fortune--2020-05-24--Will the airlines survive the coronavirus? Yes—and here’s how

It’s likely that no sudden crisis in the annals of American capitalism has unleashed greater devastation on any industry than the coronavirus’s blow to U.S. airlines. Start with the 80% to 90% drop in ticket sales, and social distancing precautions that leave middle seats empty and the few planes airborne often half-full. Then add the prospect that companies will sharply curb pricey business travel, and the gigantic accumulation of debt required to buck those many headwinds, and it would be logical to conclude that this critical sector can’t survive in anything like its current form.
“How do you design an industry for 40% of the traffic it was getting the year before—and that’s the best-case scenario for 2020?” says Joe Brancatelli, publisher of the business travel site JoeSentMe.com. “We could be facing a wave of bankruptcies or even reregulation. The new normal is impossible to predict.”
Brancatelli’s warning is well aimed. If the lockdown extends far longer than expected, or fear of packed planes prompts Americans to shun air travel well into the future, it’s possible that only government intervention can save the industry. In that case, the airlines would operate as public utilities, where U.S. agencies set prices ensuring carriers cover their costs––the system prior to deregulation in 1978––or the U.S. could provide antitrust relief, enabling the airlines to jointly set fares in an OPEC-style cartel.
But the most likely outcome is that today’s major airlines return to health within three years, and that the Big Four that rule the skies today––American, United, Delta, and Southwest––will still be dominant in post-virus America. The big difference? “The major carriers will be 10% to 20% smaller than they are now,” says a former industry leader. “In the near term, it will be ugly. We’ll see painful restructurings, but probably not bankruptcies for the majors.”
In his view, the airlines will succeed in substantially shrinking the “capacity,” meaning the number of seats offered on their routes. They’ll get there by trimming their fleets. The majors will ground older planes, not just fuel guzzlers but all save for the most fuel-efficient jets. “They’ll emerge with smaller, more efficient fleets,” he says. “The crisis will lead them to overshoot in the direction of less capacity.”
Of course, we don’t know how many people will be flying three years from now. But the shrinkage in seats being offered on busy routes means that flights will be even more packed than in recent years, and prices won’t be any lower. “The result is that the carriers will be getting more revenue for each square foot on the plane,” says the former executive.
The airlines should also benefit from what looks like an extended period of low oil prices that will curb the jet fuel bill that last year accounted for 30.3% of the Big Four’s operating costs. “If robust economic growth returns, then all three things that have always formed the formula for success, GDP, capacity, and fuel costs will be working in the airlines’ favor,” adds the ex-airline honcho.
The industry sustains the power to rebound for a basic reason: The overwhelming dominance of the majors. The Big Four handle 86% of U.S. traffic, and at around half of America’s 100 largest airports, a single carrier offers the majority of seats. It’s the the three “network carriers,” Delta, American, and United that build and defend those “fortress hubs,” including strongholds for Delta in Atlanta, American in Dallas, and United in Minneapolis. The majors have tightened their grip to the point where just one or two carriers serve well over half of America’s 100 busiest domestic routes, according to estimates from Kevin Mitchell, chief of consumer advocacy group Business Travel Coalition. On many of those big city-to-city pairs, a single airline holds a market share exceeding 70%.
For now, the overriding challenge is surviving what looks like a terrifying, even fatal, cash crunch. Surprisingly, the big carriers did so much to bolster their finances since the Great Recession that they harbor the borrowing power and cash reserves, when augmented by a promised $50 billion in federal relief, to keep their wings level during the hurricane.
Let’s examine three big issues for the U.S. airlines: the scale of their coming losses, the debt building on their balance sheets, and the flight path that could steer them through to clear skies.
Horrendous losses are on the way
The fall in passenger traffic since early March is staggering, and dwarfs the drop following 9/11. On March 1, 2.3 million passengers boarded flights at America’s airports, almost exactly the same number as on that date last year. Six weeks later, on April 14, the flow of passengers had shriveled to 85,000, and as of May 18, the carriers were transporting just 244,000 customers, one-tenth the hordes from a year before.
“The entire month of March had slightly more customers than in September 2001,” the month of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, says Brancatelli. “Only this time, the collapse has already lasted for over two months and will last a lot longer.” In October of 2001, traffic rebounded by one-third from September. By contrast, the damage from the coronavirus kept deepening: Since the start of April, 85% fewer passengers a day are boarding flights than in March. Brancatelli notes that quintupling the count in mid-April would get the U.S. back to just 40% of the traffic in February.
The wipeout translates into huge, sudden losses. Delta anticipates that its passenger revenues will drop 90% in the second quarter, from last year’s $11.4 billion to less than $150 million. For 2020, Fitch Ratings, the fixed-income research firm, forecasts that the Big Four will lose $17.2 billion, led by American (–$6.2 billion) and United (–$5.5 billion). If that happens, the majors will suffer a vertiginous descent of $29 billion from last year’s $11.8 billion in profits. A $17 billion-plus deficit for this year would be equivalent to erasing 94% of the Big Four’s $31 billion earnings over the fat years from 2017 through 2019.
Debt loads are soaring
U.S. airlines are grounding more than half the 6,200 planes in service before the crisis and have shrunk schedules substantially. Southwest will cut over 40% of its 3,700 daily flights from May 3 through June 10, and United is suspending 90% of its service in May and expects similar reductions in June. But airlines are a classic high-fixed-cost business, where players must cover lease and interest payments on huge fleets and rent on airport gates and pay full crews whether a flight is half-full or chockablock. Hence, a small drop in “load factor,” the share of available seats filled by passengers, can turn strong profits into steep losses. For example, a drop in American’s load factor by just four points, from last year’s 85% to 81%, was enough to push its results below breakeven.
The drop in traffic on this never-before-witnessed scale makes it impossible to trim flights fast enough to bring revenues in line with those big fixed costs. As a result, the Big Four are bleeding tons of cash, and piling on debt to fill the gap. In April, Delta’s cash burn was $100 million a day, and its goal was reaching $50 million a day by June.
The U.S. passenger airlines are benefiting from provisions in the coronavirus relief bills, providing around $18 billion in grants and another $32 billion in low-interest loans––about $8 billion of those loans carry a coupon of just 1% for the first five years. But the Big Four are also tapping far pricier credit from the capital markets. In late April, Delta announced plans to raise $3 billion, half from a term loan and half from a secured fixed-income offering, and in early May, United raised $2.25 billion on bonds-backed aircraft at a rate of around 10%.
At the end of 2019, the Big Four held $53 billion in debt. Delta and Southwest were lightly leveraged, United’s load was moderate, and American was already heavily burdened, shouldering around 40% of the quartet’s total. Jonathan Root, an analyst with Moody’s Investors Service, forecasts that the Big Four will add between $35 billion and $45 billion in new borrowings this year, or 66% to 85%, to their pre-virus totals.
A tall scaffold of debt is the Big Four’s essential bridge to the recovery.
The Big Four need a big comeback to level that new mountain of debt
Root says it’s impossible to know how fast demand will recover. But he did model a hypothetical scenario where traffic returns to 2019 levels in 2023. The former top industry executive cited earlier believes that a full comeback in three years is indeed likely. During the long slump, the Big Four can lower capacity and shrink their workforces sufficiently to break even at 50% to 60% of last year’s volumes, says Root. If traffic does bounce back to 2019’s robust levels, Root foresees that the big majors will be spinning plenty of extra cash, and using most of it to pay down all that pandemic-survival debt. “The additional cash could come from three places,” he says. First, he notes that the Big Four returned $8.3 billion to shareholders in dividends and buybacks last year. It’s likely that they would forgo both in a recovery and channel a like amount of funds into lowering debt. Second, the carriers could temporarily lower their capex by 50% from $15 billion at 2019 volume levels to $7 billion to $8 billion.
A final windfall would be the clincher. Last year, the majors spent $31 billion on jet fuel, at an average oil price of $63 per barrel. At today’s $35 per barrel, they would save $16 billion on fuel. Of course, it’s by no means certain oil will stay that inexpensive three years from now, but world markets are signaling a new era of bargain crude.
Add it up, and the majors could find $30 billion for repaying the gigantic extra borrowings that bore them through the crisis––at a demand level matching 2019. If that takeoff plays out, America’s airlines will have accomplished what may now look like mission impossible. But it isn’t so impossible. The Big Four have learned the hard way to favor profits over invading one another’s turf and coexistence over price wars. What they’ve got going is what made them winners over the past few years: market power.
The sight of the carriers working the controls to regain their old cruising altitude could prove a surprise spectacle in post-pandemic America.


