fortune--2020-01-14--Greta Gerwig, ‘Little Women,’ and an Enormous Oscars’ Snub

This is the web version of the Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! The Megxit drama continues, sources say Bernie Sanders told Elizabeth Warren a woman couldn’t win (but he denies it), and #OscarsSoMale—again. Have a terrific Tuesday.
EVERYONE’S TALKING
– Misdirection. Nominations for the 92nd annual Academy Awards were out yesterday, and if you were hoping for a woman to finally receive a director nod: better luck next year. Again, the category had only male honorees. Greta Gerwig stands out as the most prominent snub, considering her take on Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women was nominated for six awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Critics of the all-male line-up also faulted the Academy for overlooking other directors, like Lulu Wang of The Farewell, Lorene Scafaria of Hustlers, Melina Matsoukas of Queen & Slim, and Marielle Heller of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.
It’s worth pointing out that the Academy ended up with this outcome while consciously trying to up its diversity. Its goal is to double its female and minority membership, but four years into the effort, it remains 68% male and 84% white. Insecure creator and star Issa Rae, who presented the nominations, captured all of our exasperation, when, after announcing the best director list, she quipped: “Congratulations to those men.”
Little Women star Florence Pugh, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, was more direct, calling Gerwig’s snub, “incredibly upsetting.”
“She’s literally made a film about this,” Pugh told Entertainment Weekly. “She made a film about women working and their relationship with money and their relationship with working in a man’s world. That’s literally what Little Women is about, so [this] only underlines how important it is—because it’s happening.”
Taking all this into account, it’s worth revisiting a Vanity Fair interview with Gerwig from Saturday. “I still think we very much have a hierarchy of stories,” she told the magazine. “I think that the top of the hierarchy is male violence—man on man, man on woman, etc. I think if you look at the books and films and stories that we consider to be ‘important,’ that is a common theme, either explicitly or implicitly.” Nevertheless, she said, “I believe that writing about something makes it important. I think Louisa May Alcott, whether she knew it or not, made the ordinary lives of girls and women extraordinary by turning her pen to them.”
And in a new interview with The New York Times yesterday, Gerwig addressed the Academy overlooking female directors head-on. She said the sheer number of female directors is inching upward, and ultimately, that will make the difference. “[I]n terms of it all moving in the right direction,” she said, “that’s all we can do: continue to make the work, make the work, make the work.”
Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
Today’s Broadsheet was produced by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Can a woman win? Sources told CNN that in 2018, Sen. Bernie Sanders allegedly told Sen. Elizabeth Warren as she prepared to run that he didn't believe a woman could win the race for president. Sanders strongly denied the story, and says it is "ludicrous" that he would make such a comment. Warren's campaign then released a statement that said the fate of a female candidate had come up in their conversation. "I thought a woman could win; he disagreed,” Warren said. The two will likely face questions about the alleged confrontation on the Des Moines debate stage tonight. CNN
- Side-by-side. Queen Elizabeth II issued a statement yesterday agreeing on a "period of transition" for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. But another royal story drew attention, too. This BuzzFeed piece shows side-by-side examples of how the British tabloid press has written about Meghan in comparison to Kate Middleton; one example shows how the same tabloid that cooed over Middleton's experimentation with avocados to ease her morning sickness criticized Markle for eating the same fruit since it's been "linked to human rights abuses."
- Self-defense. How far can abused women go to protect themselves? The New Yorker examines the case of Brittany Smith, charged with murder after killing a man who raped her. Self-defense from rapists or abusers is a "valid legal defense," the piece says, but women still face murder charges. The New Yorker
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Abby Huntsman will leave The View to help run her father Jon Huntsman Jr.'s campaign for governor of Utah. The Guardian Media Group named Annette Thomas as chief executive. Mastercard promoted Raj Seshadri to president of data and services and Linda Kirkpatrick to Seshadri's former role of president, U.S. issuers. Canadian pension plan OMERS named Shelagh Paul VP, global communications.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Airport security? Taking a flight to Saipan anytime soon? Look out for some unorthodox airport screening measures. One airline, Hong Kong Express Airways, asked women to take pregnancy tests before they boarded planes. The U.S. island in the Pacific has stirred concerns about citizens of other countries visiting expressly for the purpose of giving birth there, which grants their baby U.S. citizenship. It's not illegal to do that, but immigration authorities are allowed to deny visitors who lie about their reason for traveling or who can't prove they have the money for a "medical procedure" like giving birth at their destination. One Japanese woman who was heading to Saipan to visit her parents and was asked to take a pregnancy test said the experience was "humiliating and frustrating." Wall Street Journal
- Retirement report. Trends in Japan's workforce and population demographics are combining to leave up to 50% of Japanese women in poverty in their old age. While more women are working than ever, many are predicted to run out of money 20 years before they die. Bloomberg
- Fly me to the moon. Yusaku Maezawa is set to be the first private citizen to go to space with SpaceX. He just wants someone to share it with. The Japanese billionaire posted a website where women can apply to be his "companion" on the journey. Bloomberg
ON MY RADAR
Climate activist turns down Siemens' offer of seat on energy board Guardian
The bearable whiteness of Little Women New York Times
Gigi Hadid called as potential juror in Harvey Weinstein trial Variety
QUOTE
"Have you been talking to my mom?"
-Sen. Cory Booker, on Twitter, after dropping out of the presidential race, in response to a report that fans were "mourning the possibility of First Lady Rosario Dawson"


fortune--2020-01-14--China Dodges Hit From Trump’s Tariffs With Exports to the Rest of the World

Disney Is Ready to Roll Out New ‘ Star Wars ’ Sagas as One Story Ends

China’s export juggernaut last year showed it can be nimble too, quickly diversifying into new markets to cushion the impact of Donald Trump’s tariff onslaught.
That’s the key trend seen in China’s 2019 trade data published Tuesday, which show exports to the U.S. plunged 12.5% even as overall shipments rose 0.5%. The trade balance tells a similar story, with China’s surplus with the U.S. dropping 8.5% to almost $296 billion even as its overall surplus rose more than 20% to about $422 billion.
The Phase One trade truce due to be signed by the two nations in Washington Wednesday may bring only a temporary respite as deep divisions over issues from subsidies to technological dominance persist. That raises the question of whether China can continue offsetting the impact of Trump’s tariffs as uncertainty threatens to undercut its global supply chain dominance.
“The trade tension between China and the U.S. led primarily to a redirection of trade flows,” said Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economics research at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong. “The Phase One deal in itself may not lead to a full snap-back in global trade, with lingering policy uncertainty continuing to weigh on corporate spending.”
China is set to commit to targets already stated by the U.S., and buy about $200 billion more U.S. agriculture, energy, manufactured goods and services over the next two years in a phase-one trade deal, according to people familiar with the matter. That includes about $50 billion in oil and gas, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing the deal which hasn’t been made public. Earlier Tuesday, Politico and Reuters reported differing sets of numbers for the purchase commitments in the trade deal.
Amid the ratcheting-up tariffs, China’s exporters wasted no time finding alternative markets and by year end shipments to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations had surged almost 13% while those to the U.K. rose 10%. So effective was this strategy that China’s share of global exports held firm through the first three quarters.
China’s December trade data showed both import and export growth exceeded expectations. Exports rose 7.6% while imports surged 16.3%.
China shifted from a $5 billion deficit with the rest of Asia at the end of 2018 to a surplus of about $67 billion last year, according to calculations by Christopher Balding, an associate professor at Fulbright University in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City.
“This swing in economic fortunes will change the dynamics for many countries of dealing with China,” he says. “Whatever its faults, the United States’ willingness to import a lot more than it exported to most countries smoothed over many problems.”
China’s exporters aren’t out of the woods yet either. Tariffs remain on both Chinese and U.S. goods, and even after the trade deal is signed, the U.S. will be imposing tariffs that are 14.4 percentage points higher on Chinese imports than before the trade war erupted, according to JP Morgan.
It’s likely that bilateral trade will stay depressed for years with a significant risk of decoupling, and could drop as much as 40%, says Adam Slater, lead economist at Oxford Economics Ltd. in London.
The real impact on China is the coming diversification of supply chains, not just away from China but from over-reliance on any single supplier, says Pauline Loong, managing director at research company Asia Analytica in Hong Kong.
“Recalibrating supply chains takes time,” she says. “So the longer term impact on China is more serious than it may appear right now.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Geopolitical events just don’t bounce oil prices like they used to
—The Carlos Ghosn affair: A look inside the motivations of a fugitive CEO
—How the re-election of Taiwan’s president could reshape Asia’s economic landscape
—Laws meant to close down tax havens and shut loopholes could have opposite effect
—7 M&As that defined a decade of dealmaking and reshaped the economy
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-01-14--New Boeing CEO David Calhoun Has Not 1—But 2—Company Reputations to Save

