
“Claims of having a vaccine ready to distribute before you do testing, I think, is problematic, at best,” Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S.’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in July.
Brazil’s Butantan Institute, a scientific research center that is partnering with Sinovac on the vaccine trials, said it will hold a press conference about the trial suspension on Tuesday morning in Brazil.
Battles in Brazil
Even before the trial pause, Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine candidate had become a flashpoint in Brazil.
The Butantan Institute and Sinovac started enrolling 9,000 Brazilian volunteers in Phase III trials in July. In late September, Brazil’s São Paulo state purchased 46 million doses of CoronaVac for $90 million and asked Brazilian health authorities to register the candidate for potential distribution.
In October, João Doria, governor of São Paulo, said CoronaVac was the “safest” and “most promising” of all the vaccine candidates tested in the country. (Brazil has also hosted Phase III trials for Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine candidate.)
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro took issue with Doria’s remarks and said Brazil would not purchase Sinovac’s or any other Chinese vaccine because of the country of “origin.” Even so, later in October, Brazilian authorities approved the import of 6 million doses of Sinovac’s vaccine candidate.
Before news of Sinovac’s trial delay, Doria announced on Monday that São Paulo is building a facility to produce 100 million doses of Sinovac’s candidate.


fortune--2020-11-10--Germany funded the development of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine—not U.S.’s Operation Warp Speed

It’s said that success has many authors, and the encouraging data from Pfizer Inc.’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine had plenty of people in Washington lining up to take credit.
Vice President Mike Pence was among Trump administration officials saying support from the government’s Operation Warp Speed program helped accelerate the development of the vaccine, which was found to be more than 90% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infections in an interim analysis.
The truth is that Pfizer didn’t receive any funding from Operation Warp Speed for the development, clinical trial and manufacturing of the vaccine. Rather, its partner, BioNTech SE, has received money — from the German government.
HUGE NEWS: Thanks to the public-private partnership forged by President @realDonaldTrump, @pfizer announced its Coronavirus Vaccine trial is EFFECTIVE, preventing infection in 90% of its volunteers. — Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) November 9, 2020
BioNTech is credited for contributing the messenger RNA technology, which prompts the body to make a key protein from the virus, creating an immune response. The biotechnology company already had a history of working with Pfizer on influenza vaccines, and in March they clinched a deal to co-develop a shot to prevent against COVID-19 at research sites both in the U.S. and Germany. The two companies began human testing of the vaccine in April, before the existence of Operation Warp Speed was revealed publicly.
Berlin gave the German company $445 million in an agreement in September to help accelerate the vaccine by building out manufacturing and development capacity in its home market.
Subscribe to The Capsule , a weekly brief monitoring advances in health care and biopharma, delivered free to your inbox.
What the U.S. did, meanwhile, was commit to buying hundreds of millions of vaccines in advance to ensure Americans were among the first in line if it clinches an emergency-use authorization or approval from the FDA. The Trump administration agreed in July to pay almost $2 billion for 100 million doses, with an option to acquire as many as 500 million more, once that clearance comes.
As part of that agreement, the U.S. gets to decide who gets the vaccine first, and will work with the company on logistical support. While most vaccine front-runners that have been tapped by Warp Speed will distribute their doses through a government partnership with McKesson Corp., Pfizer is handling its own delivery of its products. The company has designed reusable containers that can keep the doses at ultracold temperatures, and is organizing trucks and flights to move them.
Operation Warp Speed is credited with speeding along several other vaccine programs, including one from Moderna Inc.that uses similar technology to Pfizer’s and could produce trial data later this month. The Trump administration’s rapid-vaccine operation, led by the Health and Human Services Department, the Defense Department, and other agencies, could well prove to be the reason many Americans get a vaccine in 2021, even if it’s not made by Pfizer.
Some Republicans, including Donald Trump Jr. and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, questioned the timing of Pfizer’s release of its positive data on Monday, almost a week after the presidential election — with the implication that the information could’ve changed the outcome and tipped the scales toward President Donald Trump, who lost to former Vice President Joe Biden.
Pfizer said on Oct. 27, a week before Election Day, that it hadn’t met the threshold for positive cases that would’ve allowed it to report the data. After that, it revised its trial protocols to raise that threshold higher, after consulting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on what would be acceptable to gain approval. The FDA has been under pressure from scientists to set tough standards for a vaccine so that Americans will feel it has been rigorously vetted and is safe to use.
If Pfizer hadn’t raised its threshold in response to the FDA’s recommendations, it’s possible it could’ve hit the lower bar of 32 positive cases before the Nov. 3 election. But it’s unclear when the trial hit that number. The company didn’t find out it had surpassed the new, revised threshold of 62 positive cases until Sunday.
All along, Pfizer’s top executives have attempted to quell notions that it has been influenced by political players.
Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla has repeatedly said that the drug giant has avoided taking taxpayer dollars for research and development purposes.
“I wanted to liberate our scientists from any bureaucracy,” Bourla said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sept. 16. “When you get money from someone, that always comes with strings. They want to see how we are growing to progress, what types of moves you are going to do. They want reports. I didn’t want to have any of that.”
“Basically I gave them an open checkbook so that they can worry only about scientific challenges, not anything else. And also, I wanted to keep Pfizer out of politics, by the way,” Bourla added.


