fortune--2020-11-23--When ‘going the extra mile’ becomes a problem

This is the web version of The Broadsheet, a daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Republicans are divided over the RNC’s leadership, women-led blockbusters head to streaming, and job descriptions make a difference in the energy industry. Have a motivated Monday.
– ‘Going the extra mile.’ Last week, we covered a new study that found how slightly tweaking job applications to promote “flexible work” attracted more women, especially to senior positions.
A new Fortune story by Katherine Dunn provides us with a real-world example of a similar phenomenon. Katherine, who reports for Fortune out of London, interviewed Helle Østergaard Kristiansen, the CEO of Danish energy trader Danske Commodities. Danske’s parent company Equinor was one of the first legacy oil giants to aim for near net-zero emissions by 2050, and Kristiansen is in her second year leading Danske through trading “a deeply complex, finely balanced power market, with all the fluctuations of wind and solar power that entails, across an entire continent.”
But along with those responsibilities, Kristiansen has worked to evolve her company’s workforce. And the trader found that its job ads, unsurprisingly, had a huge impact on who applied. “Previously, it has very much been in the wordings, like ‘doing what it takes,’ ‘go the extra mile,'” the CEO told Katherine. “Which is not maybe very appealing to a female trader.”
Now, the company instead straightforwardly describes the responsibilities and qualifications needed for a position. That change was implemented as its workforce, which is still 78% men, became younger, with an average age of 33, and more focused on candidates with PhDs in software engineering than traditional traders.
Kristiansen hopes that changes in advertising open positions—and a new parental leave program—will help the company hire more women.
“That’s actually the fantastic part of being part of a trading company. It’s very much about qualification, and you’re measured on your results, nothing else,” she says. “For female candidates, it should be an interesting sector to join: you’re part of the energy sector that is moving so fast, it’s so important for the future of every one of us.”
Read the rest of Katherine’s story, including much more detail on Danske’s work in the energy industry, here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Run RNC. A fight over the future of the GOP is playing out via the Republican National Committee. Ronna McDaniel is seeking reelection as RNC chair with the backing of President Trump—an endorsement that is dividing Republicans who are on board with Trump's continued influence and those who want the RNC to move past Trump after his presidency. New York Times
- Dean's corner. Erika James became dean of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania at the beginning of the year. In this interview, she talks about being the first woman and first Black woman to lead the business school, choosing to use her business acumen in academia rather than the corporate world, and more. New York Times
- All about ESG. Why do investors like socially responsible companies? Savita Subramanian, head of U.S. equity and quantitative strategy and head of global ESG research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch; Sarah Ketterer, CEO and fundamental portfolio manager of Causeway Capital; and Mallun Yen, founder and general partner of early stage venture capital firm Operator Collective weigh in at a Fortune roundtable. Fortune
- Testing whiplash. As Sen. Kelly Loeffler campaigns in Georgia's runoff race, she had conflicting coronavirus test results this weekend. The GOP senator tested negative, then positive, then "inconclusive," then negative again. After attending campaign events Friday, Loeffler is now self-isolating. CNN
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: President-elect Biden is expected to name Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a 35-year Foreign Service vet, as his ambassador to the UN. Lauren Williams announced that she will leave her role as editor-in-chief of Vox; with Akoto Ofori-Atta, she will launch Capital B, a new local and national nonprofit news organization serving Black audiences. Celestine Maddy, the former SVP of marketing at The Wing, joins Pinterest as global head of consumer marketing.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Prenatal fear. Undocumented women who become pregnant have avoided seeking prenatal care or giving birth in hospitals because of fear of the Trump administration's immigration policies. Health professionals are trying to encourage women not to risk their health, but, says doctor Margaret Kini: "Nobody can falsely reassure them because anything is possible these days." New York Times
- Home blockbuster. Wonder Woman: 1984 will be the second woman-directed big-budget movie to premiere on streaming this year, after Mulan. The Wonder Woman sequel will debut on HBO Max the same day it hits theaters in December. Fortune
- Back in action. Skier Mikaela Shiffrin returned to competition for the first time in almost a year on Saturday. The Olympic champion lost her father in early February, a month before the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. "Maybe [resiliency] is bouncing back," Shiffrin said of moving forward. "But it’s also just rolling out of bed some days." USA Today
- A.I. says smile. A new paper on artificial intelligence finds that Google's cloud image service affixes the labels "official" and "businessperson" to images of men, but marks photos of women with "smile" and "chin." "It results in women receiving a lower status stereotype: that women are there to look pretty and men are business leaders,” says researcher Carsten Schwemmer. Wired
ON MY RADAR
Another transition: Audrey Pence weds New York Times
Elena Ferrante names her 40 favorite books by female authors Guardian
Women in finance have to ask for promotions. Men don’t Fortune
PARTING WORDS
"This is not a girl who’s made to be a victim or who’s only there to inform another character’s journey. She defines her own journey."
- Kiera Allen, an actor who stars in the new Hulu thriller Run, on representing disability onscreen


fortune--2020-11-24--Better conversations: The 7 essential elements of meaningful communication