fortune--2020-05-24--The mystery of China’s unemployment rate

These Wall Street analysts want to know what you are grilling during Memorial Day weekend

When China released economic data for its first quarter in April, Beijing was commended for not disguising the negative impact the coronavirus had on its economy. GDP growth fell 6.8%, broadly in line with estimates proposed by economists. However, there was one data point that raised a few eyebrows: unemployment.
According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, unemployment for March stood at 5.9%, not far from the 5.2% it had registered in December, before the COVID-19 outbreak began. In the intervening months, 460,000 businesses declared bankruptcy. Officially, unemployment spiked in February at 6.2%, and then declined in March. In April, it edged up again to 6%.
“The unemployment figure was remarkably stable,” Oxford Economics lead economist Tommy Wu said of the figure in March, suggesting that the official tally is likely “not that representative” of the labor force. Of course, unemployment rates worldwide rarely are accurate reflections of the current state of affairs, tending instead to lag behind changes. But pinning a reliable figure on the vital statistic is especially difficult in China.
Measuring tape
China’s official unemployment rate is typically stable, hovering around 4-5% for decades. Until recently, Beijing determined unemployment by the number of urban workers who registered for unemployment benefits with local governments. In 2018, the central government reformed the system in a bid to gain a more accurate accounting of its labor force. Unemployment is now gauged by a monthly survey of urban residents, but the new model still has its flaws.
First, rural unemployment isn’t included; the 5.9% statistic touted in March is only representative of urban areas. The exclusion of rural regions is a legacy of China’s socialist system in which all rural residents were allocated government-owned land to till and were therefore technically employed by the state, says Li Chen, assistant professor of Chinese studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
“In reality the rural situation has changed a lot, but the institutional design has remained the same,” Li said. “Many rural residents have become urban workers and so they don’t stay with their land anymore. But, officially, they still maintain their land rights so, for this reason, institutional design does not fully recognize rural unemployment.”
Second, the current method is thought to miscalculate China’s massive migrant worker population; some experts say the workers are undercounted, others argue they are exempted altogether.
China’s unemployment data is entangled with the country’s peculiar household registration system, or hukou, which divides the populace into rural and urban areas. When a rural resident moves to the city to find work, these migrant workers typically retain their rural resident status—or rather, they are denied urban resident status.
The updated unemployment survey is intended to ignore a worker’s hukou. However, migrant workers switch jobs frequently and often work in unofficial capacities—as unregistered street vendors or cleaners, for example. The fluidity of China’s “floating population” of migrant workers makes it difficult to determine their exact number and their current employment status.
Going urban
In 2019, China’s government counted 291 million migrant workers, who constituted roughly 36% of the total work force. In March this year, that number had dwindled 56% to just 129 million, according to the National Bureau for Statistics, which reports the number of migrant workers alongside the figure for urban unemployment. The massive drop in migrant worker levels suggests mass unemployment in their ranks.
An open questions is whether jobless migrant workers are counted in Beijing’s official unemployment rate. Geoffrey Crothall, director of communications at workers’ rights advocate China Labor Bulletin, says they are, although many other experts say they aren’t.
“You can’t rely on the survey numbers for anything really comprehensive, but the current survey system is a better measure than the method they used to use,” Crothall said, adding that the survey data probably accounts for about 60% of the total workforce, as it ignores workers in rural areas.
Recently China’s state-run Global Times weighed in, citing an anonymous official at the National Bureau of Statistics for confirmation that migrant workers are included in the survey system.
The severity of job losses in the U.S. cast more doubt over the reported stability of China’s labor force. U.S. unemployment skyrocketed during the first four months of the year to its highest level since the Great Depression. Data for April shows U.S. unemployment at 14.7%, up from 4.4% in March and 3.5% in February. Goldman Sachs predicts the jobless figure will peak at 25%.
Busybodies
Governments the world over are concerned by unemployment among their citizens, but the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is perceived to be more concerned than most. Li says that, as a one-party state, a key part of the CCP’s legitimacy is derived from “delivering sustained economic development and acceptable unemployment levels.”
China emerged from its period of isolationist communism in the late 1970s. As it did so, the CCP established two figures as metrics by which to measure the success of the economic Reform and Opening Up policy: GDP and unemployment.
There’s a common belief among China observers that if unemployment rises, demonstrations against the government will increase as well, threatening the Party rule.
However, Corthall says there isn’t any obvious correlation between unemployment and protests. Most protests tend to be directed towards specific grievances workers have with employers, such as unpaid wages or missing social security payments.
“If you’re just unemployed, who are you going to protest?” Corthall asks. “If it’s just a general grievance against the general economic system, it won’t necessarily contribute to a protest, it’ll just contribute to a general discontent with the economic system.”
Nevertheless, Beijing is “clearly concerned” with unemployment, Corthall adds. This week, ahead of the annual gathering of China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress, Beijing put out a memo pledging to position employment at the center of government policy controls, along with monetary and fiscal measures.
Alternative means
Economists skeptical of Beijing’s own reporting rely on alternative means to estimate the true number of unemployed in China. Some, such as the Economist Intelligence Unit, use GDP growth to deduce a relative shift in employment—translating shifts in GDP to growth or loss in household income and deducing unemployment from that. This year, EIU estimates unemployment could average 10%.
In 2017, a team of researchers used data from China’s triannual Urban Household Survey (UHS) to estimate China’s unemployment at roughly twice the official number, averaging 10.9% between 2002 and 2009. The UHS is essentially a more refined survey than the official unemployment one, and the researchers say it’s similar to the Current Population Survey that the U.S. uses to determine labor data.
Zhuang Bo, chief China economist at TS Lombard, looked at reported profit and productivity declines across industrial sectors—manufacturing, services, construction—to speculate on the number of laborers that would need to be laid off in each. He concluded there are as many as 50 million unemployed migrant laborers left unaccounted for in China’s figures, which could more than double the official unemployment rate.
However, Zhuang isn’t convinced by his own methodology, saying that “on the ‘real’ number of China’s unemployed, at best all we can do is form a wild, educated guess.”


fortune--2020-05-24--This Jamie Dimon protege has weathered six crises. Here is his coronavirus playbook