fortune--2020-11-11--What conclusions can we draw about the Hispanic vote in 2020?

The map of battleground states was notably different this year. In particular, two reliable Republican strongholds, Texas and Arizona, were not automatically shaded red. While ultimately Texas went for Trump, Arizona went blue for the first time in 24 years.
An essential part of this story was Hispanic voters. Although they are one of the fastest growing ethno-racial groups, Hispanics have had persistently low levels of voter turnout. Often overlooked by both political parties and susceptible to the voter suppression efforts that have increasingly become a part of the political landscape, little more than half of eligible Hispanic voters usually participate in presidential elections.
This changed in 2020. While the numbers are still coming in, all indicators point to a dramatic increase in their participation. This is a testament to concerted grass-roots organizing efforts, in which Latinas often play an important role. Also notable is the role of the Hispanic vote in Nevada, which appears to be following in the footsteps of Colorado in a shift from purple to blue.
While people are noting the significance of Hispanic voters in building support for Democrats in the Southwest, much attention has focused on Florida and the role that some Hispanic voters may have played there in securing a Trump victory. Here we see the need to treat Hispanic voters not as a monolith, but as a heterogeneous group with distinct political histories and different political preferences both across and within these communities.
Data from the American Election Eve Poll, conducted by Latino Decisions, is instructive. According to the survey, while Mexican-Americans, the largest Hispanic group in the Southwest and across the nation, strongly supported Biden (74%) over Trump (23%), Cuban-Americans in Florida and beyond showed a preference for Trump (52%) over Biden (45%). Other Hispanic groups, such as Puerto Ricans, Central Americans, and South Americans, all tended to support Biden, but to varying degrees.
Digging in a little deeper, there are other important considerations to make regarding the level and direction of support within the various Hispanic communities. First, there was a gender gap, with 73% of Latinas reporting support for Biden versus 67% of Latinos. This gender gap varied from state to state, with the biggest gap in Texas, where 75% of Latinas reported voting for Biden versus 59% of Latinos.
There is also an age gap. In the aggregate, older Hispanics reported stronger support for Biden, but in Florida, 64% of Hispanics between 18 and 39 supported Biden versus 54% of those 40 and above.
It’s become clear that political parties ignoring or making uninformed assumptions about Hispanic voters do so at their peril. In all 50 states, Hispanic voters have come to make up increasingly larger shares of the electorate. According to the Pew Research Center, in battleground states, Hispanics grew more than any other racial or ethnic group as a share of eligible voters between 2000 and 2018.
While party outreach has improved somewhat in recent years, it still falls short. Hispanic communities are underrepresented both in regard to their numbers in office and attention to their needs. In the past year, Hispanics have been hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, both by the virus itself and its economic ramifications. Hospitalization rates for Hispanics are 4.5 times the rate among whites, and the economic downturn has hit Hispanic workers particularly hard, with men and especially women experiencing higher levels of unemployment than does the general population.
More concerted efforts to facilitate and connect with Hispanic leadership and engaging in more meaningful outreach to local communities could go a long way toward mobilizing these voters. What happened in the Southwest and elsewhere shows that this is possible.
Celeste Montoya is an associate professor of political science and women and gender studies, and director of the Miramontes Arts & Sciences Program, at the University of Colorado Boulder.