Good morning.
“Is this the toughest job in America?” That’s the question Fortune‘s Erik Sherman asked about the new CEO of Boeing, David Calhoun, who started yesterday. I’m sure some sharp-minded CEO Daily readers can think of a worse job. But this one has to rank high on the list. Boeing has dug a deep reputational hole for itself since the crash of the two 737 Max airplanes, and it has a big financial hole as well—burning $4.1 billion in cash in the third quarter. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Fox TV on Sunday that the airplane maker’s problems could shave 50 basis points off U.S. GDP growth this year.
It was obvious a few days after the second crash that Dennis Muilenburg’s days were numbered. (See my March commentary here.) And it has been obvious for some time that Calhoun was CEO-in-waiting. He ran GE’s aircraft unit, he’s been on the Boeing board for a decade, he’s relatively young (62), and he was available. One question for a future business case study: should he have been given the job nine months ago? Or was the company better off letting Muilenburg take three quarters of grief, then allowing Calhoun to orchestrate a turnaround?
The Schumpeter column in this week’s Economist calls Calhoun “The Last GE Man.” Once upon a time, that would have been a compliment. Calhoun is the last in a long line of Jack Welch protégés that included David Cote of Honeywell, Welch’s successor Jeff Immelt, Bob Nardelli of Home Depot and Chrysler, and Jim McNerney of 3M and Boeing. As the column notes, “GE Man’s legacy is a chequered one.” It’s up to Calhoun to restore two legacies—Boeing’s and GE management’s. I’m guessing he’ll succeed…because Boeing is too big to be allowed to fail.
By the way, Boeing is expected to report 2019 figures today that are likely to underscore the rough year it had; Reuters has a helpful summary of last year’s mess here.
Also out this morning, a couple of interesting CEO data points. A YPO survey of top executives around the world found that 96% believe building “stakeholder” trust is a high priority, and 42% say it is more important today than it was five years ago. And 90% of North American CEOs surveyed by GLG said “they agree with the Business Roundtable’s recent policy statement that corporations should be responsible not only to shareholders but also to customers, employees, communities, and suppliers.”
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
BlackRock on Climate Change
On Monday, the fund said it will drop investments that have high sustainability-related risks, including thermal coal producers, and launch new products that screen fossil fuels, among other moves. Chief Executive Larry Fink said that climate change has become a "defining factor" in companies' long-term prospects, and warned that he believes we are on the edge of a "fundamental reshaping of finance." Fortune
Gas Hack
Security experts say Russian military hackers have gained access to Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company that hired Hunter Biden as a board member, though it's not clear what the hackers found. The tactics are strikingly similar to those American intelligence agencies say were used during the 2016 presidential campaign. New York Times
Currency Manipulator No More
The U.S. has dropped the designation of China as a currency manipulator, ahead of a deal this week to halt the trade war between the two countries. That reverses the labelling last summer, and led the Chinese renminbi to rise to a five-month high against the dollar in early morning trading in Asia. FT
Greta Vs. Siemens
As young climate activist Greta Thunberg turns her attention to CEOs, German industrial giant Siemens finds itself in a predicament: while it has pitched itself as a corporate advocate of climate action, Fortune's Christiaan Hetzner writes, it is now the focus of protests online and at its offices over an 18 million euro rail contract for a planned Australian coal mine. Fortune
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
U.S.-EU Trade Talks Begin
The EU's top trade regulator will be in Washington today to discuss tariffs, and has said he is looking to "refresh" the relationship. Meanwhile, California winemakers are speaking out on behalf of their European competitors, with both the Californian and a European wine trade associations saying that wine tariffs should be eliminated. Bloomberg
Bollywood Turns on Modi
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi enjoyed star-studded support ahead of his re-election last year, but now the alliance is cracking, with Bollywood superstars including both actors and directors showing up at protests and speaking out against a citizenship law critics say is anti-Muslim. FT
Taiwan's Future
Earlier this week, incumbent president Tsai Ing-wen won 58% of the vote, underscoring support for her progressive agenda and criticism of Beijing. But as the island looks to chart a more independent economic future, it may be pushed into closer alignment with other countries in Asia, and the U.S. Fortune
We Want A Refund
Boris Johnson's government gave out £10 million to trade organizations last fall to help them prepare for a "hard Brexit"—that is, leaving the EU without a deal. But now, with the U.K. finally on track to leave the EU at the end of January, the government is trying to claw back the money, which has already been largely spent on preparation and awareness meetings for members. FT
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by Katherine Dunn.


fortune--2020-01-14--These $50 ‘Strawberries’ Are Popping Up on Michelin-Starred Menus

When purchasing a crate of strawberries at a neighborhood market, the modus operandi usually goes something like: “the redder the berry, the better the taste.” But Hiroki Koga and Brendan Somerville, founders of New Jersey-based Oishii Farm, seek to upend that notion with a new creation: the Japanese strawberry, also referred to as the Omakase berry.
Grown in an indoor vertical farm by the Hudson River, the berry is produced using seeds that the founders imported directly from Japan. “They are completely natural,” explains John Reed, the company’s marketing manager. “They are not in any way genetically modified, they are completely pesticide-free. They are perfectly clean, never even touched by a bare human hand. They don’t have to be washed [prior to ingestion] and there are no concerns about anything unnatural going into your body when you eat them.”
A chef prepares a dish with Omakase berries. Oishii
Clearly appealing to a public craving all things natural, Koga and Somerville, who met through an entrepreneurship network while pursuing MBA programs in California, are no strangers to the food world. Somerville worked on a few startups in the food space while Koga did a wide range of management and consulting in the industry before opening up Oishii (which translates to “delicious” in Japanese) in 2016. Hailing from Japan, Koga immediately noticed the sub-par quality of American produce as compared to what can be eaten in his country of origin and decided to do something about it.
“The flavor of an amazing strawberry is so different from what you typically eat in the United States,” Reed says. To create the ideal berry, Oishii Farm controls for two main elements: texture and color. Although cagey about the specifics of production, Reed concedes that the fruits are to be of appropriate firmness and boast a more subtle color than the usual deep red of American strawberries.
A bowl of Omakase berries. Oishii
“We monitor our farm very carefully,” Reed explains. “There’s only one specific day for each plant when the berries are going to be at optimal flavor and so we have our farming experts identify berries that are at peak ripeness daily, that’s why you’ll see identical color and firmness in the texture of the [fruits].”
The omakase strawberry is, indeed, delicious: juicy, firm, and sweet—it truly does taste like what you’d suppose a great berry should taste like, also emanating an unusually strong aroma. Although at first glance it appears to look identical to its American counterpart, a closer inspection reveals a key difference: whereas a typical berry features pronounced green seeds on the outside, the omakase strawberry boasts sucked-in seeds that create a dimpled sort of look on the surface.
Not your average Strawberry Shortcake. Oishii
In production since 2018, the omakase strawberry is still only available within New Jersey and New York, both as an ingredient incorporated at higher-end restaurants and, inventory permitting, to private individuals who can place an order online. In the latter case, buyers end up purchasing an entire experience: $50 will get you a crate of eight strawberries (about 35 grams each), delivered by an Oishii team member at a pre-established meeting spot. Said team member will explain the concept behind the product while revealing how best to enjoy it. (The fresher, the better.)
So far, mostly New York City restaurants have reveled in the offering. The first eatery to serve the strawberries was Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare back in 2018. Since then, a slew of other chefs have jumped on the bandwagon: including the Michelin-starred restaurant Atomix and Instagram-famous pastry shop Dominique Ansel Bakery.
Pastry chef—and inventor of the ‘Cronut’—Dominique Ansel, holding up an Omakase berry. Oishii
A mere glimpse at the farm’s Instagram account hints at the versatility of the berry, at least as it is currently used by the various cooks: Ansel created a strawberry sando (Japanese for sandwich) by filleting the berry and combining it with a light chiffon cake and a light cream; chef George Mendes at Aldea used it in his arroz doce (classic Portuguese rice pudding) and topped it with cinnamon and ice cream; sushi chef Kazushige Suzuki at Onodera, on the other hand, serves the fruit as-is.
As Reed explains it, the company’s goals of expansion are dual in nature: the team wants to broaden the reach of the strawberry to include areas well beyond New York while also diversifying the product line. If the Environmental Working Group’s annual “Dirty Dozen” list—which highlights the fruits and vegetables found to have the highest amount of pesticide residue—is of any indication, the potential for variation is pretty vast. Although strawberries appear on the list annually, there are at least 11 other commonly “contaminated” products that the farm could potentially grow, such as apples, peaches, cherries, tomatoes, spinach, and potatoes.
Michelin-starred restaurants in the U.S. are now serving desserts with Omakase berries, but “regular” consumers can buy eight of them in a sushi-style box for $50—a price tag that includes delivery to a specific location in downtown New York. Oishii
“I definitely see a bright future for indoor vertical farming,” Reed says. Acknowledging that certain crops—wheat and corn, for example—will likely continue to be cultivated outdoors, Reed posits that growing certain fruits and vegetables in lab-like environments may have its advantages: “Certain elements benefit much more from indoor agriculture, from being grown fresh and consumed almost immediately, strawberries are definitely one of them.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—The most anticipated books of 2020, according to Goodreads
—Why this 100% sustainable Icelandic sea salt is becoming a chef favorite
—The magic of the wedding industry’s most exclusive conference
—Just in time for Dry January: No-alcohol whiskey and gin alternatives
—The best travel destinations for every season of 2020
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-01-14--Boeing Mocked Lion Air For Requesting Extra 737 Max Pilot Training Year Before Crash