Why Tesla stock could go to $ 1,000 , according to a Wedbush analyst

Fred Dust is the senior design advisor for the Rockefeller Foundation, and was previously a senior partner and global managing director at international design firm IDEO. As an architect and design thinker, he often found himself conducting difficult conversations among stakeholders with sharply differing points of view. As he explains in this excerpt from his new book, Making Conversation, due out Dec. 1, the experience prompted him to consider how conversations themselves could be better designed—leading him to some life-changing insights.
Nowadays, everyone I meet—friends and colleagues, even strangers at dinner parties—keeps asking me some variation of the same question: “I had this conversation today and it just didn’t work. What do you think I did wrong?”
The headmaster of a school wondering how she could better handle hard conversations with the powerful and wealthy parents of her students. A CEO trying to navigate decisiveness with prudence. A mother in anguish because her daughter’s anorexia has turned the family dinner table into a war zone. A board meeting that went wrong over a single word. A senior member of a police force struggling to talk with her officers about ethics.
Without intending to, I’ve become a kind of expert in the design of conversations.
Constructive conversation is one of humanity’s first and most powerful tools. Conversations built our first communities and helped emerging civilization progress. Public discourse was the foundation of democracy and has been the underpinning of all aspects of government and governance throughout history. And whatever we may feel about our handheld devices and pinging social media accounts, technological “progress” arose from constructive conversations. Creative collaboration was what put humans on the moon and what still keeps us in the digital ether.
Courtesy of HarperBusiness/HarperCollins Publishers
But lately it seems like we’ve all lost the ability to talk to one another. To have productive conversations. To exchange ideas and together advance those ideas.
Everything’s moving too fast. The news media promotes friction and faction. Politics and democratic dialogue seem lost to us, each day hitting a new low. College campuses have become so divided by race, class, and gender politics that institutions that were built on dialogue are now afraid to host it at all. Once, we might have believed others were wrong; today, we believe others are lying.
Meanwhile, our children are being driven inward, only able to communicate through their devices, and what we perceive through social media is only the thinnest slice of who we are as humans. The “discourse” online is between figments of ourselves, ghosts in dialogue. We’ve lost our sense of humanness and it’s reflected in the viciousness of the rhetoric that surrounds social media “conversation” today.
Sure, we’ve always had a hard time having important conversations across political, socioeconomic, gender, or racial lines. But now we’re having trouble talking to the people closest to us. It’s happening between friends, family, co-workers, people who share political beliefs and goals. The rift is visible everywhere.
For my entire career, I’ve built my life around the idea that a fresh and creative approach to conversations that matter could save us. Could change the world. But over the last couple of years I found myself in increasing despair. I wasn’t sure I actually believed in the power of creative conversation anymore. It was akin to a loss of faith.
How I became a designer of conversation
It all began in 1988 when I dropped out of college to go and work with the HIV activist group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power).
The early days of ACT UP felt like a creative revolution. So many of those who found themselves afflicted with the disease were artists, playwrights, and designers; their approach to public protest was so fresh and transgressive that a movement about death felt vibrantly alive. The die-ins. The slogan Silence = Death. The reappropriation of the pink triangle—a remnant from the Nazi-era branding of the gay men and women sent to the concentration camps. It was new and modern, and the combination of activist methods and creative coalitions reinvented the landscape of modern protest.
That was the beginning of a journey for me. I was chasing something. I could see the way art and social change could merge—how hard conversations could become both more provocative and more positive through the introduction of creative practice.
A year later I returned to school and shifted my study from politics to art and art history. While the medium was different, the underlying current of what I was engaged with was the same. I chose to study the long history of artists who had made social change through their work. I was looking for the places where art and activism blended together.
After I graduated, I began working with artist activists like Yolanda Lopez and the art collective Border Arts Workshop, who did politically charged work about immigration in California, and Mary Kelly, who became notorious for documenting every aspect of her child’s first year of life and attracted outsize anger from the mostly male world of art critics. Their art was courageous, clever, witty, and beautiful, but also capable of inspiring bold change. It was encouraging new forms of conversation in the world.
Soon, I discovered the architect Christopher Alexander, who had pioneered a method that allowed communities, towns, and neighbors to design their homes and civic buildings alongside him. Today we would call it co-design. At its essence, it was a way of having a collective conversation, and using that conversation to design solutions for that community.
To me, it seemed like an evolution of the work I had been doing, but one that moved from creative political dialogue to a collective creative act. In 1997 I went to grad school for architecture at UC Berkeley to learn more about his practice.
I practiced as an architect at a firm for a short while, but I missed feeling like I was making change, I missed the idea that creativity inspired conversation, things that I had found core to my own creative practice.
I learned about IDEO through watching the iconic shopping cart video on Nightline. If you haven’t seen it, it follows the process of a large collaborative design team as they take a week to completely redesign a standard shopping cart. The essential humanity in the process spoke to my heart. IDEO felt like a place where design and real change could happen.
I joined the firm in 2000 and built IDEO’s architecture practice. The nature of design culture at IDEO was deeply collaborative and it wasn’t hard to extend that process to include the people we were designing for.
I was personally committed to breaking down the language of architecture to make the process and principles more straightforward, so that our clients could truly be co-designers. We had nurses design patients’ rooms. We built rough classroom concepts in full scale and walked and talked through the space with teachers, changing them on the fly. It was design as a constructed and constructive conversation, an evolution of what I’d seen in Alexander’s design process.
Schools, non-profits, philanthropies, and governments began coming to us to see how we might solve larger, more systemic problems. These were nascent challenges, but I realized that this was the kind of work I really wanted to do: bringing people together to use creativity to make change. And everything we did started with the right conversation.
We began to build a business focused on work with these highly varied organizations coming together to tackle more large-scale, systemic, societal issues like income inequity, gun violence, and health care.
These kinds of projects meant bringing groups together in “tri-sectoral” conversations—non-profits and foundations, for-profits and private companies, and the government. Those conversations were, of course, incredibly fraught. The three sectors often had wildly divergent reasons for engaging. With that came the subtler issues. Sometimes there was no common language; other times there were different ideas of how a conversation should happen, or even how fast things should move. Very early on in this work, I discovered that when we brought together diverse stakeholders, communities, and political and cultural entities in hopes of making change, our existing tools weren’t quite good enough.
By 2016, we had successfully used new conversation formats to tackle design problems that ranged from work with the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to work with non-profits and farmers in the Andes. I structured conversations on health, anxiety, and stress with the surgeon general and explored the way dialogue in the town squares of Greek villages might help relieve the weight of the Greek financial crisis. I led new formats with the elite of the Aspen Institute and with the victims of gun violence in Brooklyn.
Our formats ranged in scope and intended impact. They broke conversational conventions, they had new and stricter rules, they incorporated movement or props, there was both choreography and craft in their construction.
We were making progress. We were making conversation.
What conversations matter?
Quick chats, catching up over coffee, hallway gossip, late-night laughs with loved ones can be the best gifts of life. But the conversations I’m focused on are a more substantive and intentional form of engagement that typically have three things in common.
First, there is difference. The people in the room can’t be all alike or in agreement.
Second, it feels difficult. Conversations that matter are about grappling with hard issues—often be about strategy, politics, or emotionally charged topics.
Third, something is made, besides conversation. Too often, we experience a kind of “conversation fatigue,” which emerges from the fact that so little seems to come of it. This is the greatest risk: that little comes of it. A creative conversation must move us forward. It must help us shift from thinking and talking into the act of doing. Agreement cannot be enough; action is required.
The purposeful burden that I place on the term conversation is that it must work to resolve differences, must explore hard issues, and must be aimed toward a positive outcome.
The conversations you decide to exert creative energy on can be global in nature, discussions traversing the dividing lines of international conflict, or the future of climate change. Or they can also be more personal in nature, exposing hard truths to the ones you love. These seemingly small domestic conversations can be designed too.
What designers bring to conversations
When we think of those who can make hard conversations happen, we tend to think of professionals with sophisticated, even extreme, tools: facilitators, mediators, psychologists, hostage negotiators. But . . . approaching dialogue as a designer means that you treat dialogue as something that you create, something that you design, not something that you facilitate.
It’s tremendously liberating. There are new possibilities, if you can begin to think about how you influence the structure and feel of a conversation by design rather than by pure force of will. It relies not on your interpersonal skills but a different skill set: the ability to spot opportunity and design for it in order to shape outcome and impact.
Think of creativity as a benevolent power you can exert when conversations start to go astray. The most powerful thing about applying creative constructs to the conversations that you make is that they can help balance power, protect from inequities, and do it in a way that’s built into the very structures that govern the conversations.
Making conversation
As I started researching this book, I found hope again. I felt like I could write and speak with optimism about the future of conversation without it being foolish optimism. Why?
Again and again I found evidence of people who had persevered and were making hard conversations happen in all kinds of surprising contexts. I saw more people bridging divides than falling into them. I witnessed people tackling hard topics, not with trepidation but with a kind of excitement, even joy.
It became evident that there are seven essential components, what I think of as the Seven Cs of a creative conversation:
COMMITMENT Most of us go into conversations with only one goal: convincing everyone else we’re right and they’re wrong. And why shouldn’t we? Sticking to our beliefs makes us feel safe and powerful. But creative conversations are very different. They’re about open-ended exploration. Letting go of our own ideas, or at least not holding on to them so tightly. Committing to the conversation itself. Committing to the people we’re in conversation with.
CREATIVE LISTENING Most people aren’t good listeners and few of us actually enjoy it. We treat it like a chore, nodding along, keeping dutifully silent, waiting for our turn to talk. Truly, listening can be a creative act—generative, satisfying, and pleasurable. With creative listening, we can learn to help people tell us better stories; to test perspectives other than our own; to embrace our own reactions and judgment. When we listen in this way, we are actively searching for the clues for creation.
CLARITY Conversations rely on their most basic element: words. But words are fraught with misunderstanding. There is complex or technical jargon not everyone understands. There are words we use every day that we believe have shared meaning but do not. As a result, so many conversations get lost in the gap between the words we hear and the meaning behind the words someone else is using. But if we begin a conversation by seeking clarity and definition of the words and terms we use, we can build a common language and even uncover common values.
CONTEXT Where you have a conversation has a huge influence on how the conversation goes. The space, literally, sets the script: some rooms give conversations extra energy and life, some turn dialogue inert. Sometimes this means re-arranging an available space or moving to another. Sometimes just a subtle shift in position can have a huge impact on the kinds of conversations that are possible.
CONSTRAINTS Every conversation has rules. But too often the rules are unstated, arbitrary, or unfair. As a result, everyone gets frustrated, nothing feels equitable or productive, and the loudest voice ends up dominating, reducing the dialogue to their own monologue. But constraints, as any designer will tell you, can fuel creativity. Rules can set us free. First, we have to reject someone else’s rule book and start designing better constraints for the conversations we want to have and the communities we want to build.
CHANGE All creative conversations require a moment of change—when a group of individuals becomes a community intent on creation. This moment of collective change is what allows us to imagine moving a conversation forward and inspires the potential for action.
CREATION When do we stop talking and just start doing? So many impactful conversations yield remarkable ideas and so many of those ideas never leave that room. Creation is about moving from actionable ideas to just plain action. Creation means getting real about whether the people in the conversation are the ones who can make the ideas real. Creation is about taking that conversation out into the world.
When you feel like you cannot make conversation or when the world seems to be broadcasting that idea, remember: You can, and people are. Do not succumb.
When a conversation seems hard, when it makes you nervous, when you feel at risk or on edge, remember this core lesson: Conversation is always an act of creativity.
We don’t have to just be participants in, or victims of, conversations. We can be the makers of the conversations that matter most.
Excerpted from MAKING CONVERSATION. Copyright © 2020 by Fred Dust. Reprinted here with permission of HarperBusiness, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers


fortune--2020-11-24--Why Janet Yellen is a great pick for Treasury secretary

This is the web version of CEO Daily. To get it delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning.
I’m delighted my former macroeconomics professor, Janet Yellen, appears to be Biden’s choice for Treasury Secretary. It was long ago (London School of Economics, 1979-80), but her crystal-clear and dispassionate explanations of macro principles still stick in my mind today.
More relevant, of course, was her performance as chair of the Federal Reserve, which won near universal praise, both in the U.S. and abroad. As a professor, she taught that lower unemployment would lead to rising inflation—the fabled Phillips curve. But as head of the Fed, she was willing to abandon theory when the evidence for it collapsed. She cares deeply about the fate of left-behind workers and laid the groundwork for the monetary policies of her successor, Jerome Powell, that helped those workers in the years leading up to the pandemic. At Treasury, she will have a broader range of tools to both keep the economy growing and help those left behind. Teamed with Powell, they should give business and markets confidence that steady hands are on the tiller.
Separately, there’s a report out this morning from the McKinsey Global Institute shedding new light on the future of remote work. It finds that 20% of the work force in developed countries can work remotely 3-5 days a week as effectively as if they were working in an office. That suggest three to four times as many people may work from home in the future as did pre-COVID.
The effect varies by industry and country. Finance and insurance have the highest work-from-home potential (76% without any productivity loss), which is why the U.K. also ranks high (33% without productivity loss.) The U.S. comes in at 29%, while China is only 16% and India 12%.
The flip side of that story is that more than half the workforce in every country—including 61% in the U.S.—don’t have an option of working from home, because their jobs involve handling equipment, moving objects, selling, teaching, caring for others, etc. One side effect is that remote work “may increase gender disparity,” the report says, because “the female workforce in many economies is more highly concentrated in occupational clusters like healthcare, food services, and customer service.” You can read the full report here.
More news below. And check out my interview with Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown, who is determined to wean the world from meat. He’s making some surprising progress—including in China. You can listen on Apple or Spotify.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Administration, assemble
Apart from Yellen for Treasury, President-elect Biden is picking Antony Blinken as secretary of state, Jake Sullivan as national security advisor, Avril Haines as director of national intelligence, Alejandro Mayorkas as secretary of homeland security, Linda Thomas-Greenfield as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., and former presidential hopeful John Kerry as climate envoy. The establishment is back. CNN
Transition approval
And the transition is now formally going ahead, after General Services Administration chief Emily Murphy finally declared Joe Biden the apparent victor of the election, thus unlocking the resources Biden's team needs to prepare for late January. President Trump has now authorized the federal government to initiate the Biden transition. He's still challenging the election results, though, and it seems few of those who voted for him accept that he lost. Fortune
Ghosn rights
Japan violated Carlos Ghosn's rights by arresting him arbitrarily and holding him under abusive conditions, a U.N. panel has concluded. The former Renault-Nissan chief was arrested four times in 2018 and 2019 over alleged financial crimes, and according to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention he did not enjoy the presumption of innocence that Japan is supposed to provide under international law. Fortune
Goldman in Paris
Goldman Sachs has applied to launch a trading venue, called SIGMA X Europe, in Paris. In doing so, it joins the likes of Cboe Europe and London Stock Exchange Group, which have also set up venues in EU cities so that, when Brexit Proper strikes at the end of this year, they won't lose the rights to host trading in most EU shares for clients inside the EU. Bloomberg
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
DuPont and Biden
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece on how the trajectory of DuPont Co., Delaware's biggest employer, influenced President-elect Biden's ideas about what's wrong with big business today: "Mr. Biden seldom publicly discusses DuPont by name, but in private, according to aides, he regularly cites its restructuring and downsizing as Exhibit A of modern capitalism gone awry. He often bemoans what he believes to be corporate America’s prioritization of investors over workers and their communities." WSJ
Side effects
Doctors have urged the CDC and drugmakers to be transparent about the side effects that may come with coronavirus vaccines. They fear that if people have their first of two shots and unexpectedly experience fever or headaches or exhaustion, they may not come back for the crucial second dose. CNBC
Labor force
Europe's governments may have largely staved off mass unemployment this year, but the pandemic has nonetheless exacerbated the divide in its job market between skilled and unskilled workers. The Financial Times reports: "In the first half of the year, there was a 7% contraction in low skilled jobs in the eurozone, while the number of high skilled jobs grew 3%…People who lose their jobs still need retraining for new roles being created, because there is a mismatch between the jobs being created and those destroyed by the crisis." FT
Plasma call
David Sullivan, professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, writes for Fortune that his team has had some success infusing COVID patients with plasma from people who had already come through the disease. Trials are ongoing to prove whether the convalescent plasma therapy really does work. Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-11-24--Why Beyond Meat’s CEO chose to fight climate change by going into business

Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life when he was in college. But after a conversation with his dad, he realized that the biggest problem facing the world was climate change, and that the contributions made by a musician or doctor in an environmentally unstable world would be weakened.
Once he determined the problem he wanted to solve, he wasn’t quite sure of the best way to address it. He started his career at the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, then worked at Ballard Power Systems, a hydrogen fuel-cell company.
“I learned in that process about how to attack a global problem, and the type of infrastructure you need if you’re going to use technology to solve problems,” Brown says on the latest episode of Leadership Next.
He ultimately found the pace of change in both government and the nonprofit sector to be too slow. Meanwhile, over the years, he had learned about livestock and the role it plays in climate change, natural resource use, and conservation, as well as the role that animal protein has in widespread human medical issues including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. So he chose to focus on creating plant-based meats in the private sector.
The goal, he explains, is to make a product that not only is indistinguishable from animal protein, but also is better for you and cheaper than traditional meat. But creating the product has been less of a challenge than getting people to build it into their diets.
“We do have our work cut out for us,” he says around the nine-minute mark of the episode. “The thing that I got clear on very early on was, you’re not going to browbeat or moralize your way to this issue. People don’t want to hear it.”
Right now, to convince people to add Beyond products to their grocery lists and takeout orders, the company is focusing on marketing using athletes such as DeAndre Jordan and Chris Paul. It’s also pushing the trademarked “Eat what you love” slogan, rather than using dietitians or scientists to persuade consumers. And it’s working. The company’s stock is up despite the coronavirus pandemic battering many parts of the food industry.
To hear about Brown’s approach to investment in China and his views on competition (“a great thing as long as I’m winning”), listen to the rest of the episode where you get your podcasts.


fortune--2020-11-24--Resurgent airlines, energy and bank stocks lead the way as the vaccine rally intensifies

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. It’s a risk-off Tuesday as stocks in Asia and Europe climb, and U.S. futures look set to add to yesterday’s gains. Energy, finance and travel stocks are leading the way; crude futures too are rallying.
Investors are cheering Monday’s vaccine rally 3.0, President-elect Joe Biden’s rumored selection of a very familiar face to run the U.S. Treasury, and further signs the transfer of power in Washington is finally getting into gear.
Speaking of transitions, we dig further into the value stocks pivot below.
Let’s see where investors are putting their money.
Markets update
Asia
The major Asia indexes are mostly higher in afternoon trading with Japan’s Nikkei up 2.5% , reversing a multi-day slide.
are mostly higher in afternoon trading with Japan’s up , reversing a multi-day slide. Huawei’s grip on the world handset market is expected to decline significantly, dropping by about one-third over the next year as the larger impact of sanctions bite into a core business.
is expected to decline significantly, dropping by about one-third over the next year as the larger impact of sanctions bite into a core business. Japan’s extraordinary arrest and lengthy detainment of former Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn was bashed as “harsh” and tantamount to a human rights violation, an influential team of U.N. lawyers has ruled.
Europe
The European bourses were in the green at the open with London’s FTSE 100 up 0.9% helped by a big surge from British Airways parent IAG ( +5% ).
were in the green at the open with up helped by a big surge from British Airways parent IAG ( ). Boris Johnson confirmed on Monday that Britain’s national lockdown orders will be lifted on Dec. 2 (with restrictions, of course) as the teetering economy heads into the Christmas season.
confirmed on Monday that Britain’s will be lifted on Dec. 2 (with restrictions, of course) as the teetering economy heads into the Christmas season. Still reeling from the Wirecard fiasco, German officials at Deutsche Boerse will expand the benchmark Dax from 30 to 40 listed firms, and introduce new quality criteria as part of its biggest makeover ever.
U.S.
The U.S. futures point to another solid open. That’s after all three indexes rallied on the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine news, with energy and bank stocks the big gainers.
point to another solid open. That’s after all three indexes rallied on the COVID vaccine news, with energy and bank stocks the big gainers. Not everybody is bullish about the road ahead. Goldman Sachs has downgraded its GDP forecasts for the current quarter and for Q1 2021 as COVID cases soar across much of the country.
for the current quarter and for Q1 2021 as soar across much of the country. Shares in Tesla closed 6.6% higher yesterday after über bull Dan Ives at Wedbush Securities slapped a $560 near term price target on the EV maker. He also “upped his ‘bull case’ from $800 to $1,000, which would represent an over 100% pop from the stock’s current levels,” Fortune‘s Anne Sraders reports.
higher yesterday after über bull Dan Ives at Wedbush Securities slapped a on the EV maker. He also “upped his ‘bull case’ from $800 to $1,000, which would represent an over 100% pop from the stock’s current levels,” Fortune‘s Anne Sraders reports. Meanwhile, the futures markets are pleased with president-elect Joe Biden’s apparent selection of former Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen as his new Treasury secretary.
Elsewhere
Gold has bombed lower over the past 24 hours, trading below $1,830/ounce .
has bombed lower over the past 24 hours, trading below . The dollar is down.
is down. Crude is up again on the vaccine news with Brent trading near $46.30/barrel .
is up again on the vaccine news with trading near . Bitcoin is flat, hovering around $18,300.
***
Calling an end to the pandemic
The S&P 500 is up 1.9% since we got our first dose of positive vaccine news out of Pfizer/BioNTech on Nov. 9. We’ve gotten two more shots in the arm since, each coming on consecutive Monday mornings bright and early.
Public health officials seem pleased with the progress in the labs, and that’s lifting those corners of the markets that had been trampled for months by grim COVID data and lockdown measures.
The energy segment of the S&P 500 has soared 24.4% in the past month and financials are up 9.5% in that same period. Meanwhile, consumer discretionary, health care and IT are underperforming, at or near the bottom of the pack. It’s all part of what we’ve talked about here often, the great rotation into value stocks.
This big pivot is thanks to renewed vaccine optimism. Which leads me to one of the most bullish calls of the week, courtesy of Lisa Shalett, chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. “News on vaccine availability and efficacy is much better than expected, raising prospects for an end to the pandemic by 2021’s third quarter,” she writes.
No more pandemic by next summer? Where do I sign up for that?
Here’s more positive news. The U.S. economy is in very good position for a big bounce-back. And that’s thanks to the U.S. consumer, the engine of the economy.
“Households that have improved balance sheets,” she writes, “should help with a surge in consumption spending when the economy fully reopens. That scenario is led by upward earnings revisions for the Russell 2000 Index, which are at a 20-year high (see chart). Such a development has typically augured well for a full economic recovery.”
Here’s the chart she refers to, showing Russell 2000 earnings improvements hitting a once-in-a-generation high:
That’s something to be thankful for.
***
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 read
Hitting the road. Nearly one in three (31%) Americans plan to travel this holiday season for vacation or to visit friends and family, according to a new Fortune-Civis Analytics survey. That planned exodus comes despite public health warnings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to please stay put. That 31% figure is well below last year's figure of 51% who hit the road for the holidays.
How to invest in the 2021 recovery. On newsstands in the coming days you'll be able to find Fortune's annual Investors Guide. Psst, there's a sneak peak already available online. On that note, I want to point you to another installment of the Fortune Investor Roundtable discussion we recently held in which the likes of Savita Subramanian, head of U.S. equity and quantitative strategy and head of global ESG research, talks about the big pivot into value stocks and how to play it.
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
The "word of the year" has been canceled
Sort of. Yesterday, the U.K.'s Oxford University Press disclosed that there was no clear winner on a single "word of the year" on account of, well, it's 2020. But the word chaps up there in Oxford didn't exactly come up empty, as Fortune's David Meyer explains. "If it's words you crave, here are some that are unsurprisingly given prominence in that report: coronavirus, lockdown, social distancing, superspreader, mail-in, moonshot, Black Lives Matter, cancel culture, bushfires, impeachment and acquittal."
My prediction for 2021: "bullish." Or, better yet: "impavid."