It’s hard to think of any CEO better qualified to offer guidance on how to navigate the pandemic economy, and prepare to sprint in the recovery, than Frank Bisignano. The newly named CEO of Fiserv, the fintech and payments processing giant, made his mark steering businesses through the most jarring upheavals of the past two decades. And in between the cataclysms, he was busy clinching deals while enduring chemotherapy and reviving laggards that looked too broken to be fixed.
Bisignano fought on the front lines through 9/11, the Great Recession, and the pandemic, and faced three other daunting challenges: battling throat cancer; rescuing a failing backwater at Citigroup that he transformed into one of the bank’s top money-spinners; and reviving a struggling also-ran, the payments processor First Data. After the first tower fell on Sept. 11, 2011, Bisignano led a parade of Citigroup troops located near the World Trade Center to safety in Midtown Manhattan. During the financial crisis, he worked alongside his mentor Jamie Dimon to salvage the wreckage of Bear Stearns, then waded into the mortgage flood by spearheading damage control on the subprime-laden portfolio inherited from Washington Mutual.
Last July, he sold a thoroughly reinvented First Data, to Fiserv for $30 billion, delivering shareholders a 100% return from the IPO price three and a half years earlier. On April 8, the Fiserv board named Bisignano, now 60, to succeed longtime CEO Jeff Yabuki. On July 1, Bisignano will take charge at this relatively little-publicized colossus that’s produced 20%-plus annual shareholder returns over the past decade and now boasts a market cap of $66.5 billion, the 16th-highest among U.S. financial services and data processing companies, exceeding Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and American Express.
In a series of interviews with Fortune, Bisignano discussed how his experience in tackling past crises shaped Fiserv’s strategy for minimizing damage from the pandemic, while at the same time keeping the people and investments in place to thrive on the other side. Among the measures he’s deploying: providing extra hazard pay for frontline workers, and marshaling the top brass to put all or a big chunk of their cash comp into a fund for the hardest-hit employees.
Bisignano: From blue-collar Brooklyn boy to Wall Street fixer
Bisignano rose to the top of financial services from an unusual place: mending and building mundane back-office operations and banking services. What set him apart from the typical manager who oversees Wall Street’s plumbing was a knack for rallying teams as a swashbuckling coach, and his record as a bulldog who could fix anything. Those skills translated into entrepreneurial flair that enabled him to squeeze big profits from neglected corners of banking. One snapshot captures his talent for flamboyant showmanship, fielding and branding: At Smith Barney, Bisignano organized a rowdy softball team of all Italian-Americans who called themselves “the paisanos,” and took to the diamond in floppy hats like pizza makers.
The ethnic pride reflects his upbringing. Bisignano grew up in Brooklyn’s working-class Mill Basin neighborhood. Both of his parents were born in Italy, and his grandfather, who was deaf and blind, lived with the family. His father worked as a customs agent, while his mother rose from bookkeeper at a stevedoring company to running the operation—a 105-pound dynamo who cowed or charmed the longshoremen as needed. Bisignano graduated from Baker University, a liberal arts school in Kansas, where he majored in finance and competed as a nationally ranked bowler.
Jamie Dimon, Bisignano, and then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York in 2007. Mark Lennihan—AP Photo
In 1994, Dimon hired Bisignano, then in his mid-thirties, as chief of operations at Smith Barney. Bisignano stayed on board as the team of Dimon and Sandy Weill transformed financial services through a string of acquisitions culminating in the Travelers purchase of Citicorp in 1998. In 2001, Bisignano’s operations outfit encompassed 16,000 employees in downtown Manhattan, many of whom worked at 7 World Trade Center. Just after the first tower fell around 10 a.m., the workers at a Citi building in the financial district looked out their windows through the dust to spy their boss on the street holding a megaphone and yelling, “Go north!” Bisignano led a march of thousands of Citi workers up Sixth Avenue to an IT hub near Penn Station.
Impressed by how Bisignano smoothly relocated the troops and got trading up and running with barely a hiccup, Weill handed his operations chief the job that would prove his big breakthrough. Weill reckoned that the franchise, a troubled outpost called Global Transaction Services (GTS), was the perfect candidate to be reinvented by his empire builder in the waiting. When Bisignano took charge, GTS was losing $400 million a year. He transformed GTS from a processor that handled piecemeal transfers to a platform that clients used to outsource a wide range of treasury services across subsidiaries in multiple countries. GTS handled its clients’ foreign-exchange and cash management, parked their overnight deposits at the best rates, and provided a complete accounting of all of the day’s balances and transactions on a common system. By 2005, Bisignano had turned GTS into a star performer, generating $1 billion a year in earnings. It remains one of Citi’s most profitable units to this day.
Rejoining Jamie Dimon
In 2006, Bisignano’s old boss Jamie Dimon hired him as chief administrative officer at JPMorgan Chase. Trading a job heading a big profit center for his old role of running a big bank’s back office seems like a downshift. But the appeal wasn’t so much running J.P. Morgan’s real estate, procurement and IT as joining the legendary Dimon team, a group that included Bill Winters and Jes Staley, now CEOs respectively of Standard Chartered and Barclays; Charles Scharf, chief of Wells Fargo; Mike Cavanagh, CFO of Comcast; and Heidi Miller, who held the top finance jobs at Citi and Priceline. “It was the dream team of financial services,” recalls Bisignano. “We had unparalleled spirit.” When the financial crisis struck, Bisignano displayed his dealmaking prowess, helping to negotiate the purchase of failing Bear Stearns for just $250 million. As part of that package JPMorgan got the firm’s super-deluxe, 47-story headquarters on Madison Avenue that had cost $1.1 billion to construct.
In 2010, Bisignano suffered a personal crisis that changed his goal from serving as franchise player on an all-star team to running the whole show. He was diagnosed with throat cancer, the same affliction that would strike Dimon four years later. The exhausting treatments barely slowed the bulldozer. “I’d get radiation in the morning, then fly to L.A. on a deal, then take the red-eye back and get more radiation the next morning,” he recalls. “I did a lot of meditating. I never thought about being CEO before cancer. I was happy to serve with the Jamie crowd. It was beating cancer that gave me a sense of mission.” Today, Bisignano’s deep gravelly voice is a legacy of his successful surgery.
Bisignano recovered so fast that in 2011, Dimon tapped him to shoulder a second job, fixing the mortgage book, largely consisting of subprime loans issued during the real estate bubble to buyers who lacked the income to make the payments. Once again, Bisignano engineered a fast turnaround. But the notorious “London Whale” trading loss created discord among his cherished team, and most of the brain trust’s most valued members departed. Dimon named Bisignano co–chief operating officer and assigned him to install controls that would prevent another blowup. But as the camaraderie vanished, he pursued his destiny to become boss.
Floundering First Data