Indonesia’s Lion Air considered putting its pilots through simulator training before flying the Boeing Co. 737 Max but abandoned the idea after the planemaker convinced them in 2017 it was unnecessary, according to people familiar with the matter and internal company communications.
The next year, 189 people died when a Lion Air 737 Max plunged into the Java Sea, a disaster blamed in part on inadequate training and the crew’s unfamiliarity with a new flight-control feature on the Max that malfunctioned.
Dewi Manik, shows a photo of her husband, Rudy Lumbantoruan, who was a victim on board Lion Air flight JT-610, as she boards an Indonesian Navy ship to visit the site where the aircraft crashed to mark the disaster’s one-year anniversary. At Tanjung Priok port on Oct. 29, 2019 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Ulet Ifansasti—Getty Images
Boeing employees had expressed alarm among themselves over the possibility that one of the company’s largest customers might require its pilots to undergo costly simulator training before flying the new 737 model, according to internal messages that have been released to the media. Those messages, included in the more than 100 pages of internal Boeing communications that the company provided to lawmakers and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and released widely on Thursday, had Lion Air’s name redacted.
But the House committee provided excerpts of those messages to Bloomberg News that un-redacted the Indonesian carrier’s name.
“Now friggin Lion Air might need a sim to fly the MAX, and maybe because of their own stupidity. I’m scrambling trying to figure out how to unscrew this now! idiots,” one Boeing employee wrote in June 2017 text messages obtained by the company and released by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
In response, a Boeing colleague replied: “WHAT THE F%$&!!!! But their sister airline is already flying it!” That was an apparent reference to Malindo Air, the Malaysian-based carrier that was the first to fly the Max commercially.
Doing simulator training would have undercut a critical selling point of the jet: that airlines would be able to allow crews trained on an older 737 version to fly the Max after just a brief computer course.
In a report on the Oct. 29, 2018 accident, Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee cited a failure by Boeing to tell pilots about the new flight-control feature on the jet, called MCAS, and the need to provide training on it so that pilots would be able to better respond to malfunctions.
Yoda prays for his best friend who died in the Lion Air plane crash in 2018, at a cemetery in Jakarta Oct. 29, 2019. Grieving relatives tossed flowers into the sea on October 29 where an Indonesian Lion Air jet crashed a year before, killing all 189 aboard. BAY ISMOYO—AFP via Getty Images
The report also cited shortfalls in the crew’s ability to perform emergency check lists, fly the plane manually and communicate about the emergency. The copilot, who took nearly four minutes to look up an emergency procedure he was supposed to have memorized, was singled out for repeated failures during training.
The 737 Max was grounded worldwide last March after an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed following a similar MCAS malfunction.
To be sure, simulator training that didn’t address a malfunction of the system like the one crews in both disasters encountered might not have saved the jets. Separate decisions had been made not to inform pilots about MCAS, something that has drawn sharp criticism from pilots’ unions in the U.S.
But the prospect of simulator training for Max pilots — and opposition to it within Boeing — were major themes in the latest batch of embarrassing internal company messages released last week.
Lion Air has declined to comment whether it was the carrier discussed in the messages released last week by Boeing but people familiar with the exchanges, who asked not to be identified discussing a private matter, said Lion Air had initially raised concerns about the need for simulator training on the Max but ultimately accepted Boeing’s recommendation that it was unnecessary.
A Boeing 737 Max airplane is seen parked at a Boeing facility on Aug. 13, 2019 in Renton, Washington. David Ryder—Getty Images
Some of the messages revealed the pressure on employees — and customers — to avoid the additional training. Boeing’s resistance to simulator training for Lion Air pilots was reported earlier by Forbes.
Boeing didn’t respond to a request for comment but said last week that “any potential safety deficiencies identified in the documents have been addressed.”
“These documents do not represent the best of Boeing,” Greg Smith, the company’s interim CEO, said in a message to employees Friday. “The tone and language of the messages are inappropriate, particularly when used in discussion of such important matters, and they do not reflect who we are as a company or the culture we’ve created.”
Technical Pilot
The communications include a 2017 email from Boeing’s chief technical pilot on the 737 in which he crowed to colleagues: “Looks like my jedi mind trick worked again!” The email was sent two days after the earlier messages expressing alarm about Lion Air potentially demanding simulator training.
Attached was a forwarded email exchange in which the person warned an unnamed recipient against offering simulator training for Max pilots, pushing instead for the computer-based course that regulators had already approved for flight crews transitioning to the Max from earlier 737 models.
“I am concerned that if [redacted] chooses to require a Max simulator for its pilots beyond what all other regulators are requiring that it will be creating a difficult and unnecessary training burden for your airline, as well as potentially establish a precedent in your region for other Max customers,” the Boeing pilot wrote in the forwarded message.
While Lion Air was not identified in the redacted emails, the discussions are consistent with those Boeing held with Lion Air at the time, according to people familiar with the matter.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Geopolitical events just don’t bounce oil prices like they used to
—The Carlos Ghosn affair: A look inside the motivations of a fugitive CEO
—How the re-election of Taiwan’s president could reshape Asia’s economic landscape
—Laws meant to close down tax havens and shut loopholes could have opposite effect
—7 M&As that defined a decade of dealmaking and reshaped the economy
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-01-14--With Plaid Acquisition, Visa Makes a Big Play for the ‘Plumbing’ That Connects the Fintech World

In late 2018, payments giants Visa and Mastercard both invested in fintech startup Plaid through a $250 million funding round that valued San Francisco-based firm at an impressive $2.65 billion.
Described as “strategic investments,” the two financial services heavyweights sought not only to provide Plaid with financial backing, but also to leverage the fintech firm’s sprawling technological capabilities to improve their own services.
“We’re really excited about working with [Plaid] to enhance payment experiences globally,” Bill Sheedy, executive vice president of Visa’s strategy group, told Fortune at the time.
With Plaid’s APIs (application programming interfaces), Visa could potentially improve the customer experience via everything from fraud detection to real-time account balance verification—services that “reduce the friction around financial transactions,” as Sheedy put it.
A little over a year later, Visa has decided to come back for the whole thing.
Whether it beat its great rival Mastercard to the punch, or saw a deal that its East Coast rival did not see, is as yet unclear. But on Monday, Visa announced that it has agreed to acquire a 100% stake in Plaid in a deal valued at a whopping $5.3 billion (twice the firm’s late-2018 private valuation).
The transaction sees Visa snap up one of the more impressive growth stories in the ever-expanding realm of financial technology. Since launching in 2013, Plaid has made itself an indispensable piece of the fintech ecosystem—a company with the technological capabilities to connect one in four people with a U.S. bank account to thousands of apps and services, from Venmo to Robinhood, from Chime to Acorns.
Plaid likes to describe itself as the “plumbing” that makes the increasingly tech-enabled financial services world go round, a claim justified by the company’s already sizable reach. Given the eye-watering sum that Visa is prepared to fork over—not to mention the bullish noises coming out of the company’s C-suite on Monday afternoon—it’s clear that the payments behemoth believes it is picking up an asset that will help it “capitalize on the fintech-driven evolution,” as Visa CEO Al Kelly put it.
“Fintechs are clearly reshaping financial services, and Plaid is unquestionably the leader in this space,” Visa president Ryan McInerney told Fortune on Monday. The deal is about expanding Visa’s services beyond its bread-and-butter, debit and credit card solutions and into a “broader set of money-movement services,” as McInerney described it.
In Plaid, Visa has acquired a company that holds the keys to countless fintech services that promise to increasingly shift online the way that people move and spend their money. Visa may already have 3.4 billion debit card holders globally, but Plaid provides the payments giant with access to “new products and services in a higher-growth market than we are in today,” McInerney said.
According to EY, 75% of global consumers accessed a fintech application for money transfers and payments last year, compared to only 18% in 2015. “It’s something that positions Visa for the next decade and beyond,” McInerney added.
Visa CEO Al Kelly echoed that sentiment on Monday, saying on a conference call that the acquisition “places Visa on a higher growth trajectory” in the years to come. Parlaying Plaid’s technology on a global scale, Visa aims to deploy the startup’s technology to flesh out its “non-card and [real-time] payments” services and gain exposure to “open banking” capabilities that have grown increasingly prevalent, particularly overseas.
“We are increasingly trying to move from being strictly focused on payments, to being focused on the movement of funds for any purpose around the world,” Kelly said, citing Visa’s acquisition of cross-border payments firm Earthport last spring as another example of the company’s strategy. “As big as Visa is in terms of the bank accounts that we can reach, we’re not as big as we need to be if we want to be a formidable player in money movement around the world.”
As for Plaid, the monetary benefits of the deal for the company, its founders and its investors are fairly obvious. But beyond financial considerations, Plaid co-founder and CEO Zach Perret noted Monday that the acquisition provides “a way to continue to expand, particularly in a lot of new international markets where we don’t have a presence… We think we can do more, and faster, which is where Visa comes in.”
Above all else, the transaction is a statement of intent on Visa’s part—one that shows the company doesn’t plan to sit on the sidelines as a wave of tech-fueled innovation promises to disrupt the financial services industry across the board, from banking to payments to point-of-sale transactions.
It also serves as a warning shot to its longtime rival at Mastercard, which has pursued its own array of forward-thinking acquisitions and new business lines meant to expand its services beyond mere cards and payments. (Representatives for Mastercard declined to comment.)
It appears that the two payments heavyweights have entered the 2020s in the throes of a great fintech arms race—one that shows no signs of abating.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Forget policymakers. Greta Thunberg and her allies are targeting CEOs now
—Investors see a 2020 recession coming—but think they’ll make money
—The Carlos Ghosn affair: A look inside the motivations of a fugitive CEO
—Laws meant to close down tax havens and shut loopholes could have opposite effect
—What a $1,000 investment in 10 top stocks a decade ago would be worth today
Subscribe to Fortune’s forthcoming Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


fortune--2020-01-14--BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Puts Climate Change at Center of Megafund’s Investment Strategy