fortune--2020-11-24--Reeling from the Wirecard scandal, Germany’s DAX is getting its largest overhaul ever

Germany’s DAX index plans its most sweeping overhaul since its inception, adding 10 new companies and new quality controls after the implosion of Wirecard AG rocked investor confidence in the gauge.
Index operator Qontigo, a unit of Deutsche Boerse AG, will boost the number of members to 40 from 30 in the third quarter of next year, it said in a statement. Qontigo will also impose new criteria on both existing and prospective DAX members, including a requirement to puplish quarterly statements and audited annual results, with a fast exit for those failing to releasing them on time.
The changes come after the implosion of Wirecard, the fintech that was a DAX member for two years despite repeated allegations of irregularities. When it collapsed in June, pressure to overhaul the index mounted as existing rules didn’t allow for the benchmark’s first-ever insolvent member to be ejected right away. After that, the index makers undertook a four-week long consultation with more than 600 market participants before adjusting the rules.
“Europe’s benchmark indexes are generally too narrow compared to U.S. equity indices,” said Frederik Hildner, Salm-Salm & Partner portfolio manager. “I very much like the fact that these are a better proxy for the economy, whereas narrow large-cap indices are oftentimes heavily impacted by sharp moves of large constituents. So I tend to like the upcoming extension of the index.”
For prospective new members, the potential benefits are big, with about 14 billion euros ($17 billion) in exchange-traded funds tracking the index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Among the most likely stocks for inclusion would be the largest stocks in Germany’s MDAX index, which include Airbus SE, Siemens Healthineers AG, Sartorius AG, Zalando SE, Knorr-Bremse AG and Hannover Rueck SE.
Entry for new members will be based on market cap, a general liquidity threshold and the new qualitative criteria, with the index owner dropping its previous methodology of rankings which included the volume of shares traded. New members will also need to have been profitable for the past two years.
Delivery Hero SE joined the DAX in August to replace Wirecard, and some investors expressed unease about the fact that the Berlin food-delivery firm had never reported an annual profit. Had the new rules already been in place, it would not have been eligible to join.
The earnings reporting requirements will become effective during the first-quarter index review, along with a mandate for companies to include an audit committee on their supervisory board. Existing members that don’t yet have an audit committee will get until August 2022 to adapt to the new rule.
The only proposal that was not adopted would have banned companies involved in “controversial weapons.” According to Qontigo, this would have affected one current member of the MDAX.


fortune--2020-11-26--Why the CDC will probably recommend shorter quarantine periods for COVID

iPhone ’ s new ‘ orange dot ’ feature warns you when an app is listening

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is now widely expected to revise its recommendations for COVID-related quarantine. The twist is that it’s actually good news from the public’s perspective, with the possibility that recommendations could come down to anywhere between seven and 10 days for a self-imposed quarantine rather than two full weeks.
Currently, requirements are fairly stringent, with the CDC recommending a 14-day quarantine for anyone exposed to a person with coronavirus even the exposed individual tests negative themselves. That may be prudent but it’s also a logistical mess. It isn’t exactly easy or enforceable to keep people confined by themselves during the holiday season.
So why would the CDC change its cautious stance right now, especially given the surge in the COVID pandemic and upcoming holiday weekend? Officials such as CDC director Robert Redfield and one of the agency’s COVID-19 response leaders, Henry Walke, along with other public health officials, boil it down to a simple reality: Human behavior and a shifting understanding of the pandemic.
“We do think that the work that we’ve done, and some of the studies we have and the modeling data that we have, shows that we can with testing shorten quarantines,” Walke said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
COVID testing turnaround times play a huge role in this. It’s no secret that it took days, or even weeks, to get a coronavirus test result back just a few months ago. It can still be complicated, but capacity has appeared to improve with the introduction and distribution of more testing products. And then there’s the reality that it’s just hard to expect people to shut themselves off for two whole weeks.
That plays into the CDC’s considerations over quarantine and self-isolation. In a press call with reporters, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) official Admiral Brett Giroir stated that there’s “been a a preponderance of evidence that a shorter quarantine complemented by a test might be able to shorten that quarantine period from 14 days.”
This is specifically aimed at those who may have been exposed to coronavirus. It’s not official yet, and it certainly doesn’t mean people shouldn’t continue to take prudent public safety measures such as wearing masks and social distancing. But just maybe we can shave off a few days from Americans’ quarantine time and improve public health in the process.


fortune--2020-11-26--Native Americans are reshaping U.S. politics 400 years after the Mayflower

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower, an opportunity for reflection that has been swallowed up by the pandemic and division. But for the Native Americans who discovered the pilgrims standing on their shores, the pain remains the same. In other news: the Pope is an NBA stan, and be grateful you’re not Ron Howard this year.
But first, here’s your holiday of colonial oppression week in review, in Haiku.
“Enjoy your day of
colonial oppression!”
She laughed as she walked
away. It was the
day before Thanksgiving, and
I was on the Rez.
She took the meeting
wearing an Aerosmith tee,
and sunglasses she
never removed. She
helped girls to save themselves by
teaching them to rock:
“’Open your mouth! MAKE
SOME NOISE!’” I tell them. ‘Take up
space! Shout your power!’”
Take every chance you can to take good care of your power. We are so very grateful for all of you.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
In Brief
Nearly lost in the drama of the 2020 election was promising news from down ballot races. Thirteen Native Americans from eight states were running for 11 House seats, and six won. This means a record level of Indigenous representation in Congress. Native Hawaiian Kaiali’i “Kai” Kahele’s win makes her only the second Native Hawaiian in Congress since statehood.
Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District will be returning to Congress as a frontrunner for the Secretary of the Interior. It would be a thing, alright: She'd be the first woman of color to serve in that role and the second Native American to serve in a cabinet position. (Everyone seems to forget Charles Curtis, a member of the Kaw Nation born in the Kansas Territory, who served as Herbert Hoover’s vice president.)
This representation is both hard won and long overdue.
Native voters turned out in force this cycle, battling horrific conditions during a pandemic to ensure their voices were heard. Katrina Phillips, an assistant professor of history at Macalester College (and Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe) breaks down the effort in a must-read opinion piece:
In a now-viral tweet posted on Friday, Len Necefer noted that 76,000 citizens of the Navajo Nation had cast a ballot in the 2020 election — an 89 percent voter turnout. This vote may well have played an outsized role in Biden’s narrow victory in crucial states like Wisconsin and Arizona. In Wisconsin, which seems to have had a larger Native voter turnout in 2020 than in 2016, the Red Cliff and Bad River Bands of Lake Superior Chippewa, the Menomini Tribe and the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mahicans were among those who helped turn Wisconsin blue. Even in states like Montana and South Dakota, which both went red, counties that overlapped reservation lands saw significant Native voter turnout.
But she notes, that the long, brutal and systematic erasure of Native voices in civic life must now come to an end.
It’s also crucial to eliminate the obstacles continuing to plague Native and Indigenous voters. In an election where Navajo activist Allie Young called on her fellow Navajo voters to ride their horses to the polls — and when Natives across the country still face countless obstacles when it comes to casting their vote — Native voters are transforming American politics.
On Point
COVID data is about to get janky While we’re engaged in a long and bizarre conversation about masks, rights, and safety, misinterpretations about basic data continue to muddy the waters. It’s about to get worse, warns Erin Kissane of the Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project. “[B]y Thanksgiving Day and perhaps as early as Wednesday, all three metrics [testing, case, and death numbers] will flatten out or drop, probably for several days,” she notes. Then following the holidays, numbers will spike as normal testing resumes. But the news will likely be worse. “[T]he data we see early next week will reflect not only actual increases in cases, test, and deaths, but also the potentially very large backlog from the holiday.” Sigh.
COVID Tracking Project
NBA player meet with Pope Francis on social justice In a simpler time, I would have labored to make a “cool pope has game” quip of some sort to introduce this story, but the truth is, it just feels a bit too soon. Suffice to say, that while I found it odd, the dialog was earnest and welcome. Truth be told, Kyle Korver of the Milwaukee Bucks thought the invite was a joke at first. “I thought it was a fraud email that I got,” he told the New York Times. “I called Michele [the executive director of the NBA] right away. I was like, ‘Is this for real?’ She said, ‘Yes, it is and would you like to come in like two days?’ This came together really quick.” The five players jumped at the chance to spread awareness of their mission, and offered the pope a book of their social justice work, team swag, and a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. The players were Kyle Korver, Sterling Brown, Anthony Tolliver, Marco Belinelli and Jonathan Isaac, who have all played outsized roles in team protests; Isaac is an ordained minister.
New York Times
On background
There are 573 federally recognized American Indian Tribes in the U.S., but only one who greeted the “pilgrims” on what has become the foundation myth of the country’s founding. The Wampanoag are still here and still mourning what followed after the Mayflower docked in 1620. Many had hoped that the 400th anniversary of the arrival would have been a long overlooked opportunity to reset the historical record, but the pandemic would have other plans. It is a déjà vu all over again, Wampanoag leaders tell Time, decimated by a mysterious infection before the pilgrims arrived, and facing a fight for their land afterward, their lives in 2020 are eerily similar to their lives in 1620. The earlier infection killed so many people that they were easily outmatched by the colonizers. “It’s somewhat ironic that on the 400th anniversary of acknowledging this point in history, we are forced to stay home and stay separate and feel that fear and uncertainty and some of the things that my ancestors were dealing with in a much more severe fashion,” says, Aquinnah Wampanoag Councilman Jonathan James-Perry.
Time
The Harvard Indigenous Design Collective's stated mission is to support the the work of “Indigenous architects, planners, designers, scholars, allies, and alumni of the Harvard Graduate School of Design.” They are getting the job done with a Twitter stream honoring extraordinary individuals. Here’s just one, and I can’t wait to interview her: Tamara “Tammy” Eagle Bull, Oglala Lakota and the first Native American woman to be licensed as an architect. Check her out her work here, more on HIDC below.
HIDC
Appalachia is back in the news, thanks to the poorly received Netflix’d version of, J.D. Vance’s 2016 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. People really hate it. According to the Atlantic’s David Sims, “Hillbilly Elegy is one of the worst movies of the year.” But don’t blame stars Glenn Close or Amy Adams. Blame director Ron Howard’s “steadfast loyalty to the source material's utter contempt for the working poor.” Tough break, Ron!
Funny, if it weren't such a big problem.The truly wonderful Appodlachia podcast has an entire content section devoted to debunking, explaining, and otherwise emotionally processing Elegy, and all that I’ve listened to has been eye-opening. (Start with episode one, Hillbilly Elegy: The Farce Awakens, in which the amiable hosts “dissect the book equivalent of a raging dumpster fire, Hillbilly Elegy, in part 1 of their series on the damage it is doing to Appalachia.”)
Electric Lit offers a helpful list of books about “Affrilachia,” or Black Appalachia, and decries the erasure of a big part of the region’s cultural heritage. “[T]he presence of African people in the Appalachian mountains was documented as early as the 1500s,” notes writer Crystal Wilkinson. “Many Black people are still settled in hollers, former coal camps and thriving urban Appalachian towns and cities throughout the region. Our ancestors were among the earliest settlers. My own family has lived in the hills of Kentucky, where I grew up, for four generations.”
To round things out, here are some helpful pieces from the Boston Review:
The mythical whiteness of Trump country, adapted from from What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte, Belt Press, 2018.
Queer in rural America - A reminder that "'rural America’ is neither a monolith nor an apparition.” Further, rural spaces aren't only white, conservative, cisgender and they have a role to play in the future of a vibrant country.
Mass incarceration in Appalachia - “Addressing white poverty by incarcerating people of color exacerbates tensions between marginalized communities while curtailing the potential for multiracial solidarity.”
raceAhead is edited by Aric Jenkins.
Today's mood board
Effortless cool. Immense talent. Denzel Washington was named the greatest actor of the 21st century (so far) by the New York Times.