It was hardly a trophy job, but it was the kind of “mission impossible”–style rescue Bisignano had long been training for. In 2007, buyout shop KKR & Co. had purchased payments stalwart First Data in one of the largest LBOs ever at $6 a share. Six years and two departed big-name CEOs later, First Data was floundering, and KKR had marked down its investment by $3, suffering a $2.5 billion loss. At breakfast at a New Jersey diner, Scott Nuttall, now KKR’s copresident, pitched Bisignano on shouldering the hardest of hard cases.
Nuttall warned Bisignano that First Data was “too big for any one person to run,” reasoning that a smaller, more focused business would be more attractive to Bisignano. “Don’t sell anything!” riposted Bisignano, who judged First Data’s immense scale as its greatest asset. “Whatever you’re thinking of selling, I can fix it!” The leader whom Nuttall describes as “a force of nature” stepped into the CEO role for the first time.
Over the next six years, Bisignano transformed First Data from old-line processor to tech juggernaut. The old First Data was providing merchants with what Bisignano calls “dumb bricks,” countertop terminals that did little more than swipe credit and debit cards and send the charges to the banks. His big innovation was handing restaurants, delis, hairdressers, and all manner of merchants the sophisticated tools once reserved for big chains such as McDonald’s and Walmart. First Data’s key innovation, now a staple at Fiserv, is a terminal-cum-computer called Clover that manages inventory, tracks which waiters at which tables sell the most expensive bottles of wine, and signals when those connoisseurs are returning so waiters can remind them to order their favorite vintages.
The basic idea was upgrading merchants from the old knuckle-busters to supersmart Clover, offering lots of apps that run the gamut from preventing hacking to sending messages reminding employees of their shifts. And the wager on this iPad of point-of-sale payments paid off, as Clover won legions of both upgrades and new clients. From 2013 to 2018, Bisignano raised net profit from a $700 million loss to $1.2 billion and pared the gigantic debt burden imposed by the LBO from $23 billion to $16.4 billion.
The second-biggest fintech deal of all time
The comeback transformed First Data from a dog into a prime takeover candidate. At the closing in July 2019, Fiserv paid almost $32 a share, or $30 billion, twice First Data’s price and valuation on going public in 2015, and five times its level when Bisignano took charge in 2013. In the annals of fintech, the deal ranked second only to FIS’s $33.5 billion acquisition of Worldpay, which closed two days following the Fiserv–First Data merger.
The merger is a good fit because First Data was the industry leader with retail merchants, while Fiserv ranks first in “core banking,” processing for large financial institutions. In weighing the union, Bisignano says that an enterprise more equally weighted between the two sectors would smooth the stream of profits and revenues through big swings in the economy. He also believed that by moving to fewer, bigger data and call centers, pooling purchasing power, and bringing overseas processing in-house, the combined company could achieve giant cost savings. In fact, Fiserv now anticipates lowering its annual operating expense base by $1.2 billion or around 11% on the premerger run rate of just under $11 billion. It has pledged to save even more by greatly lowering debt and hence curbing interest expense.
Reward frontline workers
Along the way, Bisignano has learned a thing or two about navigating through troubled waters. Most important? Take care of your frontline workers. “Eighty-five percent of our workers are working from home,” says Bisignano. “But we need thousands of workers to staff our call [and] data centers and production facilities.” Fiserv added 25% to the pay of all its frontline workers for the duration of the pandemic. “We provide masks, and the workers observe social distancing,” he says. “But it’s also important that we say thank you for their hard work in these incredibly stressful times.” In periods of crisis, he says, few workers are more essential than the folks who sustain the economy by keeping everything from the PPP grants for small businesses to dollars for online purchases flowing––and Bisignano wants them to know it.
Cut pay at the top
When the crisis struck, the top two officers, Yabuki and Bisignano, gave up 100% of their cash compensation, and the next 18 highest-ranking executives took 20% pay cuts. But instead of using the money to hold down operating costs, Fiserv is putting the forgone pay into a “hardship fund” for employees and their families who are experiencing financial stress. He notes that workers need to apply for the aid but that Fiserv has already contributed millions from the fund to help out with such emergencies as an income shortfall because a spouse loses a job.
Don’t cut pay, reduce benefits
“We don’t want to hurt our people in the short run by either laying off people, or cutting salaries,” he says. “The world they’re living in has radically changed—we don’t want to change it more by hurting their livelihoods.” On the other hand, he adds, the pandemic is hitting revenues as merchants process fewer payments, although banks are asking for still more services from Fiserv. To lower expenses, Fiserv is suspending its contributions to 401(k) plans for now. That way, employees get the same cash income they depend on––frontline workers get even more––but Fiserv can still reap savings that sustain profits during the crisis.
Maintain & invest
“A major reason we can keep our people and maintain our level of investment in technology is the synergies from the deal,” says Bisignano. “My view was that from the very start, we’d generate the savings needed to do both even if we went into a steep recession. Of course, I never imagined anything on this scale.” Keeping employees on the job is critical, he notes, because it should enable Fiserv to sell customers all the terminals and software they need when the market rebounds, whereas the need to rehire or train new people could slow the start. Fiserv also pledges to deliver on its premerger plan to cull a total of $500 million from its annual cost savings for investment in the kind of new technologies that could hatch the next Clover.
See the opportunity
“The pandemic accelerated the trend to online shopping and electronic transfers that was already underway,” he says. “We’d invested to develop products in both areas, and those products helped offset the decline in in-person retail shopping.” Zelle, the industry service for sending money online, attracted eight times as many clients for Fiserv in the first quarter as in the same period last year. Another winner: Clover’s Order Ahead feature that enables customers to send in takeout orders online to restaurants, where they’re channeled to kitchens and suppliers, and customers are assigned times to pick up their dishes at the eatery.
Buy back stock opportunistically
Share buybacks have long provided a big boost to Fiserv’s earnings per share and hence its stock price. From 2017 to 2019, it spent $3.7 billion on repurchases, lowering its share count by 7.6%, and lifting EPS from buybacks alone by a like amount. Fiserv continued buying back lots of stock in the first quarter, though Bisignano says it will channel its cash flow for the remainder of the year toward paying down debt. He praises two masters for his approach to deploying capital: Dimon, “who taught me the importance of a fortress balance sheet,” and Yabuki, whom he calls “a great capital allocator.” Share repurchases are out of vogue for financial institutions right now, but Bisignano says he plans “to stick with buybacks” as a bulwark in the future.
That’s the kind of against-the-tide, unconventional thinking that built one of the great careers in financial services. Here’s why Bisignano thrives when the world goes crazy: He’s seen plenty of black swans, and he’s always ready for the next one.