BlackRock Inc. will ditch investments with high sustainability-related risk as climate concerns drive a sweeping change in the way the world’s largest asset manager invests its $7 trillion in assets.
“Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects,” Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink wrote in his annual letter to corporate executives on Tuesday. “Awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.”
Fink is tackling the subject as asset managers come under greater pressure on sustainability and climate change. BlackRock has been moving toward a more public stance on climate, as activists and non-profit groups increasingly scrutinize the firm’s behavior and voting record around environmental issues.
Fink outlined a number of initiatives, including: making sustainability integral to portfolio construction and risk management; exiting investments that present a high sustainability-related risk, such as thermal coal producers; launching new investment products that screen fossil fuels; and strengthening the firm’s commitment to sustainability and transparency in its investment stewardship activities.
Earlier in January, BlackRock joined Climate Action 100+, a group of more than 370 investment managers with a combined $41 trillion in assets. Together the campaign’s members are pressuring the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases to reduce their environmental impact and disclose more information on how climate change will affect their businesses. The company also listed environment and climate risk among its top priorities for meetings and discussions with the public companies it owns, according to its 2019 investment stewardship report.
Under Spotlight
Fink’s letter, which mentions ‘climate’ 29 times, builds on previous missives advising corporate leaders on how to orient their businesses for the long term. In previous years he’s underscored the theme that profit and social purpose are inextricably linked. People are looking to corporate executives to step in and offer fixes to social problems that governments are failing to solve, Fink wrote in last year’s letter.
Activists have been calling on BlackRock to do more around the climate crisis. Groups including Amazon Watch, the Sunrise Project, and coalitions of youth activists and parents have all targeted the firm, asking for more action around the global crisis of climate change. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore attacked big index fund firms recently too.
“I think the large passive managers have a real difficult decision to make,” Gore told the Financial Times in December. “Do they want to continue to finance the destruction of human civilization, or not?”
Protesters follow Fink to speaking events and galas. Some call on BlackRock to divest from the fossil fuel companies where it sits among the largest owners; as a giant of passive management, the firm often points to the fact that it can’t divest from companies listed in indexes.
BlackRock’s size puts it in a delicate position: operating in more than 30 countries, and as one of the biggest holders of most U.S. publicly traded companies, its clients include large sovereign wealth funds, state pension plans and financial advisers with viewpoints that don’t necessarily align on what to do about climate change and social justice issues.
Non-profit Majority Action analyzed the 2019 proxy voting records of BlackRock and its peer Vanguard Group, and found the two firms voted against at least 16 climate-related shareholder proposals where their support could have given the measures majority support. In contrast BNP Paribas SA and Pacific Investment Management Co. voted in favor of almost all of the 41 climate-change resolutions that Majority Action analyzed in its study.
“The asset management industry is uniquely placed to help drive global decarbonization efforts, but it requires a concerted effort from all, not just the few,” said Alex Bibani, who manages a responsible investment fund at Sarasin & Partners in London. “We are pleased to see BlackRock making these positive steps and hope that others, such as Vanguard, follow suit.”
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—The Carlos Ghosn affair: A look inside the motivations of a fugitive CEO
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—Laws meant to close down tax havens and shut loopholes could have opposite effect
—7 M&As that defined a decade of dealmaking and reshaped the economy
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-01-14--McDonald’s Tests an Oft-Vilified Ingredient in a New Fried Chicken Sandwich War Contender

In McDonald’s push to make a fried-chicken sandwich that better competes with Chick-fil-A, it picked up something extra in the recipe: MSG, the flavor enhancer that has both fans and foes.
The world’s biggest restaurant chain is currently testing chicken sandwiches with monosodium glutamate, an ingredient that adds a savory taste but has also drawn health concerns from consumers. The additive is popping up beyond the new sandwich undergoing trials in Knoxville, Tenn., and Houston, as well as appearing at other locations in tests of sausage, soup bases, and different crispy-chicken fillets.
Chicken is a big deal in fast food. Americans eat more of it each year than any other meat, and consumption is growing. McDonald’s for years has also tried to make a fried-chicken sandwich to rival Chick-fil-A, the Atlanta chain with a cult following. Chick-fil-A also uses MSG in its classic chicken sandwich among other menu items, as does Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, which last summer introduced a sandwich that sold out amid a social media frenzy.
“We are always listening to our customers regarding our menu offerings,” a spokeswoman for McDonald’s said in response to questions about its addition of MSG. Feedback and insights from the test will inform its future decisions, she said.
A representative for Chick-fil-A declined to comment while representatives at Popeyes didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Positive Response
MSG is a flavor enhancer that’s been used for decades after commercial production started in the early 20th century. It’s now commonly associated with takeout food and processed soups and meats. While the ingredient is generally safe, according to the Food and Drug Administration, its use is controversial and some people complain of bad side effects including headache, numbness, and heart palpitations.
McDonald’s does not use MSG in products on its national menu currently and lists ingredients in its national menu on its website, according to the company.
McDonald’s customers in Houston and Knoxville have responded positively to the testing of its Crispy Chicken Sandwich and Deluxe Crispy Chicken sandwich, offered at more than 230 stores, according to the spokeswoman. The trial will continue for a few more weeks. It’s also testing a Portuguese sausage and a soup base with added MSG in select locations in Hawaii, as well as more crispy chicken fillets in Augusta, Georgia, and Seattle.
“We use real, quality ingredients to elevate the taste of our food so our customers all over the world can enjoy,” McDonald’s chief nutritionist Cindy Goody said in a statement. “We’re passionate about our food and take great care to offer delicious, quality menu options to our customers that are produced and sourced in a responsible way.”
In the past four years, the Chicago-based company has tried to clean up its ingredients including removing artificial preservatives from its chicken nuggets. It’s also moving its U.S. egg supply to cage free.
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—Brazilian beauty company Natura wants to give Avon a makeover
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—Consumers are turning away from real fur, but faux fur isn’t a perfect fix
—After a decade of e-commerce, convenience just isn’t enough
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-01-13--Biopharma’s Big Week Is Upon Us

Biopharma’s Big Week Is Upon Us

This is the web version of Brainstorm Health Daily, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top health care news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Hello and happy Monday, readers—I hope you had a wonderful weekend.
Here we go again. It’s that week in San Francisco. The big biopharma bash. The life of the life sciences scene. The Woodstock of would-be drug developers.
I’m speaking, of course, about the 38th annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference—a confab that attracts thousands of investors, biopharma executives, academics, and a fair number of us ink-stained wretches eager to cover the craziness each year.
I won’t be attending the festivities, aka #JPM20, in person this time around. But that doesn’t mean we won’t have plenty of updates, interviews, and key insights from what plays out over the following week in the Bay (in fact, look to this column for some breaking news about a major genomic sequencing player tomorrow).
And there’s already been a few notable developments to set off the conference and all the wheeling-and-dealing that comes with it. For instance: Med tech giant Medtronic announced that it’s acquiring Stimgenics, a company focused on spinal cord stimulation in order to treat chronic pain just ahead of JPM week; Illumina, a titan of the genomics space, reached a partnership with Swiss drug developer Roche to bolster the latter’s diagnostics business; and virtual doctor visit specialist Teladoc announced it would acquire rival InTouch Health in a $600 million deal that includes $150 million in upfront cash.
Much, much more to come. In the meantime, read on for the day’s news.
Sy Mukherjee
sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy
DIGITAL HEALTH
The explosion of knowledge in the genomics world. We have a guest post up on Fortune co-written by Bryan Roberts, one of the investing gurus over at Venrock, and John Stuelpnagel, a co-founder of Illumina and Ariosa Diagnostics, as well as the chairman of biotech Inscripta (note: Venrock is an investor in the latter firm). Bryan and John delve into the explosion of knowledge that's driving change in the genomic sequencing space—a "revolution of observation," as they put it. Read the whole thing here. (Fortune)
INDICATIONS
Biogen doubles down on Alzheimer's bet with Pfizer drug deal. Biogen turned heads across the country with its stunning decision to submit its Alzheimer's treatment, aducanumab, for FDA approval after initially leaving it for dead. It appears the company is doubling down on the Alzheimer's drug development bet—Biogen announced Monday that it's snatching up an early-stage Alzheimer's and Parkinson's drug from Pfizer meant to treat certain symptoms associated with the conditions. This is, admittedly, different from aducanumab, which Biogen believes can treat the underlying disease that drives Alzheimer's (as opposed to just its symptoms). But the firm is clearly taking a different tact from other drug giants who have largely abandoned this space in the wake of multiple failures. (Reuters)
THE BIG PICTURE
Study suggests a modest increase in the minimum wage would be a boon for mental health. How far can a dollar go? According to a new report published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, quite a bit—and with life-saving potential. The Emory university researchers found that just a $1 increase in the minimum wage in each state may be associated with 27,000 fewer suicides (a $2 spike could be linked with nearly 60,000 fewer suicides, according to the study). As always, it's important to note that correlation is not causation. But this does add to the body of work linking economic security with personal wellbeing. (NPR)
REQUIRED READING
Is This the Toughest Job in America? by Erik Sherman
Women Now Outnumber Men in the U.S. Workforce, by Emma Hinchliffe
Every Company Is a Digital Company, by Alan Murray
How the Re-Election of Taiwan's President Could Reshape Asia's Economic Landscape, by Grady McGregor
Sign up for other Fortune newsletters.