fortune--2020-11-26--MeWe is a fast-growing social hub for conservatives. What you need to know

Our mission to make business better is fueled by readers like you. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
Conservatives are flocking to alternatives to Twitter and Facebook after those services took a tougher stance on hate speech and misinformation before the recent election. While Parler has become a haven for Trump supporters, another right-leaning service—MeWe—is growing even faster.
Users downloaded MeWe more than 1.4 million times during the first three weeks of November, a 20-fold increase from October, according mobile app data analytics firm Sensor Tower. For comparison, during that same time period, its buzzy competitor, Parler, had 4.7 million downloads, up more than 14-times from the previous month.
MeWe started this year with just 48,000 new downloads in January. But conservatives’ anger over how Facebook and Twitter policed their sites has helped lift use of the MeWe. MeWe said it now has about 12 million members—3 million of which joined in November.
Some of MeWe’s featured pages include conservative news organizations The Epoch Times and Newsmax along with mass media news organizations like The New York Times and The BBC. Meanwhile some of the largest public political groups on the app include MAGA 45, Sean Hannity conservatives, and a fan group for Fox News political commentator Tucker Carlson.
Though fan groups for conservatives like Donald Trump, Hannity, and Carlson exist, MeWe hasn’t actually attracted the political figures to its service.
Here’s what to know about MeWe.
What is MeWe?
MeWe, which debuted in 2016, calls itself the “next-generation” of social media. Users can share photos, videos, and voice messages along with messaging other users, creating private groups for friends and family, and joining public groups.
MeWe was created following a discussion by friends during a dinner, according to the company. The group was concerned about how big tech companies like Facebook were handling the “spirit of our democracy” as well as users’ personal information. That led Mark Weinstein, who had created the social websites SuperFriends.com and SuperFamily.com in the late 90s, to building MeWe.
The service has no ads and, according to the company, doesn’t share users’ personal information with advertisers.
How is it funded?
The Los Angeles-based company, whose legal name is Sgrouples, has raised more than $19 million. After its most recent funding round in January 2019, it had a $49.8 million valuation, according to Pitchbook.
Some of the MeWe’s investors are Jack Canfield, former CEO of Chicken Soup for the Soul Enterprises; Lynda Weinman, who sold her learning website to LinkedIn in 2015; and fashion designer Rachel Roy. Mark Britto, chairman and founder of mobile payments company, Boku, also invested in the company.
MeWe’s revenue comes from in-app purchases, like extra storage for photos, voice and video calling, and custom emojis. Another is the MeWe Premium membership, which costs $4.99 monthly for a bundle of special features. There’s also a Slack-like service for business customers called and MeWePro.
Who leads MeWe?
Helping Weinstein determine the company’s direction is an advisory board that includes Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the English computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web; Raj Sisodia, a co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism movement; and Chicken Soup for the Soul founder Canfield. Also on the board is MIT professor Sherry Turkle, filmmaker Cullen Hoback, and Baird analyst Colin Sebastian, according to MeWe.
What makes it attractive to conservatives?
“Unlike other social networks,” the service says it has “absolutely no political agenda and no one can pay us to target you with theirs.” That’s likely music to the ears of conservatives, who have for years argued that Facebook and Twitter unfairly censor their posts.
Though conservatives may consider MeWe to be a friendly alternative, the service also has a long list of rules that can ultimately get users removed. In addition to prohibiting spam and illegal content, it bans posts that are “hateful, threatening, harmful or incites violence.” That includes bullying, harassment, or porn. And it says people can’t use the service to do anything misleading or discriminatory and that they can’t impersonate other people, brands, or create fake accounts.
However, MeWe’s rules don’t mention whether racist comments, health misinformation, or false claims about election fraud would be removed or get warnings labels—as they are on Facebook and Twitter. The service also doesn’t appear to fact-check or provide fact-checking attachments to posts that may have misinformation.
What differentiates MeWe?
MeWe’s business doesn’t depend on ads, therefore users aren’t targeted by specific advertisers and the service isn’t incentivized to make decisions in favor of those advertisers.
The company also says that it doesn’t use algorithms to help determine what users want to see. Instead users see the most recent posts from the people and groups that they follow regardless of what they say.
MeWe also has a secret chat option, which allows users to send encrypted messages to others that are deleted from MeWe’s servers after they have been delivered.


fortune--2020-11-25--U.S. speeding toward COVID-19 stimulus cliff as relief programs approach Dec. 31 expiration

Our mission to make business better is fueled by readers like you. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
President-elect Joe Biden won’t take office until Jan. 20, but he’s reportedly pressuring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to come to some sort of COVID-19 stimulus agreement ahead of the new year.
But while Biden works behind the scenes to bridge the still-massive gap between the Republican and Democratic plans (Democrats are in favor of a large, all-encompassing bill and Republicans want to institute a “skinny” bill with stopgap measures), it appears that nothing short of a holiday miracle will make anything happen within the 36 days left in 2020. The Senate is on recess until Nov. 30, the House is on recess until Dec. 1. Congress will adjourn for the year on Dec. 10 and the Senate on Dec. 18. That leaves between eight and 15 working days to sort out one of the most massive and divisive legislative undertakings in years.
But without an extension, tens of millions of Americans stand to lose essential benefits provided to them under the first stimulus bill, passed earlier this year.
With a death toll in the U.S. already well above 250,000 and surging infection rates, Americans are already struggling to stay afloat both emotionally and financially. Now, without action by Congress, 12 million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits on New Year’s Eve when the CARES Act provisions lapse.
On Dec. 31, the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which gives 13 extra weeks of unemployment insurance to Americans without other options, will end along with the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which helps gig workers who are out of work.
The federal eviction moratorium will end, potentially leaving sick citizens out on the streets. There will be between 5.5 million and 6.5 million pending evictions filed by Jan. 1, 2021, according to data from Stout, an investment bank.
Student loans also will be required to be paid in full, impacting the estimated 37 million Americans currently taking advantage of the pause in payments. One analysis found that less than 11% of people with federal student debt are currently repaying their debts.
Poverty and income inequality have risen significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, before the country began to shut down, about one out of three households had trouble keeping up with expenses. By September, that number had increased by 5 million. Hunger in America has also hit new highs: More Americans are facing food insecurity than since 1998, according to Census data.
The changes come on top of about 33 other tax credits and provisions that are expected to end at the close of the year.
“It’s the perfect storm. Here, you are losing the only available resource you had to keep your family housed, at the same time any protections against evictions are disappearing,” said Emily Benfer, chair of the American Bar Association’s COVID-19 eviction task force.