fortune--2020-11-10--When Apple’s Big Sur software update will arrive

Apple plans to release Big Sur, its new operating system for laptops and desktops, on Nov. 12, the company said during a virtual product event on Tuesday.
The new MacOS software represents a big shift for Apple. The version, 11, is the first whole number software upgrade since Cheetah, version 10, debuted in 2001; it replaces last year’s Catalina, or version 10.15.
Big Sur takes design cues from Apple’s iPhone software, the latest version of which is iOS 14. Application icons, formerly circular, display as rounded squares. The software features free-floating notifications widgets and a “command center” that provides quick access to settings, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, volume, display brightness, and “do not disturb” toggles.
The similarities with iOS are intentional; Apple is more tightly integrating the hardware and software across its devices. Big Sur is designed to work in tandem with Apple’s new custom-designed ARM processors, called M1, which Apple says are faster than earlier Intel-designed computer chips.
Big Sur–equipped MacBooks and Macs will be able to run iPhone and iPad apps. They will feature a speedier ad-tracker-limiting Safari web browser and slicker graphics-rendering, which Craig Federighi, Apple’s software engineering leader, describes as “buttery smooth.”
While Apple’s latest Macs and MacBooks will have the best performance, models dating back to 2013 will also be compatible with Big Sur, the company said.


fortune--2020-11-10--Pete Buttigieg: Americans’ trust in the presidency can and will be rebuilt

The first news event I can remember was the space shuttle Challenger exploding after launch in 1986, killing the seven astronauts on board, including a schoolteacher, Christa McAuliffe. At 4, I more or less understood what had happened, but not the context. Our country had never lost an astronaut in flight across six Moon landings and nearly two dozen shuttle missions, and because McAuliffe was on board, millions of schoolchildren watched the disaster live in their classrooms. Most significantly, I didn’t grasp what a later investigation would reveal: that NASA had launched the shuttle under unacceptably risky weather conditions. The tragedy was preventable.
President Ronald Reagan wrote in his diary, “There is no way to describe our shock and horror.” That night, with the help of his speechwriters, he tried. He had planned to give his State of the Union address that evening, but instead addressed the nation about the tragedy from his Oval Office desk. Nothing is less welcome for a national leader than delivering bad news; but in doing so, Reagan actually cemented his role, in a memorable and poetic remembrance of the astronauts.
One might have expected a failure of this magnitude to have undermined trust in the space program, in the country, and in the President. But soon after his speech, polls recorded the highest job approval rating of Reagan’s entire presidency. The disaster was a source of anguish and humiliation for the country, but by acknowledging the failure directly, Reagan demonstrated a measure of transparency that was ultimately reassuring. Embodying our national vulnerability, he generated a level of national goodwill.
Too often, we think of trust as the product of infallible consistency. But trust is just as often about how we handle failure, and in the wake of failure people can be astonishingly forgiving. A year after the Challenger disaster, Reagan would address the nation concerning the Iran-Contra affair, which led to the indictment of several high-ranking administration officials. (The spectacle of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North misleading Congress would deal a blow to the credibility of the uniform of an order not seen since Vietnam.) Many doubt to this day that America got a full and honest account of the President’s knowledge and involvement in the plot to trade arms for hostages. But even here, Reagan seemed to benefit from the limited extent to which he did step forward and own what had happened. Little about this episode was to his credit, but he earned a measure of appreciation and even forgiveness from Americans not because of the occasional, fuzzy denials but because he finally said he was “the one who must answer to the American people for this behavior.”
Presidents after the Trump era will need to return to the basics when it comes to trust and credibility. By 2020, each of the most important means available to the White House for building trust—transparency, responsibility, vulnerability, truth-telling, predictability, reciprocity—had been not just abandoned but torched. Trump sought neither the trustworthiness that comes from consistently telling the truth, nor the credibility that comes from admitting mistakes.
Asked about the removal, on his watch, of the pandemic preparedness unit of the National Security Council, Trump uttered the words that might best sum up his presidency: “No, I don’t take responsibility at all.”
Pete Buttigieg is the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., and a former Democratic candidate for President.
Excerpted from Trust: America’s Best Chance by Pete Buttigieg. Copyright (c) 2020 by PB Projects, Inc. Used with permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.