fortune--2020-05-25--Goodboy’s data-driven approach to pet health care

Do some Hong Kongers have a right to resettle in the U.K. ?
China ’ s new security law revives @ @

This is an installment in a special series, Startup Year One, interviewing startup founders about the major lessons they learned in the immediate aftermath of their businesses’ first year of operation.
For pet owners, keeping their best friends healthy and happy has seemingly never been easier with new direct-to-consumer pet food producers or toys delivered on demand. Still, if only our dogs could talk and tell us how they’re really feeling.
Launched in January 2019 by cofounders and childhood friends Kari Sapp and Stefan Lewinger, Goodboy uses a proprietary algorithm to help pet owners quickly identify health issues and goals, while providing their pets with high-quality supplements that specifically target each dog’s needs.
Fortune recently spoke with Sapp and Lewinger to learn more about their first year in business, the lessons they’ve learned, the hurdles they’ve overcome, and their plans for the next year.
The following interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Goodboy cofounders Stefan Lewinger and Kari Sapp. Courtesy of Goodboy
Fortune: What inspired the launch of Goodboy?
Sapp: The whole idea behind Goodboy was super personal for me. A little over a year ago, I was inspired to create Goodboy after my dog Finley was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. At the time, she was a healthy, young, 4-year-old Labrador retriever with no health issues. The diagnosis came as a total shock to me. Outside of feeding her quality dog food and maintaining a steady exercise routine, I realized that I could be doing so much more for her health, not only during her treatment process but also long-term as well.
With Finley as my catalyst, I set out to create a brand that would redefine the way modern “pawrents” proactively cared for their pets. I reached out to Stefan, and we decided to team up and build Goodboy, a partnership that was very organic from the start. Stefan and I have known each other since we were kids. We’ve been friends for years and had previously worked together for about three years; I headed up content marketing at the D2C subscription company he founded in 2013. Professionally, my background is in PR and marketing, having worked previously in both corporate and startup roles. So deciding to develop a brand like Goodboy was a no-brainer.
Lewinger: I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and creative people. My mother was an artist and a teacher. My brother is a celebrated ceramicist out of Brooklyn, and my father is a lifelong business owner and entrepreneur himself. So I guess I learned a lot of what I know by osmosis, you could say. I started my first company a few years out of college and grew it to a multimillion dollar brand with over $10 million in lifetime revenue and a spot on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in North America.
I was fortunate enough to be able to surround myself with people much smarter and more talented than me, and one of those happened to be a lifelong friend and colleague, Kari. We would often get into long conversations at work about what else we could do to apply what we’ve become so good at with Sock Fancy [Lewinger is CEO and cofounder of the socks subscription service] to something new, exciting, and where we could really make an impact. When the unfortunate news came down about Kari’s beloved dog, Finley, and the feeling of hopelessness and desire to be able to make an impact in her dog’s life and health, the idea for Goodboy was born.
Wellness products for pets is a space that has seemingly exploded over the past couple of years. Why do you think that is so?
Sapp: I think as a whole, people view pets less as “just animals” and more like family members. Recently, millennials eclipsed baby boomers in pet ownership. There has been a notable shift in millennials when it comes to having children, many putting this decision off until later in life or choosing not to have children at all. With this shift, their focus has moved toward their pets, really prioritizing their wellness, well-being, and long-term health. Things that were once seen as splurges—pretty much anything outside of your basic grocery store pet food—to prior generations are now viewed as necessities or requirements for this new age of pet owners.
Lewinger: In addition to the younger generations’ willingness to splurge on their furry family members, I think we’re starting to see a halo effect of sorts from the wellness and self-care culture over the past few years. There has been an overall increase in awareness for products that help us take control of our own health by creating healthy habits, eating real food, and taking important vitamins and supplements. Brands like Care/of, Ritual, and even Goop have transformed the self-care markets for humans, and now we’re naturally seeing that spill over to the pet space, resulting in the explosion in demand.
Goodboy offers meat-free formulations to address allergy issues in pups and to work toward reducing the company’s carbon footprint by using fewer meat products in general. Courtesy of Goodboy
Beyond tapping into dietary trends like grain-free and keto-friendly (and even meat-free, a rarity in dog treats and food), how has technology shaped the development of Goodboy, whether it be the influence of big data or social media?
Sapp: Technology has had a huge impact on Goodboy from the jump, starting with our quiz process. We built a custom algorithm that determines the best supplement plan for every dog, according to their specific needs. Our data collection through this quiz process has really allowed us to harness users responses to more effectively and efficiently power end results. We not only use this data to ensure that each dog gets on the most impactful supplement plan but also to influence our future product offerings, making sure our decisions are based on what our customers actually need and not solely on industry trends or assumptions.
Lewinger: At its core, our business is built on technology and driven by data. It allows us to be super nimble and responsive to what our customers need and want to see from a pet wellness brand and provides us the tools and information we need to iterate quickly, stay ahead of the competition, and gain a competitive advantage in what is going to become—and, in some respects, already is—a very competitive market.
What were some of the biggest hurdles you faced in the past year? What surprised you the most?
Sapp: One of the biggest hurdles has been reshaping our thought process behind “growth at all costs.” When you launch a new D2C brand, it’s hard to not get wrapped up in the growth vortex. Hitting X milestone in X months, skyrocketing subscriber counts, raising loads of money in a matter of weeks—it all feels so heavy. Blocking out the noise and outside pressures and focusing on our own growth plan has been challenging but also very rewarding. It’s allowed us to hyper-focus on what’s really working for us—and what’s not—for our business, our brand, our customers, and most important, our pups.
What kind of feedback have you received from your customers, and have you (or will you) apply that feedback to how you sell your products in the future?
Sapp: We laid everything on the table from the get-go, from our ingredients to our sourcing to our manufacturing processes—a rarity, until recently, in the pet industry. Our customers are not only looking for a quality and effective product but an open line of communication to share their feedback. We’ve been able to take a lot of this feedback and quickly implement changes that directly impact our customers and their dogs. For example, we recently removed all meat products from one of our most popular supplements. This came as a direct result of current and potential customers indicating that their dogs were experiencing meat- or mixed-meat-related allergies and food sensitivities.
We were able to take this data, reformulate our supplement, and make it a more widely usable product for any pup, regardless of their allergy restrictions. We’re also constantly collecting new data through our custom quiz, really keeping our finger on the pulse of new and emerging issues that dogs and their owners are facing. Our dedication to data collection and leveraging that data to inform our decisions has been a huge part of Goodboy from inception and will continue to be as we grow.
Lewinger: We thrive on customer feedback to inform many of our business decisions. I think one that sticks out for me recently is the effort to continually improve the sustainability of products, especially for consumer packaged goods companies. We’ve already moved to smaller packaging for our renewal orders in order to cut down on unnecessary use of cardboard, and we’re currently developing more environmentally friendly containers and refill packs to cut down on our carbon footprint. We’ve seen this sentiment echoed by many of our customers and look forward to meeting the ongoing challenges of sustainability in the months and years to come.
All of Goodboy’s formulas are made using premium raw ingredients and no additives or fillers. Courtesy of Goodboy
Obviously, amid the coronavirus pandemic, consumers’ purchasing habits, practices, and even their relationship to food is going to change. How does Goodboy plan to adjust and fit into whatever this new normal might be?
Sapp: We’ve always tried to be a company and brand that provides real value for our customers and, most important, their pets. I think as we come out of this, consumers will be more in tune with what they are buying, from who, and why. For us, our focus has always been based on transparency and community, allowing our customers to be flexible within our model. Did you lose your job during the pandemic? We can put your account on hold. Love the products but need a break from the monthly payments? We can skip your next shipment. Your dog’s needs have changed, and you want to reevaluate your subscription? Let’s swap products and find something that fits those concerns better.
Where we do adjust is through our conversations and brand voice, providing more valuable information and knowledge on our products, as well as educating our current and potential new customers why supplemental care is important, now more than ever. As we all figure out our “new normal,” we know that the consumer purchasing process will certainly be more complex, making it our responsibility to uniquely meet these needs as best we can.
Lewinger: People are spending more time at home with their pets than they ever have. Their dogs are now right there with them during Monday morning conference meetings or after-work Zoom happy hours. So now more than ever, people are more closely in tune with some of their dogs’ needs, and more aware of some of their behaviors that they may have otherwise missed, which has created an opportunity for us to have these conversations with our subscribers. We’ve been able to adjust our messaging to focus more on the changing stay-at-home environment to try and help.
At the same time, how does a shutdown of this nature affect the future of the business, from product development to raising capital?
Sapp: Like many others, we are seeing some slowdowns within our supply chain. This doesn’t necessarily affect how we are developing new products, but it will impact and potentially extend the timeline in which we can release them.
In terms of raising capital, we’ve had to adjust. With the shutdown and instability of the market as of late, our focus has shifted from primarily angel investors to now more venture capital.
Goodboy cofounders Stefan Lewinger and Kari Sapp want to redefine how modern “pawrents” proactively care for their pets by combining healthy ingredients with data-driven science and technology. Courtesy of Goodboy
Looking beyond the post-pandemic era, which could be anywhere from a year to a few years from now, how do you plan to grow Goodboy, and what do you want the business to look like five years from now?
Sapp: We want to be the brand that redefines how modern “pawrents” proactively care for their pets. We’ll do this by constantly improving our technology, research, and data collection, using this data to meet the needs of our customers, future customers, and their pets. We’ll continue to expand our product offerings, making it easy, convenient, and fun to care for your best bud.
Lewinger: Our goal is to become the go-to brand for pet health and wellness. In the near future that means to continue expanding our supplement line to accommodate the growing number of needs we’re seeing in our dog community. In the future, that means addressing all aspects of health and wellness—physical and lifestyle wellness—which would include more broad initiatives like nutrition, exercise, and other accessory products. All with the ultimate goal of making a brand focused on creating happier and healthier pups.
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fortune--2020-05-25--Hong Kong stocks are trading like a frontier market