fortune--2020-11-25--Why Salesforce wants to slurp up Slack

Why Salesforce wants to slurp up Slack

Our mission to make business better is fueled by readers like you. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
Salesforce is eyeing what could become its biggest-ever acquisition: Slack, the workplace instant messenger.
The two tech companies recently held talks about a deal whose value would likely top $17 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports. That figure represents Slack’s market capitalization in recent days—before M&A rumors sent the stock surging almost 25%, causing stock markets to halt trading of its shares, on Wednesday.
Neither Salesforce nor Slack responded to Fortune’s request for comment.
Why would Salesforce be interested in Slack? Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s billionaire founder and CEO, clearly wishes to build his business into something greater than just a purveyor of software for managing customers and sales leads, the company’s bread-and-butter money-maker. He wants to build a platform—that word Wall Street-wooing techies love—to accommodate all offices’ computer-based needs.
Slurping up Slack would expand and deepen Salesforce’s virtual hooks into workplaces. Slack’s chat app is a sticky piece of software that has essentially become an operating system on which offices run, enabling integrations with all sorts of other tools (including Salesforce’s). Like Amazon continually adding new perks for Prime subscribers—same-day delivery, exclusive music, Whole Foods discounts—Salesforce is looking to offer an ever-more compelling bundle—one that might, it hopes, rival Microsoft.
There’s the rub. For years Salesforce has been setting itself on a collision course with Microsoft over the fast-growing and highly lucrative “cloud” market. At the end of 2009, Salesforce bought GroupSwim, a company it turned into Chatter, basically a Facebook for the workplace—quite like Microsoft’s Yammer. In 2016, Salesforce brought onboard Quip, a phone-first word processor positioned as a competitor to Microsoft’s Office suite. Taking up Slack, which been fending off the encroachment of Microsoft Teams for three years, would further enflame the long-brewing rivalry over in-office software.
Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, calls the Salesforce’s possible Slack purchase “an aggressive move” that would be “a major shot across the bow at Microsoft.” A deal could, he writes, “set off a chain reaction for more cloud software deals in 2021 despite the run-up in valuations over the past nine months,” largely due to a booming tech rally lofted by the pandemic forcing people to work from home.
Microsoft is the playing the long game too. In addition to battling Slack with Microsoft Teams, it has got Dynamics, its own Salesforce-fighting customer-relationship management software. But as the number two cloud-computing business behind only Amazon, Microsoft has less to worry about than Google, which may be provoked by Salesforce’s swaggering to make a bold bet on collaboration software of its own in the coming months.
Ultimately, Salesforce’s Slack courtship can be viewed as analogous to Pepsi snapping up energy drinks, bottled water, and snack foods in a bid to take on perennial nemesis Coca Cola—which in Salesforce’s case is Microsoft. And just like the carbonated soft drink industry, the cloud-collab market—riding work-from-home highs—is plenty bubbly.


fortune--2020-11-25--Pros and cons of investing in 5 upcoming tech IPOs from Airbnb to Roblox

Our mission to make business better is fueled by readers like you. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
December and January aren’t typically busy months for initial public stock offerings, but this time around, they’ll be an exception. Almost a half dozen well-known tech startups, each already valued privately at over $1 billion, have recently filed for IPOs, including Airbnb, DoorDash, and Roblox.
They’re hoping to take advantage of strong investor appetite for tech stocks, despite the pandemic, and to catch the coat tails of other tech companies that have recently made successful debuts. Shares in cloud database company Snowflake are up 129% since its September IPO and those of data mining company Palantir are up 215% since its September listing.
Here are key details to consider in weighing whether to invest in the latest batch of would-be public tech companies. Financial data is from the first nine months of 2020 unless otherwise indicated.
Affirm
Symbol: AFRM
Fiscal 2020 revenue: $510 million (fiscal year ended June 30)
Revenue growth: 93%
Gross margin: n/a
Net loss: $113 million
Affirm’s S-1 filing
Founded in 2012 by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Affirm aims to bring credit and lending to customers of all kinds of online retailers. Those hard-to-miss layaway offers for a pair of shoes from Cole Haan or that cute coffee table on West Elm’s website? Affirm works behind the scenes to process the loans and often covers the cost of the item (in some cases, partner banks fund the loans). So far, Affirm has signed up over 6,500 retailer and helped consumers pay for almost $11 billion worth of products over the past three years.
Pros: Affirm says its “buy now, pay later” system is superior to credit cards, with no hidden fees or high interest rates (most Affirm offers are zero interest rate). Like other hot consumer companies, Affirm also touts its net promoter score of 78, suggesting more than three-quarters of customers would recommend the company. As e-commerce grows, there’s plenty of room for growth in the market—less than 1% of e-commerce transactions in North America relied on “buy now pay later” deals. And Affirm says its data analysis of consumers’ ability to pay lets it avoid major losses.
Cons: The largest e-commerce sites, like Amazon and Walmart, have no need for Affirm and could even launch their own lending services. So could big banks or other financial institutions that can borrow money more cheaply than Affirm can. And more than one-quarter of all of Affirm’s lending has so far come from customers of a single retail partner: Peloton.
Airbnb
Symbol: ABNB
First nine months of 2020 revenue: $2.52 billion
Revenue growth: -32%
Gross margin: 74%
Net loss: $697 million
Airbnb’s S-1 filing
As the now-famous story goes, Airbnb co-founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia decided to rent some airbeds in their San Francisco apartment after a big design conference caused local hotels to be fully booked. Their little web site, AirBedandBreakfast.com, eventually grew into the titan that has rented space to 825 million customers cumulatively across 220 countries.
Pros: The fast-growing startup took a huge hit when COVID-19 curbed travel, but has since almost bounced back. Bookings were down 72% in April compared to the same month in 2019, but for June through September, the declined narrowed to 19% to 23%. The company also brags in its regulatory filing that pandemic-related spending cuts, including slashing headcount by 25%, make it more efficient going forward.
Cons: The pandemic showed that the travel industry is subject to sharp downturns that cut into Airbnb’s sales, and infections are on the rise again worldwide. The company has also battled restrictive rules in many cities and countries seeking to ban short-term rentals. Airbnb’s filing disclosed it’s also in a battle with the Internal Revenue Service that could cost it $1.4 billion if it loses. And even after being in business for more than a decade, Airbnb is still on pace to lose around $1 billion this year.
DoorDash
Symbol: DASH
First nine months of 2020 revenue: $1.92 billion
Revenue growth: 226%
Gross margin: 53%
Net loss: $149 million
DoorDash S-1 filing
After moving to the U.S. as a child, DoorDash co-founder and CEO Tony Xu worked as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant to help make ends meet. The point of DoorDash, he says, is to help strivers and small businesses thrive. Now in business for seven years, DoorDash “dashers” deliver food and other items from almost 400,000 businesses to 18 million consumers per month as of September.
Pros: DoorDash is the leading provider of delivery with over twice the market share of runner up Uber Eats as of October 2020. The pandemic has ignited much faster growth in food delivery as people avoid going out to eat. Some smaller players have already sold out (DoorDash bought Square’s Caviar service for $410 million last year), but further consolidation could let DoorDash charge more for its services.
Cons: Once the pandemic passes, many DoorDash customers may return to eating in restaurants. Although California voters approved a measure to continue to classify gig workers like DoorDash’s dashers as independent contractors, other governments still are trying to classify gig workers as employees, which could wreck DoorDash’s business model.
Roblox
Symbol: RBLX
First nine months of 2020 revenue: $589 million
Revenue growth: 68%
Gross margin: 74%
Net loss: $206 million
Roblox S-1 filing
Much more than a video game, Roblox has become a virtual environment for millions of people and companies to create their own games. Co-founders David Baszucki and Erik Cassel went from making software simulations for physics labs to creating Roblox in 2004. Now some 31 million people play daily, including three-quarters of all U.S. kids age 9 to 12, the company says (Research firm Dubit put the figure at half of kids 9 to 12 this summer).
Pros: Roblox has plenty of reasons for developers to stick around, including its large devoted customer base and the Lua scripting language that makes it easier to make new games. About two-thirds of current users are from the U.S. and Canada, so there is room for considerable overseas expansion.
Cons: The pandemic super-charged Roblox growth rate, but kids may decide to put their screens down and play more outside after the crisis ends. Many users play on devices running Apple or Google software, putting Roblox somewhat at the mercy of the twin tech titans’ app policies. Other games have been banned and the app stores decide how much of each sale they are entitled to. A joint venture with Tencent to bring Roblox to China could be impacted by increasing trade tensions or new restrictions. And gaming and social media platforms come and go depending on the latest fads. Roblox could be the MySpace of gaming.
Wish (ContextLogic)
Symbol: WISH
First nine months of 2020 revenue: $1.75 billion
Revenue growth: 32%
Gross margin: 65%
Net loss: $176 million
Wish S-1 filing
Overshadowed by better known rivals like Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay, Wish focuses its e-commerce services on the “affordable” segment of consumers. Founded in 2010, Wish now helps more then 500,000 online sellers hawk goods to 100 million monthly active shoppers. Parent company ContextLogic has its name on the IPO registration filing.
Pros: Shopping online isn’t just for the wealthy. Wish says it’s targeting the 44% of U.S. consumers and 85% of Europeans who have household incomes of $75,000 or less, plus shoppers in developing countries. Wish’s platform is mobile first, and 90% of purchases happen via its mobile app. Although Wish doesn’t make a profit, it generated free cash flow (or cash from operating activities minus purchases of property and equipment) of $23 million in the first nine months of 2020.
Cons: Wish faces off against many larger rivals, such as Amazon, Alibaba and eBay, plus Shopify and Walmart. To compete against the giants, Wish spends vast sums, over $1 billion so far in 2020, on marketing. With deep connections in China, U.S.-based Wish could be hurt by worsening trade tensions. And as with other startups dependent on mobile apps, Google and Apple could undermine Wish’s business with new rules or requirements.
(Update: This story was updated on November 25 to add Roblox’s figure for younger players.)