fortune--2020-11-10--Apple makes a big change to its new Mac computers. Here’s what you need to know

Apple on Tuesday debuted three new computers that don’t look much different on the outside from the devices it’s been selling for years. But on the inside, the new computers are powered by a chip of Apple’s own design, ending a 14-year reliance on Intel for the brains of its Macintosh lineup.
The new chip, dubbed the M1, is similar to the processors in iPhones and iPads that Apple has designed itself for the past decade that rely on basic designs from ARM and manufacturing by Taiwan Semiconductor. Apple introduced two laptops, updated versions of the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro, plus a desktop, an update of the Mac Mini, all using the M1 chip.
The processors in the new computers are about three times faster than the previous models running Intel chips with six times faster graphics performance, Apple said. The two new laptops also get about 50% to 100% longer battery life than Intel models, depending on the applications used.
Judging those performance claims will take time. Software must be rewritten to run natively on the new Macs or operate via a slower translated mode. Apple said some popular programs, like Adobe’s Lightroom photography program, would be available soon, but other apps, like Adobe Photoshop, would not be ready until next year.
The new MacBook Air starts at the same price as the prior version of $999. The new MacBook Pro starts at $1,299, also the same as the prior version. And the new Mac Mini starts at $699, $100 less than the previous one. The models are available for preorder on Tuesday and will be delivered next week.
Shares of Apple, which had already risen about 60% this year, were relatively unchanged after the announcement. Shares of Intel, which have previously lost 23%, were also flat.
Apple has used Intel chips to power its Mac line of laptop and desktop computers since 2006. But Intel’s manufacturing has stumbled for the past several years, delaying the development of faster chips and causing periodic shortages. Intel CEO Bob Swan is trying to get the chipmaker back on track by changing leadership and dumping underperforming businesses, but he has little to show for his efforts so far.
For its part, Intel has maintained that its chips have the advantage. Intel-based PCs “provide global customers the best experience in the areas they value most, as well as the most open platform for developers, both today and into the future,” the company said in a statement.
“Apple’s moves will help validate ARM-based chips for personal computing and even in the data center,” Wayne Lam, senior director of research at CCS Insight, noted after the announcement. “This, rather than the loss of the Mac business, is the longer-term concern for Intel.”
The three models updated on Tuesday represented the low end of Apple’s Mac computers, both in performance and price. Apple said it would transition its more powerful and expensive models, like the $5,000 Mac Pro, to its own chips over the next few years.
Tuesday’s Apple announcement wasn’t much of a surprise. In June, the company had promised to announce by year-end new Macintosh computers powered by its own processor designs. During Apple’s quarterly call with analysts last month, CEO Tim Cook said the company was “in the midst of our most prolific product introduction period ever,” hinting that more big announcements were to come.
The computer announcement was Apple’s third virtual event of the fall. Last month it debuted new iPhones and a new smart speaker. And in September the company unveiled a new iPad and the Apple Watch Series 6.


fortune--2020-11-10--From mentorship to friendship to love: What I learned from three investing giants