fortune--2020-01-13--Barr Blasts Apple for Not Helping Unlock Shooter’s iPhones

U.S. Attorney General William Barr criticized Apple on Monday for not helping investigators unlock iPhones belonging to the alleged mastermind of a Dec. 6 terrorist attack at a Navy base in Florida.
The shooter, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, had two iPhones, and the FBI quickly got court approval on probable cause to search the devices, Barr said in prepared remarks discussing the government’s investigation. The attacker shot one of the phones, but the FBI was able to fix the device, he said. The second phone was also damaged but fixed. Alshamrani died during the incident, and the handsets were locked with passwords and encrypted, so the FBI can’t access information on the devices.
“It is very important to know with whom and about what the shooter was communicating before he died,” but the devices are “engineered to make it virtually impossible to unlock them without the password,” Barr said. “We have asked Apple for their help in unlocking the shooters iPhones. So far Apple has not given us any substantive assistance.”
Tech companies and governments have clashed for years over balancing law enforcement access and user privacy. The latest encryption technology used on iPhones and other smartphones has increased this tension because the devices have become a lot harder for outside experts to hack into.
“This situation perfectly illustrates why it is critical that investigators be able to get access to digital evidence once they have obtained a court order based on probable cause,“ Barr said on Monday. “We call on Apple and other technology companies to help us find a solution so that we can better protect the lives of Americans and prevent future attacks.”
Apple addressed this last week in a statement. “We have the greatest respect for law enforcement and have always worked cooperatively to help in their investigations,” an Apple spokesman said at the time. “When the FBI requested information from us relating to this case a month ago we gave them all of the data in our possession and we will continue to support them with the data we have available.”
Apple regularly responds to warrants by giving investigators access to data that is stored on its servers, such as users’ iCloud account information. However, the company has refused in the past to help authorities unlock iPhones to get on-device data. It has also argued that iPhone security and encryption mean that it can’t access such information even if it wanted to.
When Barr said Apple hasn’t provided substantive assistance, he was referring specifically to help accessing the data on the phone, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said. “They have yet to tell us whether they have the ability to get into the phones themselves,” she added.
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—Greenpeace ranks China’s tech giants on renewable energy
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Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-01-13--With ‘Joker’ Laughing It Up at the Oscars, Sony Teases Jared Leto’s Next Move as Vampire ‘Morbius’

It was an unusually eventful Monday for jokers of all shapes and sizes.
As John Cho and Issa Rae announced the nominees for this year’s Academy Awards, Joker emerged as the Oscars’ most surprising heavyweight, racking up a whopping 11 nominations, with particularly buzzy nods for Joaquin Phoenix’s harrowing portrayal of the DC supervillain and director Todd Phillips (The Hangover), as well as bids for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Meanwhile, Morbius—Sony’s gritty reimagining of the “living vampire” who menaced Spider-Man in many a comic-book panel—got its first trailer, revealing an emaciated Jared Leto as the fanged antihero. After Leto’s dangerously ill protagonist attempts an experimental blood treatment involving a great many bats, he’s transformed into a vampiric creature who menaces the fine folks of New York—including Michael Keaton’s Vulture, a direct link tying the film to Spider-Man: Homecoming and, more uncertainly, the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole.
The timing couldn’t have been more entertaining for those who’ve kept abreast of Leto’s abject fury surrounding Phoenix’s casting in Joker. Leto, a musician-turned-actor, played Joker in 2016’s Suicide Squad and was notoriously committed to the part, despite appearing in only 10 minutes of director David Ayer’s final cut. Leto reportedly expected Warner Bros. to set him up with a standalone Joker films, as well as with appearances in future DC films. When Suicide Squad earned awful reviews at the box office, leading execs to can Ayer’s planned sequel and instead tap James Gunn to reboot the property, those plans seemed at least temporarily put on hold.
Enter Joker. Originally greenlit as a smaller one-off experiment by WB executives, Phillips’ film has emerged as a critical and commercial smash, having grossed $1.067 billion against a budget in the range of $55 to $70 million despite polarized reviews. Without a doubt, it’s the most attention-getting of WB’s forays into the DC Comics sphere yet, and it’s likely to set the tone for future entries in the DC Extended Universe. With Phoenix racking up particular accolades for his performance as the Clown Prince of Crime, it seems more unlikely than ever that Leto will reprise the role of Joker.
So instead, he’ll have to contend with playing another dangerous supervillain for Sony, a studio surely more interested in launching a franchise with Leto at its head these days than WB and DC. And based on the first trailer, Leto honestly might be a more apt fit for the character of an emaciated vampire. To wit, in 2006 he was once named Prince of Darkness at Fangoria’s annual Chainsaw Awards, back when he was touring with 30 Seconds to Mars and appearing in all kinds of Shining-influenced music videos. This was always his role to win.
Morbius follows Sony’s success with 2018’s Venom, a darker supervillain saga led by Tom Hardy as another Spider-Man antagonist. Like Venom, Morbius hails entirely from Sony, and it shares that film’s shadow-soaked, gritty aesthetic. But intriguingly, the Morbius trailer suggests Sony is interested in eventually bringing Leto’s vampire into conflict with the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s current iteration of Spider-Man, requiring a little explanation as to which studios currently own the rights to which of the comic-book characters in play here.
Marvel has licensed Spider-Man and his related antagonists (including Venom and Morbius) to Sony for going on two decades, under the terms of a pact forged prior to Disney’s $4 billion acquisition of Marvel in 2009, which laid the groundwork for the current Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy was an exclusively Sony affair, as were Marc Webb’s two Amazing Spider-Man films featuring Andrew Garfield. In more recent years, Sony has worked with Marvel and its head architect Kevin Feige to launch the current iteration of Spider-Man, played by Tom Holland. Under the terms of their unusual deal, Marvel and Feige help to guide the creative direction of Spider-Man movies for Sony, with the latter studio distributing and reaping the financial benefits for standalone titles like Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home (the latter of which became the first Spidey film to pass $1 billion globally).
In exchange, Sony gives Marvel permission to use Spider-Man in other Marvel films, allowing for his sizable role in Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as to a lesser degree Avengers: Endgame.
But the Morbius trailer, even more than the entirety of Venom (which made relatively few allusions to the MCU despite using familiar Spider-Man characters like Daily Bugle reporter Eddie Brock), suggests that Sony is thoroughly committed to working within the shadows of Marvel’s existing franchise, rather than pushing forward with a universe all its own.
In addition to featuring Michael Keaton’s Vulture—incarcerated after the events of Homecoming – in a seemingly significant role, the trailer features a shot of Leto’s antihero storming past graffiti over a poster of Spider-Man, which reads “murderer.” Without spoilers, that little easter egg would seem to place Morbius after the post-credits scene for Spider-Man: Far From Home, in which the public’s perception of Spider-Man was warped by a video message from Jake Gyllenhaal’s tech-savvy villain Mysterio. That same post-credits scene, intriguingly, confirmed that J.K. Simmons, who played Daily Bugle boss J. Jonah Jameson way back in Sony’s Raimi-directed Spider-Man trilogy, is surprisingly still playing Jameson in the MCU.
In other words, just how closely tied Sony’s darker superhero films will be to the Marvel Cinematic Universe has never been a more pertinent question. Sony and Marvel’s deal hasn’t been without its issues, and the studios briefly called it quits before reaching a new agreement to continue their previous alliance.
But Morbius appears to be sowing seeds for an on-screen collision between Holland’s Spider-Man and Leto’s Morbius—and more curiously, for a clashing of tones between Sony-Marvel’s lighthearted, globe-trotting Spider-Man films and Sony’s darker, almost Gothic supervillain stories. Could the studio still be interested in architecting a Sinister Six film—featuring Leto’s Morbius, Hardy’s Venom, and Keaton’s Vulture? Those plans date back to Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man films, though there’ve been no new developments on it since 2013, when Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) was attached to write and direct.
With Joker as massive a hit as it is, now with Oscar voters as well as mainstream audiences, Sony is also perhaps invested in plotting its own series of gritty thrillers involving comic-book characters. Though Venom, as directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland), fell along more standard comic-book-movie lines, Leto’s unpredictability as a leading man—and the horror-tinged aspects of Morbius as a character—could actually work in Sony’s favor on that count.
Whether Morbius finally gives Leto a superhero franchise that won’t be usurped by the next movie out of the gate remains to be seen. The film, directed by Daniel Espinosa (Safe House), opens July 31, where it will be blessedly free from any super-powered competition, given that Fox (with The New Mutants on April 3), Marvel (with Black Widow on May 1) and WB/DC (with Wonder Woman 1984 on June 5) will all have already had their time atop the summer box office.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Indie movies and diverse performers mostly absent from 2020 Oscar noms
—Picard promises less tech, more humanity with “hope the dominant emotion,” according to Patrick Stewart
—When it comes to streaming media, Quibi made the most of CES
—Hulu will exclusively stream new FX series—and other updates from peak TV land
—How Neil Young’s eccentric online home was born
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-01-13--Former Top Stockbroker on Trial for Losing Clients’ Life Savings