Risks are mounting for Hong Kong’s stock market, the world’s fourth-largest, after the biggest plunge for the benchmark gauge in five years.
China’s shock decision last week to impose a law cracking down on dissent has led to a flare up of protests in the city, sparked concern over capital outflows and increased tensions with the U.S. That’s placed Hong Kong, and its financial markets, on the front lines of a growing clash between the world’s two largest economies.
The Hang Seng Index plummeted 5.6% on Friday, its worst drop since July 2015 when a bubble popped in China. A gauge of real estate companies sank the most since the global financial crisis, underscoring concern over whether investors will shift assets overseas, especially given sky-high prices for property. Currency traders piled into derivatives that profit from Hong Kong dollar weakness.
The slump left the Hang Seng trading at 9.5 times reported earnings, about half the multiple of MSCI Inc.’s global index and the biggest discount since 2016. Few benchmarks trade at single-digit valuations; those that do are mostly frontier markets such as Colombia, Argentina and Sri Lanka.
The Hang Seng Index closed up 0.1% on Monday, while the MSCI Hong Kong Index slid 0.4%, taking its two-day decline to 7.2%.
For global investors, the question is whether such distressed levels are worth betting on. Those who called for a rebound in March — when the gauge traded below book value for only the third time in history — are now looking at similarly depressed valuations. The Hang Seng is back below that level, with traders pricing firms’ assets at 95% of their stated worth.
While a heavy weighting of financial companies, especially Chinese state-owned firms, has long depressed valuations for the gauge, there’s little doubt about the relative underperformance of the Hang Seng Index. It’s fallen to the lowest level relative to the MSCI All-Country World Index since 2004, and is languishing in its second bear market in as many years.
As an investment option, Hong Kong has taken a series of blows in recent years.
Concern over a U.S.-China trade war sent the gauge, whose companies generate a majority of their earnings in yuan, plunging 14% in 2018. A recovery the following year was all but snuffed out as violent clashes between police and protesters shattered the city’s image as a stable financial center. While Hong Kong has successfully controlled the coronavirus outbreak, its economy has sagged as the city shut its borders and residents limited spending.
The city has a reputation for bouncing back, whether it was the global financial crisis, SARS in 2003, or riots in the 1960s. Its stock market, however, faces a series of pressures that are hard to ignore right now. How the U.S. responds is a major concern.
Secretary of State Michael Pompeo indicated Friday that the U.S. would reconsider exemptions that shield Hong Kong exports from tariffs that apply to Chinese goods if Beijing moves forward with its national security law.
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said the same day that President Donald Trump and Pompeo would discuss possible responses over the weekend.
“I can say that the Chinese move in Hong Kong is going to be very, very bad for the Chinese economy and for the Hong Kong economy,” Hassett told reporters at the White House. “Hong Kong has been the financial center of Asia for a very, very long time. I don’t think it will continue to be and so the costs for China and are very, very large” if the government moves forward, he said.


fortune--2020-05-25--Do some Hong Kongers have a right to resettle in the U.K.? China’s new security law revives old deba

Do some Hong Kongers have a right to resettle in the U.K.? China’s new security law revives old debate

Memorial Day Weekend crowds trigger virus warnings , from Lake of the Ozarks to Daytona Beach

A leading legal adviser to the U.K. government has potentially opened the door for hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents to resettle in the U.K. as Beijing moves to tighten its grip on the special administrative region.
Laurie Fransman, a barrister specializing in immigration, told members of the ruling Conservative Party that holders of British national overseas (or BNO) passports could legally be offered the right of abode in the U.K., countering a decades-long position to the contrary.
Fransman wrote a letter to Home Secretary Priti Patel in April advising there were no legal grounds to deny right of abode, which confers complete exemption from U.K. immigration control, to people with BNO status. That advice was revived last weekend by a politician urging the government to reconsider its stance on BNOs “given the deteriorating situation in Hong Kong.”
What’s a BNO?
The BNO status was created in 1985 to apply specifically to Hong Kong residents born before 1997—when the British territory was returned to Chinese sovereignty. The designation currently grants BNO passport holders the right to remain in the U.K. for six months without a visa but not the right to reside there permanently.
The U.K. government has previously maintained that offering right of abode to BNO holders would violate the terms of the 1997 handover and has frequently rejected calls to amend its stance. The government most recently declined a petition, launched by BNO holders and endorsed by some members of Parliament last year, to extend British citizenship to people with BNOs, as protests raged across Hong Kong.
Following a hiatus wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, protests returned to Hong Kong’s streets this past weekend. A march by thousands of residents, incensed by Beijing’s move to impose laws on the special administrative region that would limit freedom of speech, was quickly dispersed by police tear gas.
Fransman’s guidance emerged shortly after 200 members of Parliament from 23 countries signed a letter criticizing Beijing’s actions Friday, and urged “sympathetic governments” to show that the move “cannot be tolerated.”
Among the letter’s signatories is Conservative Party MP Bob Seely, who is petitioning the U.K. government to review its policy on BNO rights. Last year, amid the social upheaval in Hong Kong, renewals of long-expired BNO passports surged.
“It would be a stain on our country’s reputation if other nations were to open their arms, metaphorically speaking, to Hong Kong BNO folk in their hour of need before the U.K. did so,” Seely said.
Reality check
However, permitting the right of abode to BNO passport holders would not necessarily result in mass migration from Hong Kong to the U.K. Although initially popular, the number of BNO passport applications peaked in 2001, with 170,000 issued that year. There are currently 315,000 BNO passport holders in Hong Kong.
The popularity of the BNO passport declined after the alternative Hong Kong SAR passport—created by the local government after 1997—gained visa-free travel to 150 countries, compared to 118 under the BNO. The BNO passport is also no help to Hong Kongers who want to travel to mainland China, as the central government doesn’t recognize BNO status.
What’s more, not all BNO-holders could afford to resettle in the U.K. if given the right, nor would they be able to move with their families as BNO rights don’t extend to the passport holder’s kin. However, for some Hong Kong residents the challenges would be worth the opportunity.
“With the new legislation from Beijing, I am losing my home anyway,” says a 40-year-old who asked to be identified only by his last name, Fong. “It would be better to leave and go somewhere with a government system I’m familiar with, like the U.K.”
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fortune--2020-05-25--Bayer reaches verbal deal to settle up to 85,000 Roundup cancer lawsuits