“No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
—Rudyard Kipling
If you are fortunate, you’ll seek and find great people in your life. Sometimes they find you. I’m one of those who’s been blessed to have found such people, in the form of three notable, incredibly successful figures who have helped me build my own private equity career. Together, they invested their money, expertise, and reputations into relationships with a young man whom they really had no reason to give the time of day. And thanks to them, I can do the same today.
During these challenging times of racial strife and political division I am often asked, by genuine, well-meaning people, “What can I do?” The truth is that each of us can lead by helping and serving others. The person who approaches us for help or advice might not have all the polish, might not have gone to the best schools, or might not belong to the finest country club. But if you think you see talent in people, proactively extend a hand to help, as they might not be secure enough to approach you or recognize they should. By looking beyond the categories and approaching people as people, each of us can make an extraordinary difference in the lives of others.
Thirty years ago, I was an emergency room doctor in Dallas. I was very successful in my chosen field; I had earned respect and was becoming a pillar in the community. I was pleased with my life and the trajectory of where it was taking me.
Through my political involvement, I got a call one day in the emergency room from Don Williams, CEO of the real estate developer Trammell Crow, whom I didn’t know. Williams told me that he was going to the same meeting I was going to in Austin—and since we both lived in Dallas, why didn’t we just go together? I said, “Sure, what Southwest Airlines flight do you want to take?” He politely demurred and said: No, he had his own jet, and I could just fly with him.
That first private jet ride transformed my idea of the possibilities of working in business and, ultimately, private equity. I recognized that no matter how successful I was at practicing medicine, I couldn’t have the impact in that profession that I could in business. Oftentimes I was stitching people up and sending them back into the same challenging environments. With more resources, I could actually help change those environments.
I had never considered a career in business. Growing up, all I knew was doctor, lawyer, teacher, or preacher. But my encounter with Williams opened my eyes, and I became obsessed with learning as much as I could.
As I read about the investment world, I kept coming across one prominent name: Richard Rainwater. This was the early 1990s, and Richard had cut his teeth working for the Bass family, creating wealth and a legend for himself by identifying great talent and making brilliant deals. I saw Rainwater one day at a big function in Dallas. I went up to him and said, “I want to be like you when I grow up, Mr. Rainwater.” He said, “Come by and see me.” Fueled by that invitation and my own persistence, I made my way to Fort Worth. Richard opened up the investment world to me, introducing me to prominent figures including Ken Hersh of the energy-focused private equity firm NGP, who showed me my first business plan; to his own accomplished wife, businesswoman Darla Moore; to John Goff of Crescent Real Estate Equities; and to Alan Frazier of Frazier Healthcare Partners, to name a few.
Introduced to a brave new world
It was a brave new world for me. And I was being introduced to extraordinary people by someone who gave me credibility, but also confidence that I could succeed in this new realm. Richard taught me to think big, because a big deal is as much work as a small deal and easier to manage. And as I came to understand through Richard, relationships are an important foundation of credibility and success. Richard remained a mentor and friend until his untimely death in 2015 from a neurological disease.
The author (right) with investor Richard Rainwater in 2015. (Photo courtesy of Kneeland Youngblood)
Given that I was married with six kids, all in private schools, I knew I couldn’t afford to take a traditional route to finance by quitting medicine, getting an MBA, and working on Wall Street. And I hardly fit the white, Ivy League model that Wall Street was used to nurturing. Therefore, I looked for the largest pool of money in my home state, the Teacher Retirement System of Texas (currently $170 billion) and maneuvered to be appointed to the board. (I was appointed by Gov. Ann Richards and confirmed by then-Gov. George W. Bush, who was a friend and partner of Richard Rainwater, which helped.) My thinking was, get next to money and I could figure it out from there.
It was the late 1990s by then, and that’s when I met my second great mentor. David (Bondo) Bonderman was a legend, having made a 10x return on his daring move to buy Continental Airlines out of bankruptcy. Through his investment firm, TPG, which now manages over $83 billion, he would go on to do multiple legendary deals, involving companies from Burger King to Ryanair to power company Texas Genco. I met Bondo through a fellow institutional investor who was an investor in TPG. I met him at his ranch in Aspen and told him of my interest in private equity. Bondo interviewed me, met my partners, and decided to invest with us.
Bonderman’s decision to invest capital, and more importantly his reputation, helped launch me on what is now a 20-plus-year career as a private equity investor. When other investors saw that David supported me, they were more willing to trust their own assets with a relative unknown like me. Of the incredible string of amazing people who broadened my horizons throughout my career, none were more impactful than David—who helped me when I was truly new to the game.