fortune--2020-11-25--Why Joe Biden is still fundraising after winning the election

Our mission to make business better is fueled by readers like you. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
President-elect Joe Biden needs money, and he’s asking Americans to help him out.
In just 56 days, Biden will presumably remove President Donald Trump’s golden curtains and make his own mark on the Oval Office. Until then he’s building up his team, receiving Presidential Daily Briefings from the intelligence community, and preparing to take over a federal bureaucracy that includes 2 million employees and 1.3 million active duty troops. He’ll also gain access to about $6 million to pay staff, 175,000 square feet of federal office space, the use of federal aircraft, and travel reimbursement.
But through it all, his team is still asking for donations leaving some scratching their heads and wondering why he needs it.
Ahead of the General Services Administration approving Biden’s transition this week, his team was fully funding their own staff, office space, travel and more. “President Trump refuses to concede and is delaying the transition, we have to fund it ourselves and need your help. If you’re able, chip in to help fund the Biden-Harris transition,” Biden tweeted, to much criticism.
Nearly 20 million Americans are currently receiving unemployment benefits, and many of those are set to expire at the end of the year. “Politicians are still asking us for money while their salaries are paid and people don’t have money for rent, food, etc. They won’t even promise trying to alleviate people of things like student debt,” wrote Frederick Joseph, a former surrogate for the Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns on Twitter.
Biden has also requested funds to help his mounting legal defense against the Trump campaign, who are still challenging the results of the election in states across the country.
“We can’t allow Trump to win any of these lawsuits just because we can’t afford to fight back,” an email sent to Biden supporters read. “We need to be able to show up in court to defend Joe and Kamala’s victory…and to do that we are counting on a surge of donations today into the Biden Fight Fund.”
So far, the Biden transition has raised nearly $10 million, according to Politico. That far outweighs the expected funding from the GSA, and what Trump and Hillary Clinton raised respectively for their transition teams. Trump raised $6.5 million in 2016 and Clinton raised about $2.1 million. In 2009, Barack Obama raised $6.8 million.
As late as mid-October the Biden campaign still had about $180.6 million cash on hand, some of which they undoubtedly have left in their coffers. So why do they need more money? And how can they use it?
A campaign doesn’t end after election night
Staff stay on to wind things down, close out offices, file and archive papers. Campaigns may continue to pay rent and salaries. They also need to repay any outstanding credit card bills or loans. Sometimes, candidates will continue to fundraise even after they drop out of the race to pay off these outstanding fees (Rudy Giuliani’s campaign was in debt for years after his presidential run).
Biden can also start his reelection campaign and transfer the remaining funds into that. As long as all debts are paid, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) allows candidates to move funds between authorized committees so long as they’re for the same person. Biden 2024 could be infused with a few million dollars before it’s even officially underway.
The money can also be used to create a “leadership PAC” to support Biden’s political agenda, something that may come in handy if he’s faced with a Republican Senate next year.
Speaking of the Senate, two very important seats in Georgia are still up for grabs, and some are already mounting up for the 2022 elections. There’s no limit set by the FEC on how much campaign money a candidate can donate to national, state, or local party committees. Biden could hand the Democratic National Committee some of his excess cash. His campaign can also give directly to state and local candidates and up to $2,000 to each federal candidate.
Finally, there’s the charity route. This is an option typically used by lame duck politicians. But legally, the Biden campaign would be allowed to donate its excess funds to any charity of its choice.
It should be noted that the Trump campaign is also continuing to request donations to help offset legal fees. “President Trump has activated the Official Election Defense Fund, and we need YOU to step up and make sure we have the resources to FIGHT BACK against potential voter fraud,” an email to his supporters recently read. Trump has indicated that he is considering a 2024 run, and could also use the money he collects this year to bolster another go in four years.


fortune--2020-11-25--How the dark web became a haven for unemployment insurance fraud

To most people, the dark web is a mystery. To others, it is a scary online marketplace where people can buy drugs, guns, counterfeit money, or even login credentials to a stolen Netflix account.
While all of this is true, recently it has also become a booming market for unemployment insurance (UI) fraud “how to” services, where fraudsters can acquire step-by-step guides on how to steal from state employment programs.
For a few dollars more, thieves can buy the “fullz” (dark web slang for a full set of stolen personal data that includes a person’s name, Social Security number, date of birth, address, and more). This is the level of sophistication organized crime has gained in its efforts to steal from governments.
How are they able to run this racket? First, it starts with the supply of stolen identities, which has rapidly increased over the last 15 years. In 2019 alone, over 164 million sensitive records were exposed in the U.S. None of us are safe from this problem. Even the governor of Arkansas’s identity was used to file for UI in his own state.
When COVID-19 hit, states were forced to process 10 to 15 times the typical number of UI claims. On top of this massive challenge, states were asked to disburse Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA, part of the CARES Act) to self-employed Americans who are not covered by traditional UI programs. This meant those Americans would have to validate self-employment income, for the first time ever, with little to no lead time.
This created another problem: People could purchase fake tax returns on the dark web if they wanted to show previous self-employment “income” and fraudulently claim $600 per week in PUA funds. Not surprisingly, some states have found that a lot of their PUA claims are fraudulent.
These moves have opened the floodgates to criminals who use what appear to be payments to 90-year-old bricklayers, 12-year-old barbers, and incarcerated and deceased people to commit fraud on a massive scale. Fraudsters have literally seized on the opportunity to “hide in the herd” of new claimants to rip off the system. The Labor Department’s inspector general estimates that up to $26 billion of UI payments may have gone to fraudsters.
There are three major impacts of crime at this scale. First, the false claims clog the system and delay states’ ability to to get the money out to those who need it. Staff on the front lines have faced an overwhelming increase in fraud attempts and unrealistic pressure from officials to push funds out to keep the economy afloat.
Second, each stolen identity represents a human being. The victim of identity theft will have to deal with the repercussions of the theft. It takes time, money, and emotional exertion to overcome identity theft.
Third, the stolen money funds organized crime. The scale, scope, and sophistication of these crimes can’t be conducted by individual slicksters. There have been numerous reports of how organized crime, both domestic and foreign, is orchestrating UI fraud to fund operations.
Shockingly, much of this $26 billion will be used to fund crimes such as human trafficking, the drug trade, and gun smuggling. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that money stolen from our government programs even helps fund terrorism. In fact, Inspire, the magazine allegedly published by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, ran a story on how to use government programs to fund extremist activities. This complemented its stories on bomb-making methods and instructions on how to carry out terrorist attacks.
Governments are trying their best to reduce fraud and get the funds to those in need—but they are struggling with limited resources and antiquated technology. Often, they are outgunned by the criminals.
Those on the front lines need our help in fighting these crimes, and the resources to help those in need and prevent future fraud. And the authorities need to study the tactics of criminals by monitoring the dark web to identify any vulnerabilities in their process.
We also need to break down the artificial barriers between states so that they are working together against this problem. Criminals cross state lines, so states need to look beyond their borders. Finally, legislatures need to invest in providing those on the front lines with more advanced measures like pattern recognition algorithms to identify large-scale fraud rings.
COVID-19 has significantly changed all of our lives. I hope that it also changes our level of support for detecting and preventing fraud in government programs, so that we can cut off funding to crime rings and send those funds to those who desperately need them. That will safeguard the integrity of our social safety net while making our communities safer.
Jon Coss is vice president of risk, fraud, and compliance at Thomson Reuters.


fortune--2020-11-25--ViacomCBS sells Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House owner for $2.2 billion

ViacomCBS agreed to sell its Simon & Schuster book publishing business to German media giant Bertelsmann for $2.18 billion, part of the broadcaster’s plan to exit nonstrategic businesses.
The all-cash deal is expected to close next year, Bertelsmann said in a statement Wednesday. The acquisition adds heft to Bertelsmann’s publishing portfolio and fits with plans to expand the company’s Penguin Random House unit. Meanwhile, ViacomCBS sheds a noncore asset as it shifts its focus to streaming.
The closely held German company’s bid beat out News Corp.’s HarperCollins and Vivendi, which were also vying for the asset, people familiar with the matter had said. Simon & Schuster, which has published books by Stephen King and Hillary Clinton, employs around 1,500 people worldwide and generated sales of $814 million in 2019.
Jonathan Karp, chief executive officer of Simon & Schuster, and Dennis Eulau, chief financial officer, will continue in their roles.
News Corp. had warned this month that Bertelsmann could have trouble getting regulatory approval to buy Simon & Schuster as it would create “a serious antitrust issue.”
News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson renewed his objection to the deal in a statement Wednesday. “There is clearly no market logic to a bid of that size—only anti-market logic,” he said. “Bertelsmann is not just buying a book publisher, but buying market dominance as a book behemoth.”
Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Rabe said the company carried out a wide-ranging antitrust analysis before agreeing to the deal, spending “many months intensively looking at whether this deal can be approved.” In a call with reporters, he cited figures from the American Association of Publishers showing the two companies’ combined revenue would amount to less than 20% of the U.S. market.
Rabe added that bigger publishers have lost market share in recent years, while smaller ones have gained. In addition, Amazon.com is playing an ever bigger role in the book industry, both in traditional publishing as well as self-publishing.
Penguin Random House, the dominant U.S. book publisher, had about a 24% share of the U.S. book market last year, while HarperCollins had 11%, according to NPD Bookscan. Simon & Schuster had 9%.
Simon & Schuster books had a high profile in the run-up to the U.S. election with a string of popular political releases about President Donald Trump’s administration, including Bob Woodward’s Rage, John Bolton’s The Room Where It Happened, and Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough. It’s also published books from the president, including Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America.
ViacomCBS shares were down 1.1% to $34.14 at 10:55 a.m. in New York.