Bayer AG has reached verbal agreements to resolve a substantial portion of an estimated 125,000 U.S. cancer lawsuits over use of its Roundup weedkiller, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
The deals, which have yet to be signed and cover an estimated 50,000 to 85,000 suits, are part of a $10 billion Bayer plan to end a costly legal battle the company inherited when it acquired Monsanto in 2018, the people said. While some lawyers are still holding out, payouts for settled cases will range from a few million dollars to a few thousand each, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly.
A surge in Roundup claims, along with some big court losses, have weighed on Bayer since the Leverkusen, Germany-based company spent $63 billion to buy agricultural giant Monsanto — which developed the weedkiller. The shares have dropped about 40% since the deal closed two years ago, wiping out some $39 billion of Bayer’s market value.
The shares gained as much as 4.6% Monday, according to Tradegate.
Bayer is likely to announce the settlements, which need approval from the company’s supervisory board, in June, people familiar with the negotiations said. None of the deals are signed, though plaintiffs’ lawyers are expected to do so the day of the announcement, the people said.
Chris Loder, a U.S.-based spokesman for Bayer, declined to comment on specifics about the talks, but said Friday the company has made “progress in the mediations” that arose from lawsuits. “The company will not speculate about settlement outcomes or timing,” Loder said in an emailed statement. “As we have said previously, the company will consider a resolution if it is financially reasonable and provides a process to resolve potential future litigation.”
The exact number of settlements so far wasn’t immediately clear, but the estimate of at least 125,000 claims is more than twice the amount of Roundup litigation cases Bayer has disclosed so far.
Before now, a complete tally was hard to pin down. In regulatory filings, the company only acknowledged filed and served cases of about 52,500 as of April. Tens of thousands more are being held in abeyance by plaintiffs’ lawyers under agreements with Bayer, people familiar with the negotiations said. Ken Feinberg, the chief Roundup mediator, said in January the total was 85,000 and would likely increase.
Bayer has said it will earmark $8 billion to resolve all current cases, including those held in abeyance, according to some of the people familiar with the settlements. The deals so far involve many of the strongest claims against the company, the people said. It’s unclear how much would go to those who have now settled and what’s left for the holdouts.
Another $2 billion will be set aside to cover future suits linking the weedkiller to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, people familiar with the talks said.
Still Being Sold
Under terms of the deals, Roundup will continue to be sold in the U.S. for use in backyards and farms without any safety warning, and plaintiffs’ attorneys will agree to stop taking new cases or advertising for new clients, the people said.
Because some of the Roundup cases are consolidated before U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco, he may need to approve the settlement of those before him, the people said.
To be sure, with tens of thousands of cases still unresolved, there’s no guarantee the company will remain within the $8 billion it has budgeted for filed and backlogged lawsuits. Bayer complicated matters last month by backing out of some deals and demanding lawyers take less because of losses tied to the Covid-19 pandemic. That could prompt more lawyers to take their cases out of the settlement, the people said.
Feinberg, the Washington-based lawyer tapped by Chhabria to oversee settlement negotiations, said last week he remains “cautiously optimistic a national settlement will be reached.” He acknowledged fallout from Covid-19 “has slowed momentum” on the talks.
Cancer Claims
The settlements are designed to resolve claims that Roundup, whose active ingredient is the chemical glyphosate, caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in some users. The company denies that Roundup or glyphosate cause cancer, a position backed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Still, after Bayer’s court losses spurred a surge in new suits, investors such as Elliott Management Corp. urged the company to seek a comprehensive settlement.
Feinberg dispatched mediators to oversee meetings between Bayer lawyers and individual plaintiff attorneys, who negotiated solely on behalf of their clients. The company has worked out various payout schedules, though none will exceed three years, the people said.
At this point, only a handful of lawyers are holding out for larger payouts, the people said. James Onder, a St. Louis-based attorney handling more than 24,000 Roundup cases, said last week he’s rebuffed settlement offers that would leave his clients with as little as $5,000 each.
Bayer’s overtures “have been insulting,” Onder said in an interview. The company is attempting “to strong-arm the most vulnerable in our society into accepting minuscule settlements, hoping they will cower in fear to Monsanto’s repeated idle threats of bankruptcy.” Onder said he’s preparing for trials in St. Louis next year.
The people familiar with the talks have said Bayer lawyers used the threat of putting Monsanto into bankruptcy to get people to accept lower payments. Other companies — including Purdue Pharma LLP — filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors to deal with a burgeoning wave a lawsuits over its OxyContin opioid painkiller.
Challenge Verdicts
In a surprising move, Bayer is also pressing ahead with appeals of early cases it lost in court, the people said. All together, juries from three trials ordered the company to pay a combined $2.4 billion in damages. Judges later slashed those awards to $191 million.
The first Roundup verdict came from a state court jury in California, which held Monsanto liable for a grounds keeper’s lymphoma in 2018 and awarded him $289 million in damages. A judge later cut that to $78.5 million. Oral arguments in the appeal are scheduled for June 2 in San Francisco.
Refusing to include past verdicts in the settlement may be designed to send a signal on future claims that Bayer won’t just roll over and pay, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond professor who specializes in mass-tort law.
“It says they’ll fight ‘em through the appeals, which can take years to resolve,” Tobias said. “In the meantime, people will be dying.”
The deals also limit eligibility for payments to non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma cases and those where plaintiffs died of that specific cancer over the last decade, according to a Bayer term sheet reviewed in January by Bloomberg News. Roundup users that blame the product for causing their multiple-myeloma cancers get nothing under the settlement.


fortune--2020-05-25--Memorial Day Weekend crowds trigger virus warnings, from Lake of the Ozarks to Daytona Beach

The Memorial Day weekend marking the unofficial start of summer in the U.S. meant big crowds at beaches and warnings from authorities Sunday about people disregarding the coronavirus social-distancing rules and risking a resurgence of the scourge that has killed nearly 100,000 Americans.
Meanwhile, the White House broadened its travel ban against countries hard hit by the virus by saying it would deny admission to foreigners who have recently been in Brazil.
Sheriff’s deputies and beach patrols tried to make sure people kept their distance from others as they soaked up the rays on the sand and at parks and other recreation sites around the country.
In the Tampa area along Florida’s Gulf Coast, the crowds were so big that authorities took the extraordinary step of closing parking lots because they were full.
On the Sunday talk shows, Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, said she was “very concerned” about scenes of people crowding together over the weekend.
“We really want to be clear all the time that social distancing is absolutely critical. And if you can’t social distance and you’re outside, you must wear a mask,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.”
In Missouri, people packed bars and restaurants at the Lake of the Ozarks, a vacation spot popular with Chicagoans, over the weekend. One video showed a crammed pool where vacationers lounged close together without masks, St. Louis station KMOV-TV reported.
In Daytona Beach, Florida, gunfire erupted Saturday night along a beachside road where more than 200 people had gathered and were seen partying and dancing despite the restrictions. Several people were wounded and taken to the hospital, authorities said.
“Disney is closed, Universal is closed. Everything is closed so where did everybody come with the first warm day with 50% opening? Everybody came to the beach,” Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said at a Sunday news conference, referring to crowds in the Daytona Beach area.
On Georgia’s Tybee Island, the beach was filled with families, bicyclists, beach chairs, games, swimmers and more. On a main drag, people lined the sidewalk at Wet Willie’s, a chain bar that sells frozen cocktails. Most stood close together — not nearly 6 feet (2 meters) apart — and none wore masks.
But at a nearby grocery store, staff members handed customers gloves and a number to keep track of how many people were inside at a time. Shoppers had their own masks.
Officials in California said most people were covering their faces and keep their distance even as they ventured to beaches and parks. Many Southern California beaches were open only for swimming, running and other activities.
At New York’s Orchard Beach in the Bronx, kids played with toys, and people sat in folding chairs. Some wore winter coats on a cool and breezy day, and many wore masks and sat apart from others.
“Good to be outside. Fresh air. Just good to enjoy the outdoors,” said Danovan Clacken, whose face was covered.
The U.S. is on track to surpass 100,000 coronavirus deaths in the next few days, while Europe has seen over 169,000 dead, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University that almost certainly understates the toll. Worldwide, more than 5.4 million people have been infected and nearly 345,000 have died.
The New York Times marked the horror by devoting Sunday’s entire front page to a long list of names of those who have died in the United States. The headline: “An Incalculable Loss.”
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump, who went golfing for the second day in a row after not playing for weeks, said on the syndicated Sunday program “Full Measure With Sharyl Attkisson” that he is feeling fine after a two-week course of the unproven drug hydroxychloroquine and a zinc supplement.
The president has spent weeks pushing the drug against the advice of many of his administration’s top medical professionals. Hydroxychloroquine can have deadly side effects.
The issue of wearing masks in public and staying several feet apart has become fraught politically, with some Americans arguing such rules violate their rights.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, who has been targeted by such demonstrations, insisted the precautions should not be a partisan issue.
“This is not about whether you are liberal or conservative, left or right, Republican or Democrat,” DeWine said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Its been very clear what the studies have shown, you wear the mask not to protect yourself so much as to protect others.”
Critics chided Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, who has repeatedly urged Virginians to cover their faces in public, for not heeding his own words when he posed mask-less for photographs with residents this weekend. A spokeswoman for the governor’s office said that Northam should have brought a mask out with him — but that he hadn’t been expecting to be near anyone.
On Sunday, the Trump administration added Brazil to the list of countries it has banned travel from. Brazil is second only to the U.S. in reported coronavirus cases.
The ban, which takes effect Thursday, applies to foreign nationals who have been in Brazil in the 14 days before they hoped to enter the United States. It does not apply to U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents or some of their relatives.
Across Europe, meanwhile, a mishmash of travel restrictions appears to be on the horizon, often depending on what passports visitors carry.
Beginning Monday, France is relaxing its border restrictions, allowing in migrant workers and family visitors from other European countries. Italy, which plans to open regional and international borders on June 3 in a bid to boost tourism, is only now allowing locals back to beaches in their own regions with restrictions.
For the first time in months, the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the traditional Sunday papal blessing, but they kept their distance from one another. Some 2,000 Muslims gathered for Eid al-Fitr prayers at a sports complex in a Paris suburb, spaced 3 feet (1 meter) apart and wearing masks.
Beachside communities in England urged Londoners and others to stay away after rules were eased to allow people to drive any distance for exercise or recreation. The southern coastal city of Brighton said: “Wish you were here — but not just yet.” Wales kept up its “Later” tourism campaign, reminding people that its hotels, restaurants and tourist sites are still closed.