Bondo showed me his generous character early on, when he invited my wife and me on a trip to the South Pacific to enjoy the beauty and serenity of this remote part of the world with his wife, Laurie, and four other couples. It’s no surprise that David had convened us in a location surrounded by so many natural wonders; he is a staunch advocate for environmental protection and conservation. Just as important, when we arrived, he made us feel welcome. Even though his other guests had been his friends for decades, he accepted me as a peer and friend even though I had done nothing yet to earn the honor.
David Bonderman with the author. (Photo courtesy of Kneeland Youngblood)
Over the years, I would call upon David for advice and counsel, and no matter where he was in the world, no matter what he was doing, he took the time to return a phone call, respond to an email, or meet. While I have never achieved the financial success that David has, I have been successful and impactful beyond what I could have ever imagined as a doctor—and I owe a lot of it to his help.
David’s investment helped propel my pivot into finance. And in doing so, he impacted not only my life and my family’s life (my kids have been fortunate to attend Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford) but the Black community at large, given my pay-it-forward efforts to invest money, time, and reputation back into my community. For example, I support and participate in the Black Economic Alliance, which is a not-for-profit founded by Black businessmen and women professionals seeking to address the issues of work, wages, and wealth in the Black community. I’ve also given back by helping establish an entrepreneurship program at historically black colleges/universities, looking to educate, mentor, give exposure to, and fund Black women and men entrepreneurs.
Moreover, David has taught me about being there for people through good times and bad, taking risks on people, and being open to new ideas. He believes you should never stop learning, never stop challenging yourself, and never stop living life to its fullest in work and in having fun. David is the ultimate rock-and-roll fanatic, serving on the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and having built personal relationships with some of the 20th century’s most iconic artists. He’s been a “Burning Man” regular for years.
David’s penchant for fun can be seen in one of his most recent projects: leading the group that is bringing Seattle its first NHL team. Despite the fanfare, David kept a low profile throughout the process, preferring to quietly use his network and resources to win the league’s and the city’s support while allowing the fans and the team to enjoy all the excitement. From business to philanthropy, David takes this approach in most ventures, and it clearly illustrates his desire to be impactful and supportive, even when no one is watching.
Because of David, I set aside time each month to mentor people, young and old. I try to always be responsive to emails, calls, and outreach from people all over the world. I try to be action-oriented: If I can help, I make the call to try and do it right away. If I can’t help, I try not to lead people into false expectations. I continue to think big and look for transformative opportunities in business and in life.
Finally, I have been fortunate to have gotten to know Michael Milken, one of the most brilliant minds in finance. We met at a conference of Black corporate directors where he spoke. During the conference, he rotated to various tables to introduce himself, and when we met, he asked me a series of questions and he suggested I attend the Milken Global Conference, which was coming up in a few months. I attended and was blown away by the caliber of content and people. Subsequently, I encouraged many of my friends to attend and participate. Through this outreach to Black and Brown professionals in the investment world, a community with which Michael had not been familiar, Michael and I developed a close bond. He, too, became a mentor, friend, and investor.
The author with Michael Milken at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, 2015. (Photo courtesy of Kneeland Youngblood.)
I admire Michael’s prodigious work ethic. No one I have met before or since works as hard and as thoroughly as Michael. Observing him has taught me the humbling lesson that I can always do more and be more.
In the beginning, as a student of private equity, I was in awe of my mentors. Later we became friends, as we served on boards of companies together and invested in deals together. Finally, the relationship became about love. These men gave of themselves when they had no reason other than they wanted to be helpful. Their willingness to give time, more than anything else, transformed my life and my family’s lives. While they may have lost a physical step, whenever I see them, I am inspired.
Unfortunately, far too often those of us from disadvantaged communities are called upon to be perfect, to fit exactly in the right box, to be Jackie Robinson. The truth is, if we were perfect, we wouldn’t need each other.
So today, I’m sharing the lessons I’ve learned from the people I’ve leaned on. We should take advantage of the wisdom of others, within and outside of our communities. We shouldn’t let guilt or victimhood drive our efforts, but should be motivated instead by personal responsibility for ourselves and our fellow man and woman. Never take yourself out of the game because you think people will be unaccepting. People may not only be accepting—they may learn from you and be better for knowing you.
Kneeland Youngblood is founding partner and chairman of Pharos Capital Group, a health care–focused private equity firm. Its Fund III has invested in companies that have 5,360 employees, 73% of whom are women, and the majority of whom are Black or other people of color.