A former Pennsylvania stockbroker who was kicked out of the securities industry and ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages to customers he allegedly fleeced went on trial Monday on an unusual set of criminal fraud charges.
Anthony Diaz was fired by five brokerages and resigned from another amid persistent customer complaints and rules infractions. Yet he kept investing other people’s money until Wall Street’s self-regulator had seen enough and permanently barred him in 2015.
Some investors say they lost their life savings because of Diaz.
“These were exclusively retirees or people close to retirement age when they met Diaz,” said Adam Gana, a veteran securities lawyer who represented some of his former customers. “Widows, elderly, unsophisticated investors who were totally bilked by him.”
The ex-broker has said through his attorney that his actions were “proper and legal.” He pleaded not guilty to an 11-count indictment alleging wire and mail fraud. Each count carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence.
Jury selection began Monday in Scranton.
The trial comes amid a court battle over a new Trump administration rule that requires securities brokers to keep the interests of their customers ahead of their own. Democrats and consumer advocates have said the rule actually weakens investor protections, and seven states and the District of Columbia have sued the Securities and Exchange Commission to block it.
Once regarded as one of the nation’s top brokers, Diaz earned millions of dollars over a 15-year career by pushing high-fee, high-risk “alternative investments” meant for wealthy, sophisticated investors. Prosecutors say he had unsuspecting clients sign blank documents, then falsified their net worth, income, investment experience and risk tolerance to make it appear they met the suitability requirements of the products.
What Diaz sold as “no-lose” investments with guaranteed rates of return were, in fact, highly speculative and came with long holding periods that tied up clients’ money, according to court documents.
The stockbroker also lied to clients about having been fired, the indictment said, claiming he left each firm voluntarily.
The criminal charges against Diaz are “unbelievably rare,” according to Gana. While brokers have been charged with outright theft, Gana said, “I can’t recall a single indictment of a broker for falsifying documents and making unsuitable investments.”
A phone call and email were left with Diaz’s lawyer, Darren Gelber, seeking comment on the government’s case.
Gelber asked a judge to block prosecutors from telling the jury that Diaz had been fired repeatedly and barred from selling securities, saying the information was prejudicial and irrelevant. Judge Malachy Mannion denied the request last week, meaning that jurors will be free to hear about Diaz’s lengthy disciplinary record.
Two years ago, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ordered Diaz to pay some $4 million in damages to 19 former clients. He has not complied, an agency spokeswoman said last week.
Gana said he looked for assets owned by Diaz that could be used to satisfy the damage award but came up empty, “which is unfortunate because he left a lot of damage in his wake.”
Diaz has skipped out on at least one other judgment.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Forget policymakers. Greta Thunberg and her allies are targeting CEOs
—Investors see a 2020 recession coming—but think they’ll make money
—The Carlos Ghosn affair: A look inside the motivations of a fugitive CEO
—Laws meant to close down tax havens and shut loopholes could have opposite effect
—What a $1,000 in 10 top stocks a decade ago would be worth today
Subscribe to Fortune’s forthcoming Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


fortune--2020-01-13--Why Are the #OscarsStillMostlyWhiteAndMale?

This is the web version of raceAhead, Fortune’s daily newsletter on race, culture, and inclusive leadership. To get it delivered daily to your inbox, sign up here.
April Reign, founder of the hashtag campaign #OscarsSoWhite, knew by 8:35 a.m. Eastern time today that she was going to have a busy day.
Inclusion advocates worried that this year’s Academy Award precursors were grim omens for the big show. The Golden Globes ignored a slew of female directors to nominate only men; the BAFTA Film Awards nominated an all-white slate of actors.
The New York Times’s Carpetbagger column called out the tension early.
“And though the academy… has taken great pains to diversify itself since the years of #OscarsSoWhite, this past week suggests that other awards bodies still have a lot of soul-searching to do, and that this issue may require a total shift in what’s considered weighty and worthy.”
Turns out, that soul searching continues. The most inclusive part of the awards were the nomination announcers, Insecure star Issa Rae and Star Trek actor Jon Cho.
One lone actor of color—Harriet star Cynthia Erivo—was nominated for best actress. The Farewell‘s Awkwafina, Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers, and Just Mercy‘s Jamie Foxx, were among the expected nods which went un-nodded.
And female directors were snubbed by the Academy again this year. The five nominees are Bong Joon Ho (Parasite, the first Korean movie to ever be nominated for Best Picture), Sam Mendes (1917), Todd Phillips (Joker), Martin Scorsese (The Irishman) and Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood).
“Congratulations to those men,” Issa Rae joked.
But Reign was unmoved and unsurprised. “Hello! Busy day ahead & you want to discuss #OscarsSoWhite, now 5 yrs strong. Happy to help!” Reign tweeted, with a link for journalists on deadline.
While the erasure of talent of color was egregious, the director category was particularly disappointing, in part because 2019 had been such a breakthrough year.
The Los Angeles Times notes the Oscar-level films that could have been considered beside Greta Gerwig’s resplendent Little Women: Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, Marielle Heller’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers, Kasi Lemmons’s Harriet, Mati Diop’s Atlantics, Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Chinonye Chukwu’s Clemency, Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy, Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart, Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir, and Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale.
“Those 11 films netted a total of three nominations: Harriet for actress in a leading role, Cynthia Erivo, and original song, Stand Up; and Beautiful Day’s Tom Hanks for supporting actor.” (Little Women did get six total nominations, including one for Greta Gerwig for best adapted screenplay.)
Only five women in history have ever been nominated for Best Director—yet changing the ratio hasn’t seemed to help.
But a look behind the scenes suggests that perhaps it’s the Oscars who should be snubbed.
Twelve women directed some of the top-grossing films in 2019, representing 10.6% of all directors, up from 4.5% in 2018, according to a new study from USC Annenberg’s Inclusion Initiative. You can thank Universal Pictures in large measure, which distributed five films helmed by women last year—including Melina Matsoukas’s Queen and Slim. Universal also became the first major studio in 2019 to support the “4% Challenge” and commit to work with at least one female director on a feature film over the next 18 months.
Well done, Universal.
I’ll give Reign the last word, since I’m pretty sure she had this statement ready to go.
“In the past, the pushback against #OscarsSoWhite was, ‘There just weren’t enough performances to nominate.’ Well, that’s not the case this year,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “There was a wealth of talent—and not just of black performers but of various marginalized communities—that was overlooked. And it’s really unfortunate. I’m interested in what Hollywood and the Academy are going to do to make the entertainment industry reflect those that support it.”
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
On Point
Hannah Peters—Getty Images
Serena Williams wins Williams, who’s currently No. 10-ranked, won her first singles tournament since her daughter was born. Williams bested Jessica Pegula, 6-3, 6-4, at the ASB Classic on Sunday in Auckland, New Zealand. “Finally,” she seemed to say to herself after shaking Pegula’s hand at the net. Her last singles win was at the 2017 Australian Open when she was two months pregnant. In a triumphant photo, Williams holds her trophy in one hand, and her daughter on the other hip.
New York Times
Senator Cory Booker ends his campaign The emailed announcement was vintage Booker. "Friend, it’s with a full heart that I share this news—I’ve made the decision to suspend my campaign for president," he wrote. There was no more path to victory, he said. It’s worth noting that there will be no candidate of color in the upcoming Democratic debate. "The way this is shaping up, especially with the rules of the DNC, it is preferencing millionaires and billionaires and a lot of other things that don't ever translate into viability in Iowa," he said recently on MSNBC.
USA Today
Families in the UK are sending relatives with dementia to Thailand for care It’s the logical intersection of untenable long-term care costs and the growing medical tourism industry. Some of the facilities are British-run, some are Thai-run, and some are Swiss-run, but all seem to be providing some level of comfort at a terrible time in people’s lives. "The [Thai] government and private investors are very active in cultivating this as part of their economic development,” one expert notes. For the same price as inadequate care, patients are getting 1:1 attention in world-class facilities. “I can well understand people choosing this option, given the state of anxiety about care in the UK,” says a U.K. care expert.
The Guardian
On Background
McDonald’s and Black America: (Not exactly) a love story Marcia Chatelain, a history professor at Georgetown University, has written a book that explains how McDonald’s, now vilified for its role in the obesity epidemic, became a staple in the lives of Black Americans. Her new book, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, tells the story of how Civil Rights era upheavals—including stores damaged in riots after Martin Luther King’s murder—helped pave the way for Black entrepreneurs to turn stores in undesirable neighborhoods into profitable enterprises. “The period of time I cover in the book is where black people across ideological, political, and economic spectrums are still navigating their role as consumers,” Chatelain tells Vox. Back then, McDonald’s was the first assembly-line food startup, and it played an important role for Black consumers. “It’s also for people who had very hostile experience of restaurants or very limited experience of restaurants.”
Vox
Job-hunting after a “certain age” Age bias is everywhere, so plan for it says Dan Lyons, the author of Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble. He cites some semi-controversial advice from career expert Marc Cendella—just make everything before the year 2000 disappear from your LinkedIn. It’s not about being dishonest, it’s about gaming a gatekeeper system that will shunt your resume into the trash if they think your passion and experience isn’t in the here and now. And once you get in the door? Show you work well with others. “Show them you’re flexible and adaptable. You can collaborate. You can take direction and feedback from younger people.”
Fortune
Understanding Attica The African American Intellectual Society has put together an extensive online “roundtable” discussion on Heather Ann Thompson’s book Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. They tapped an array of historians and other experts to put the material into a variety of contexts, from writing trauma in historical works to exploring how the uprising fits into the broader politics of today. It’s all fascinating material, and the roundtable itself is a model for showcasing expertise and history online.
AAIHS
Quote
“With my first film, there was a bidding war with people who hadn’t even read the script—studios—just because they heard I was the female Spike Lee. But they weren’t looking at the work. They didn’t believe that we had anything of merit for ourselves. It’s just that we were the flavor, that’s it. As an African-American woman who speaks up and fights against things that are racist or misogynistic, I felt a very big backlash. If I had a penny for every time I was blacklisted and somebody told me, ‘You will never work again,’ I’d be super, super wealthy.”
—Film director Darnell Martin, in an interview with the New York Times on being part of the first wave of promising Black filmmakers, in the 1990s.


fortune--2020-01-13--An Explosion of Knowledge: Multiplexed Interventional Genomics