fortune--2020-11-25--It’s the age of the mega fund

It’s the age of the mega fund

This is the web version of Term Sheet, a daily newsletter on the biggest deals and dealmakers. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
Good morning, Term Sheet readers. Finance reporter Anne Sraders here, filling in for Lucinda.
VC fundraising just booked a new record: U.S. VC funds raised a total of $69.1 billion so far in 2020, beating the high set in 2018 of $67.8 billion, according to PitchBook.
And we have Andreessen Horowitz to thank for that. The firm closed two massive funds on Friday: one $1.3 billion fund for early-stage consumer and fintech companies, and another $3.2 billion fund focused on later-stage investments. (Mega funds over $1 billion like a16z’s made up a record 15% of all U.S. VC funds raised this year as of September.)
Part of the funding frenzy owes to the “move from on-premise to cloud, from laptops to mobile—all of these big, big mega trends are now starting to hit their stride,” Bain Capital Ventures partner Enrique Salem tells Term Sheet.
To be sure, venture dollars have long flowed into fintech, consumer tech, and educational technology. But those trends have been “pulled forward” during the pandemic, says Manhattan Venture Partners’ head of research Santosh Rao. (Think SoftBank’s recent investments in edtech companies like Kahoot.) And with lots of IPOs in the pipeline, Rao believes LPs and GPs are eager to recycle that cash into these growing companies.
But fewer funds are also chasing more money. Per PitchBook, while the fundraising totals are getting bigger, the number of funds is getting smaller: So far this year, just 287 funds set the 2020 total, versus 589 funds in 2018. Meanwhile, funding rounds are swelling, even early-stage ones, Bain’s Salem points out.
“The trend is toward mega funds, the huge funds, so the small funds are just kind of getting squeezed out,” Rao says.
And that’s where I wonder: Are VCs going to have to raise bigger and bigger funds to compete? “The huge ones are probably getting better terms,” Rao says. That doesn’t mean small funds are dying off, but with many companies staying private longer, “startups prefer big funds, big VCs, so they have some guarantee of flow,” he says. “It just means it’s very selective.”
As for investor appetite for startups, Salem believes we’re in for another year of healthy VC fundraising in 2021: “There’s more demand than I’ve ever seen.”
SPEAKING OF ANDREESSEN HOROWITZ… Payment processing fintech Stripe, backed by a16z among other big firms, is reportedly in early-stage talks to raise another big round of funding that could boost its valuation to an eye-popping $100 billion, Bloomberg reports (no word on whether a16z is involved). Stripe was most recently valued at $36 billion after an extended Series G round in April, but at $100 billion, it would be the most valuable venture-backed U.S. startup, per CB Insights.
HOUSEKEEPING: Term Sheet is off for Thursday and Friday, and Lucinda will be back on Monday. Until then, have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Anne Sraders
Twitter: @AnneSraders
Email: anne.sraders@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Manbang, a China-based logistics and truck hailing company, raised $1.7 billion from investors including SoftBank, Fidelity, Sequoia Capital China, Hillhouse Capital, Permira, GGV Capital, Lightspeed China Partners, Tencent, YF Capital, and Baillie Gifford. Read more.
- Unacademy, an India-based online education platform, raised between $75 million to $100 million from Tiger Global Management and Dragoneer Investment Group, per TechCrunch. Read more.
- Boulevard, a Los Angeles-based salon and spa management platform, raised $27 million in Series B funding. Index Ventures and Toba Capital co-led the round and were joined by investors including VMG Partners, Bonfire Ventures, Ludlow Ventures and BoxGroup.
- Logz.io, a Boston and Tel Aviv-based cloud DevOps platform, raised $23 million in funding from investors led by Pitango Growth.
- WithMe Health, a San Mateo, Calif.-based company that provides personalized guidance and evaluations of medications, raised $20 million in Series B funding. OMERS Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Section 32, Shulman Ventures, MTS Ventures and Oak HC/FT.
- Morse Micro, an Australia-based WiFi integrated circuit chip solutions startup, raised $13 million in additional funding for its Series A round totaling $30 million. Investors include Blackbird Ventures, Main Sequence Ventures, Clean Energy Innovation Fund, Skip Capital, and Ray Stata.
- DefenseStorm, an Alpharetta, Ga.-based cybersecurity management platform for community banks and credit unions, raised $12 million in Series B funding. Georgian Partners led the round and was joined by TTV Capital.
- WeGift, a U.K.-based digital rewards platform that helps businesses give gift cards to customers, raised $8 million a Series A extension round. AlbionVC led the round and was joined by investors including Stride.vc, SAP.iO fund and Unilever Ventures. Read more.
- Glue, an Israel-based A.I. platform for small business loyalty programs, raised $8 million in Series A funding from private investors led by Unicorn Technologies.
- Superpeer, a San Francisco-based platform that helps experts share and monetize their advice, raised $8 million from Acrew Capital, Audacious Ventures, Homebrew, Moxxie Ventures, Brianne Kimmel, Scott Belsky and OnDeck. Read more.
- F3, a Latvia-based social media app, raised $3.9 million in seed funding from investors including Russian dating site Mamba and its investor Mail.ru Group, venture firm Adfirst, and angel investors.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- First Reserve agreed to acquire The Goldfield Corporation, a Melbourne, Fla.-based maintenance services provider for utilities and industrials, for $194 million in enterprise value including net debt.
- 1WorldSync, owned by Battery Ventures, acquired CNET Content Solutions, a San Francisco-based software service and analytics provider for e-commerce, from Red Ventures. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
- Aspen Surgical Products, owned by Audax Private Equity, acquired Protek Medical Products, a Coralville, Iowa-based manufacturer of protective covers for medical equipment used in vascular procedures, ultrasounds, and biopsies. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
- A group of private investors led by Bain Capital Credit and Pacific Lake Partners invested in OneShield Software, a Marlborough, Mass.-based software provider for P&C insurance companies. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
EXITS
- Clearlake Capital Group agreed to acquire Dimora Brands, a Dallas-based designer and manufacturer of hardware for homeowners and builders, from affiliates of The Jordan Company. Financial terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed.
- Zywave, backed by Clearlake Capital Group and Aurora Capital Partners, agreed to acquire Insurance Technologies Corporation, a Carrollton, Texas-based marketing and agency management software services provider for insurance companies, from Accel-KKR. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
- Highline do Brasil, backed by Digital Colony, agreed to acquire Phoenix Tower do Brasil, a Brasil-based telecommunications infrastructure and cell antenna systems provider, from Blackstone. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
OTHER
- Bertelsmann will acquire Simon & Schuster, a New York City-based publisher, from ViacomCBS for over $2 billion, Reuters reports citing a source. Read more.
- Future agreed to acquire the owner of GoCompare, a U.K.-based pricing comparison site, for £594 million ($793 million).
- CoStar Group (NASDAQ: CSGP) agreed to acquire Homesnap, a Bethesda, Md.-based online real estate platform for home listings, for $250 million in cash.
IPO
- Lixte Biotechnology Holdings, a Phase 2 biotech developing technology using protein enzyme inhibitors to treat cancer, raised $6 million. Read more.
- JD Health, the health care unit of Chinese e-commerce business JD.com, will reportedly raise up to $3.5 billion in a Hong Kong IPO, outlets including the Financial Times report. Read more.
- Mytheresa Group, a German-based luxury clothing online retailer, confidentiality filed for an IPO. Read more.
SPAC
- Senior Connect Acquisition I, formed by Richard Burke, the founder and former CEO of UnitedHealth Group, filed to raise up to $300 million. The firm is seeking a target in health and lifestyle sectors catering to seniors. Read more.
- Marlin Technology Corp, formed by Marlin Equity Partners, filed to raise up to $300 million. The firm is seeking a target in the tech sector. Read more.
- Spartan Acquisition II, the second SPAC from Apollo Global Management, raised $300 million. The firm is seeking a target in the North American energy and renewable energy sector. Read more.
- Forest Road Acquisition, formed by Forest Road, raised $261 million by issuing more shares than anticipated. The firm is seeking a target in the technology, media, and telecommunications sectors. Read more.
- Roth CH Acquisition II, the second SPAC from Roth Capital and Craig-Hallum executives, filed to raise up to $100 million. The firm is seeking a target in several industries including business services, healthcare, technology and consumer sectors. Read more.
- Globis Acquisition, formed by Globis Capital Advisors and Chardan Capital Markets, filed to raise up to $100 million. The firm is seeking a target in a variety of global sectors including water, energy, infrastructure, telecommunications, and natural resources. Read more.
BANKRUPTCIES, HANGUPS, AND BREAKUPS
- Northwest Hardwoods, Inc, a Tacoma, Wash.-based lumber company backed by private equity firm Littlejohn, filed for bankruptcy protection.
F+FS
- CBPE Capital, a U.K.-based mid-market investment firm, raised £561 million ($749 million) for its oversubscribed tenth fund. Read more.
- Day One Ventures, a San Francisco-based early stage venture capital firm, raised $52.5 million for its oversubscribed second fund. Read more.
PEOPLE
- SK Capital Partners added George Gregory as a senior director. Gregory was previously the CEO of HMT. Read more.