Disclaimer: Venrock is an investor in Inscripta.
Discovery biology, pre-genomics, followed a linear path: develop a hypothesis, design an experiment and carefully control variables, one at a time, to prove or disprove the hypothesis.
The challenge with this “classical” approach is not only the “one step after another” pace, but the fact that the formation of a hypothesis is limited by our current knowledge and imagination. Not only do we not know what we don’t know, we cannot even put boundaries on how vast that negative knowledge space is—a thimble or an ocean’s worth of possibility?
When it comes to biology, our knowledge remains very limited, even after decades of eye-opening discoveries. Even for the most well-researched, monogenic diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, there are vast gaps in our knowledge. It was only in 2018 that scientists, using single cell genomics, discovered the actual cell type in the human airway that expresses the CFTR mutation causing cystic fibrosis.
While the following quote accurately describes the field of genomics, it entirely misses the dramatic impact that genomics platforms have had on scientific experimentation:
Genomics: a branch of biotechnology concerned with applying the techniques of genetics and molecular biology to the genetic mapping and DNA sequencing of sets of genes or the complete genomes of selected organisms Merriam Webster
Over the last 20 years, new experimentation platforms like arrays, next-generation sequencing and single cell analysis have dramatically increased experimental throughput while decreasing experimental cost, thereby enabling genome-wide analysis within a single experiment.
These exponential improvements (10^6+) have unleashed a multitude of non-hypothesis driven approaches that have catapulted the genomics field forward; scientists have moved from developing and testing a hypothesis regarding a single gene (…then rinse and repeat) and instead now study many, many genes simultaneously.
While these non-hypothesis driven, hugely multiplexed experiments have turbo-charged the field of biology, it has largely been a revolution of observation.
For instance, in genome-wide association studies (GWAS), scientists commonly compare, across the genome, a diseased population versus a control population -seeking variations that are statistically different. These studies have yielded putative disease-causing variants and, by inference, putative disease-causing genes.
That is terrific; however, there have been two limiting factors:
One has had to rely on low throughput, high cost experiments to validate these findings. Additionally, the identified variants often display no connection to our current functional understanding of the disease, showing up in “junk” DNA – primarily referred to as junk because we do not understand its functional importance… yet. Perhaps more importantly, studies have been limited to interrogating naturally occurring biology. We are only testing what is available in nature, yet evolution is incomplete. The ability to test non-natural variation would eliminate the “looking for your keys under the lamp-post” conundrum and dramatically expand the exploration space, very likely resulting in many, heretofore unimaginable, biological insights and potential commercial opportunities.
Advances in synthetic biology, such as CRISPR, and the initial merging of genomics with synthetic biology is beginning to allow genomics to explore more than the naturally occurring genetic space, moving the field from an “observation of nature” science to an interventional endeavor.
While next-generation sequencing has revealed millions of naturally occurring variants, the ability to intervene in a cell to create a new variation and then observe, test and measure the results at scale will dramatically expand our biological knowledge.
An early approach is Perturb-seq, which enables researchers to turn off single genes in single cells, thousands at a time, and then observe the results through RNA sequencing.
Perturb-seq provides genomic scale and resolution, allowing both multiplexed intervention in a genome as well as analysis of non-natural configurations for the first time.
However, Perturb-seq addresses only one type of mutational change, that of stopping a single gene’s transcription. Additional tools would allow us to experimentally analyze other types of genetic variation—single nucleotide polymorphisms, multi-base variations, structural changes, promoter swaps—at genomic scale.
Beyond increasing biological potential, scientists will want to explore such variation in combinations of variants. For diseases caused by a single, highly penetrant mutation, we have learned a lot.
In fact, this knowledge has fueled a growth industry in discoveries to treat rare diseases by pharma and biotech companies. We know a lot about monogenic diseases because they are easy to study with our current tools. However, most diseases plaguing our society, like heart disease and cancer, result from the interactions between multiple genes and their environment. To unravel this complexity, we need genomic scale tools that create multiple mutations in cell lines and then challenge them with different conditions, all in large multiplex and for reasonable experimental cost.
These capabilities are on the horizon. For instance, a recently launched tool from Inscripta created over 200,000 massively parallelized, precisely defined variants distributed throughout the E. coli genome.
There were several remarkable effects: (1) the discovery of over 100 variants that increase lysine production, most of which were outside of known genes; and (2) the discovery of three variants which each increased production only several fold individually, but over 14,000-fold when combined. These results further underscore our limited understanding of biology even in one of the most studied pathways in one of the most studied organisms.
Although recent advances have unveiled tremendous knowledge and revived interest and excitement among scientists and entrepreneurs, the more we learn the more we realize we still have to learn.
Distributed genomic tools that allow for cost-effective, highly multiplexed, recursive genetic editing combined with current genetic analysis platforms like single cell and next-generation sequencing will enable a closed loop of intervention and analysis that allows us to explore the full potential of nature’s variations.
We can hardly imagine, much less prognosticate, how this will impact our understanding of biology, or the new products that will arise to treat disease, produce better crops, and create novel materials.
John Stuelpnagel is a co-founder of both Illumina and Ariosa Diagnostics. Additionally, he currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Inscripta. Bryan Roberts is a partner at Venrock.
As noted above, Venrock is an investor in Inscripta.
More opinion in Fortune:
—MGM Resorts CEO: What happens in Vegas no longer stays in Vegas
—I worked at McKinsey. Here’s how the firm needs to change
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—Pharma must stop chasing shiny objects and start embracing practical technology
—The questions companies should ask to prepare for a new era of business
Listen to our audio briefing, Fortune 500 Daily


fortune--2020-01-13--Forget Policymakers. Greta Thunberg and Her Allies are Targeting CEOs Now

Every day for weeks now, the images have come in from Australia as wildfires ravage a land mass twice the size of Switzerland. Scenes of charred kangaroos and koalas, flame-engulfed homes, choking smoke powerful enough to create its own weather system have brought home the potential calamity of a changing climate.
Half a world away, Siemens, the German industrial giant that has pitched itself in recent years as a corporate advocate of climate action, finds itself unexpectedly in the middle of the uproar. In recent days, young climate activists have staged protests online and at Siemens locations around the country, spurred on by none other than Greta Thunberg.
The controversy revolves around a small (by Siemens’ standards) €18 million rail contract in a part of Queensland called the Galilee Basin, home to the Carmichael Mine, the country’s biggest planned coal mine. The project will finally provide the mine a vital transport link to the coast for export, and could open up the surrounding mining region to further resource exploitation for decades.
Siemens isn’t laying down the tracks. It’s delivering the rail signaling infrastructure. But these days, conducting any business that’s connected to Australia’s coal industry is seen by climate activists as being part of the greater environmental problem—one that’s rapidly becoming an all encompassing geopolitical and economic one, too.
Welcome to climate activism in 2020.
Thunberg’s involvement is notable too. Rather than focus her efforts exclusively on lawmakers, she is now going after corporate polluters head-on for their alleged climate misdeeds. Next week, she’s off to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to urge CEOs to de-invest in fossil fuels. On the eve of Davos, Siemens is the first big corporate scalp Thunberg and her army of supporters have claimed.
Force majeure
For now, the company is refusing to back out of the project, putting the company under increasing pressure from consumers and activists beyond Germany to cut ties.
Scientists believe Australian dependence on selling coal to fire foreign power grids in Asia has backfired, as the latter’s carbon emissions ultimately contribute heavily to global carbon emissions, leaving the island continent vulnerable to plagues of prolonged droughts, soaring heat and forest fires widely viewed as a harbinger of extreme climate change.
Campaigners, including Thunberg, had lobbied Siemens to abandon the controversial project, claiming rivals Hitachi Rail of Japan and France’s Alstom had allegedly ruled out working with Carmichael’s Indian operator, Adani Mining.
When pressed on the matter over the weekend, Siemens said its hands were tied, CFO-speak for a force majeure.
“There is practically no legally and economically responsible way to unwind the contract without neglecting fiduciary duties,” said Chief Executive Joe Kaeser, after convening an extraordinary meeting of his top executives to re-examine the deal, in a statement shared with Fortune. “Whether or not Siemens provides the signaling, the project will still go ahead.”
Siemens had positioned itself four years ago as the first major industrial group to commit to the goal of carbon neutrality in 2030. “We’re pumping too much CO2 into the atmosphere. One reason for these excesses is that civilization relies too heavily on fossil fuels, so it’s a good thing that climate activists like Greta Thunberg are mobilizing young people,” Kaeser wrote in October, under a LinkedIn post entitled “Concrete Steps that Companies Can Take to Protect the Climate.”
Siemens is the latest German company to be targeted by climate activists. In September, over 15,000 protesters picketed the Frankfurt auto show, helping contribute to a severe decline in visitors attending the biennial trade fair.
“This is naturally an enormous disaster for Siemens, precisely because it deliberately attempted to establish itself as a sustainable company, for example through its efforts in the field of smart cities,” said Dietmar Huber, Managing Partner of Joschka Fischer & Company, a Berlin-based strategic consultancy that advises companies on political issues like environmentalism. “Now a small, seemingly insignificant contract threatens to completely destroy any credibility it has as a company committed to tackling climate change.”
“Noisy anti-coal minority”
Cognizant of the optics, the Siemens CEO sought to deflect criticism by taking the unusual step of posting a letter sent from the Australian government, known for its close ties to the mining industry. In it, a cabinet minister urged Siemens “not to be intimidated by the noisy anti-coal minority” and warned the German group that buckling under the pressure from “bullies” would be “an insult to working people of Australia.”
Kaeser, who is seeking an extension to his CEO contract this year, added that he had not been briefed on the deal beforehand due to its miniscule size, representing not even a rounding error amid the roughly €100 billion in annual orders the company receives.
Such a statement indirectly puts his Australian chief, Jeff Connolly, in the firing line as the deal was penned on Dec. 10, by which point raging brushfires had already reached the outskirts of major Australian cities like Sydney.
Moreover, the mine has been in the headlines for years. It was so controversial that environmental activists shamed roughly 60 companies— including Siemens’ next door neighbors Allianz and Munich Re—into committing they would not provide services to Adani.
Connolly did not respond to a request from Fortune for comment.
Siemens’ decision to stick it out in Australia leaves it vulnerable to charges its carbon neutrality claims are little more than empty greenwashing. Australia’s inferno has already devastated over twice as much land as the Amazon fires earlier this year in scenes that have coined terms such as “mega-blaze”.
The incident has lit up parts of the Internet. Some commentators took to social media threatening to boycott Siemens’ products, doubtless unaware that Siemens is a business-to-business (B2B) company that doesn’t sell to end consumers. Perversely, this would harm Germany’s Bosch that manufacturers Siemens white goods under license. “This is on our radar screen,” confirmed a source at the company.
It also ensures for a potentially volatile debate with investors at the February 5th annual meeting. Activists have recently taken to acquiring stock in order to lecture management on their failure to tackle climate change while holding protests outside HQ.
“For only 20 million euros, he’s willing to sell the credibility of Siemens,” tweeted Nick Heubeck, one of the FridaysForFuture—a then-15-year-old Thunberg set up FFF in the summer of 2018 “to protest the lack of action on climate change”—activists that met with Kaeser on Friday. “We will see you at the shareholders’ meeting!”
Showing their social media savvy, FFF has been plastering Twitter with the Siemens logo stamped onto images of Australian forests in flames. In the corner is the photo-shopped images of cuddly koalas and kangaroos.
"Pray for Australia schreiben einige. Und: Stay safe. Uns reicht das nicht. Es sind Konsequenzen gefragt. Unter anderem von Siemens." – @Luisamneubauer & ich heute im @WELT-Gastbeitrag zu #StopAdani.
➡ Hier gehts zum Kommentar: https://t.co/s2sgRrrqYv ⬅ pic.twitter.com/pYpmSgqmc3 — Nick Heubeck (@NickHeubeck) January 7, 2020
Ironically the minute size of the deal may help them, as it is more difficult to argue effectively that greed was the motivating factor behind its decision.
“A commitment to contractual obligations is very important for a B2B company, a customer wants to know they can trust their partner not to jump ship at the last second,” said Manfred Abraham, CEO of brand management consultancy BrandCap. “Would you touch it now with the wildfires in Australia all over the news, no, you’d be crazy. But by only supplying rail signaling technology, it puts them at a safer distance.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How Nissan-Renault became a ‘masquerade of an alliance,’ according to Ghosn
—Investors see a 2020 recession coming—but think they’ll make money
—As investors shrug off Iran concerns, analysts find the complacency ‘disconcerting’
—Laws meant to close down tax havens and shut loopholes could have opposite effect
—What a $1,000 investment in 10 top stocks a decade ago would be worth today
Subscribe to Fortune’s forthcoming Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


fortune--2020-01-13--Microsoft Will Stop Supporting Windows 7 on Tuesday

Windows 7 holds a special place in the heart of many PC users, but as of Tuesday, Jan. 14, Microsoft is washing its hands of the beloved operating system.
That’s the date the software giant will officially no longer support Windows 7, meaning it won’t provide any more software or security updates. And that could open the door for hackers.
“While you could continue to use your PC running Windows 7, without continued software and security updates, it will be at greater risk for viruses and malware,” the company said on its Website.
Microsoft is urging Windows 7 devotees to upgrade to Windows—and encouraging them to get a new PC as they do so. The chance to upgrade PCs from Windows 7 to Windows 10 for free expired roughly three years ago.
“Going forward, the best way for you to stay secure is on Windows 10,” Microsoft said. “And the best way to experience Windows 10 is on a new PC. While it is possible to install Windows 10 on your older device, it is not recommended.”
Microsoft has been trying to step away from Windows 7 for years, five in fact, but the system’s extreme popularity has forced the company to extend support. Many banks, doctors offices and even airlines have used Windows 7 as recently as last year to operate their equipment.
Hackers routinely probe operating systems for weaknesses and with Microsoft no longer supplying patches, any new vulnerabilities will be fully exploitable on machines with Windows 7. That could be especially damaging for companies that use the OS on devices that have sensitive customer information.
Consumers can purchase a copy of Windows 10 for as little as $139, though a copy of Windows 10 Pro runs $200.
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—Greenpeace ranks China’s tech giants on renewable energy
—Sex tech steals the spotlight at CES
—Why there are so many scooters in Los Angeles
—What a $1,000 investment in 10 top stocks a decade ago would be worth today
—Best of CES 2020? Tech sites’ opinions differ wildly
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fortune--2020-01-13--Ticket Prices for the LSU vs. Clemson College Football National Championship Near Record Highs

College football fans are showing no signs of burning out on the Clemson Tigers.
The price for a ticket to Monday’s College Football National Championship Game on the secondary market is the second highest of all time, according to TickPick. The average ticket price stands at $1,631.81. Only the Georgia-Alabama matchup in Atlanta in 2018 fetched more, with prices averaging over $2,210 for that game.
Some tickets for Monday’s game are going as high as $1,933.
Part of the reason for that is location. This year’s game will be held at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, La. That’s basically a home field advantage for the LSU Tigers, as the school is based in Baton Rouge, just 79 miles away. And it’s not an onerous journey from South Carolina, where Clemson is located.
Ticket prices on other reseller sites are even more robust. At Ebay-owned Stubhub, the top ticket price is a jaw dropping $76,000 for a Terrace End Zone seat. Nine tickets are in the $9,000-$9,500 range. (Tickets start at $793 on that site.)
On SeatGeek, tickets start at $745 and go as high as $20,200, though most range below $2,500.
For what it’s worth, this year’s average is still better than what fans were paying when Clemson and Alabama met in Glendale, Ariz. in 2017. For that game, tickets on the secondary market were as low as $190, with an average price of $675, the lowest price since 2011.
This year’s National Championship Game will be played Monday Jan. 13 at 8:00 p.m. ET. The game will be broadcast on ESPN.
Read: How to watch the LSU vs. Clemson College Football National Championship game online for free—even without cable


fortune--2020-01-13--How to Watch LSU vs. Clemson in the College Football National Championship Game Online for Free—Even

How to Watch LSU vs. Clemson in the College Football National Championship Game Online for Free—Even Without Cable

No matter what your alma mater, it’s hard to argue that the two most worthy teams aren’t playing in this year’s College Football National Championship.
Both Clemson University and LSU went undefeated this year, posting 14-0 records, though the way each got to the year’s final game —which we might as well call the Tiger Bowl at this point —was dramatically different.
The LSU Tigers dominated the Oklahoma Sooners in the semifinals, while the Clemson Tigers had a stunning fourth quarter rally that let them conquer Ohio State. Clemson, though, is in its fourth national title game in five years and is aiming for its second consecutive national championship.
Watching the game can be a tricky proposition if you’ve joined the growing number of people who have cut the cable cord, though, since it airs on ESPN. The local sports bar is an option, but it’s inevitably a crowded, distracting one. And not everyone has friends close by who are into the same team.
Fortunately, you have options. Here’s a look at some of your options to watch the College National Championships if your current TV setup proves problematic.
What time does the College Football National Championship air?
Chris Graythen—Getty Images
You won’t be able to watch Clemson vs. LSU battle on a traditional network. The game will air at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Can I watch the College Football National Championship game online without a cable subscription?
There are loads of online options to watch bowl games, some completely free and others with free trial periods. If you’re not near a TV, you can log into ESPN.com or the ESPN app,
Prefer another option? Here are a few that work just as well.
ESPN+
Stream live sports and original series with this premium service. The downside? There’s no free trial.
Disney+
There is, however, a free trial for Disney’s bundle of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. You’ve got seven days to enjoy the services for free, after which you’ll pay $12.99 per month for all three combined.
Locast.org
This free service lets you watch local broadcast channels with no monthly fees or contracts. The hiccup is: It only services part of the country.
Sling TV
Dish Network’s Sling is one of the OG cord cutter options. It has an extensive selection of ESPN options in its lower tiered “Orange” plan. That will run you $30 per month, but you won’t get Fox Sports in that bundle. (For that, you’ll also need to subscribe to Sling’s “Blue” plan, which bumps the cost to $45-per-month.) You’ll have a 7-day free trial first.
AT&T TVNow
Formerly known as DirecTV Now, AT&T’s streaming service will run you $65 per month and up after a 7-day free trial.
Hulu with Live TV
You can try the service free for a week. Once that’s up, you’ll pay $45 per month.
YouTube TV
After a seven day trial, you can expect monthly charges of $50.
Fubo TV
This sports-focused cord cutting service carries CBS in most markets. There’s a seven-day free trial, followed by monthly charges of $55.
Can I watch the College National Championship game on Amazon?
Sadly, no. No college bowl games, including the National Championship, are currently scheduled to stream on Amazon this year.
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—Ticket prices for the LSU vs. Clemson game near record highs
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Subscribe to Fortune’s forthcoming Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.