fortune--2020-05-25--Trump bans most travelers from Brazil as coronavirus cases there skyrocket

The U.S. will prohibit the entry of most non-U.S. citizens arriving from Brazil, where coronavirus cases have spiked to the second highest in the world, expanding restrictions already placed on visitors from China and Europe.
The order begins at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, at which point the entry of foreigners who’ve been in Brazil during the 14-day period before their arrival into the U.S. will be halted, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Sunday.
The restrictions, foreshadowed earlier on Sunday by National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, don’t apply to the flow of commerce between the U.S. and Brazil. Exemptions apply for various individuals.
Trump said last week he was considering barring the entry of flights from Brazil, and he continued to float the idea, culminating in Sunday’s directive.
“Brazil is having some trouble, no question about it,” Trump said on May 19 at the start of a cabinet meeting. “I don’t want people coming in here and infecting our people.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined that Brazil “is experiencing widespread, ongoing person-to-person transmission of” the coronavirus, according to Trump’s proclamation on Sunday.
O’Brien said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he hoped any action taken would be temporary — although restrictions placed on other countries haven’t been lifted so far.
‘Every Step Necessary’
“Because of the situation in Brazil, we’re going to take every step necessary to protect the American people,” O’Brien added.
Brazil added 15,813 new coronavirus cases on Sunday and reported another 653 deaths. The South American nation now has 363,211 confirmed cases, trailing only the U.S. globally. Its death toll of 22,666 is behind the U.S. and some of the most infected European countries, including the U.K. and Spain.
The U.S. has over 1.6 million confirmed cases and more than 97,000 deaths.
Trump’s move was announced on a day when Dias Toffoli, chief justice of Brazil’s Supreme Court, took medical leave after experiencing Covid-like symptoms after being in the hospital for an unrelated matter.
Neither Brazil’s presidential palace nor its foreign ministry immediately responded to a request for comment on the U.S. travel restrictions.
O’Brien said the rest of South America, where coronavirus cases are lower, would be looked at “on a country-by-country basis.”
Trump restricted entry into the U.S. from China in late January and suspended most European travel to the U.S. in March.


fortune--2020-05-25--The Republican stance on vote-by-mail is fractured

The Coronavirus Economy : A surge in demand for food delivery has changed how this DoorDash courier works

As primaries around the country continue through the summer and the federal elections in November rapidly approach, vote-by-mail ballots or all-mail systems have become an increasingly popular idea to prevent voters from unnecessary exposure to the coronavirus.
After Wisconsin’s in-person primary in April led to an increase in infections, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and California Governor Gavin Newsom issued orders allowing anyone in-state to be mailed a ballot to vote-by-mail. Other states, like Nevada and Michigan have also eased regulations.
But President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee have been outspoken in their distrust of vote-by-mail.
“The United States cannot have all Mail In Ballots. It will be the greatest Rigged Election in history,” the President tweeted on Sunday evening. “People grab them from mailboxes, print thousands of forgeries and ‘force’ people to sign. Also, forge names. Some absentee OK, when necessary. Trying to use Covid for this Scam!”
Earlier in the week the President threatened to “hold up” federal funding to Michigan and Nevada because of the state’s plans to increase vote-by-mail in order to reduce large groups of people gathering during the global pandemic.
“This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State,” Trump tweeted about Michigan. “I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!” The President later reneged and said he would not withhold funding, but he reiterated that he didn’t believe states had the legal power to mail ballots to all voters.
On Sunday, The Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, and California Republican Party filed a lawsuit against California governor Newsom and secretary of state Alex Padilla calling the governor’s order to send mail-in ballots to every registered voter an illegal “usurpation of the legislature’s authority” to plan the “time, place and manner” of the election.
“This brazen power grab was not authorized by state law and violates both the Elections Clause and Electors Clause of the U.S. Constitution,” read the complaint.
“Elections and the right to vote are foundational to our democracy,” wrote Newsom in a statement about his executive order. “No Californian should be forced to risk their health in order to exercise their right to vote.”
The governor acknowledged that mail-in wasn’t a “perfect solution for every person, and I look forward to our public health experts and the Secretary of State’s and the Legislature’s continued partnership to create safer in-person opportunities for Californians who aren’t able to vote by mail.”
According to a recent USA Today/Suffolk poll, about two-thirds of all Americans support voting-by-mail as a safe alternative to in-person voting during the COVID-19 pandemic. About 34 states already have some form of “no-excuse” absentee ballot which allows them to request and receive ballots by mail. Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington hold all elections by mail, and about three quarters of votes are by mail in Arizona, California, and Montana.
In reality, vote-by-mail fraud is exceedingly rare in the United States. The right-leaning Heritage Foundation maintains a database of all recent instances of recorded voter fraud and found just 204 reported cases involving the fraudulent use of absentee ballots over the past 20 years— only 143 resulted in convictions. That means that over the last two decades, about 0.00006% of total vote-by-mail votes cast were fraudulent—far from the rampant manipulation that the President often describes.
In April, right-leaning legal group The Public Interest Legal Foundation released a report that the President often cites stating that more than 1 million ballots sent out to voters in 2018 were undeliverable, which they called a “catastrophe” for the vote-by-mail system. A ProPublica investigation, however, found that the organization had doubled official government numbers, and PILF later corrected the report to show that the number of ballots rendered undeliverable actually dropped between 2016 and 2018.
The President also often points to what he calls widespread voter fraud in Florida in 2018, but the state, under Republican governor Ron DeSantis, wrapped up a 17-month election last week where they concluded that there had been no evidence of wrongdoing or fraud.
The President has very little legal authority in determining when and how each state votes, but that hasn’t stopped him from voicing his opinion—often to the confusion of his own party.
While it appears to be common wisdom that Republicans oppose voting by mail because it hurts them in elections, that’s not necessarily the case. A recent study by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research found that voting-by-mail initiatives leave both major parties on equal footing. The concept, the study concluded, was fairly bipartisan. Some studies actually found that vote-by-mail aided Republicans as younger, female, and minority voters are less likely to return their ballots.
A number of Republican secretaries of state have encouraged voting-by-mail including Georgia, Kentucky, and West Virginia. President Trump voted by mail in the Florida primary this year, and the Republican National Committee sent voters in Pennsylvania letters this week encouraging them to vote through mail-in ballots, calling the method “convenient and secure.”
While the official Republican stance on vote-by-mail is fractured and mixed, Trump’s consistent messaging about rampant fraud does work to seed distrust in the sanctity and outcomes of the November elections, whatever they may be.


fortune--2020-05-25--Johnson says all non-essential U.K. shops to reopen starting June 15

The vast majority of shops in England will be allowed to reopen next month as the government gradually eases coronavirus lockdown restrictions.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson says outdoor markets and spacious car showrooms can open from June 1 because the likelihood of transmission is low there.
Clothes stores, bookshops, tailors, auctioneers and other retailers will follow on June 15, as long as the number of infections continues to fall and the businesses can be made “COVID-19 secure.”
The other parts of the U.K. — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — can set their own timetables.
Since a nationwide lockdown was imposed on March 23, only shops classed as “essential,” such as supermarkets, have been allowed to operate.


fortune--2020-05-25--Germany will take Lufthansa stake in landmark $9.8 billion bailout

Germany will offer Deutsche Lufthansa AG a 9 billion-euro ($9.8 billion) bailout that thrusts the state back into the heart of a company privatized with fanfare two decades ago.
The aid package involves taking an initial 20% stake that could rise to a blocking minority of 25% plus one share in the event of a hostile takeover, the carrier said in a statement on Monday. The plan, which requires European Union approval and will almost certainly be challenged by rival airlines such as Ryanair Holdings Plc, gives Germany an effective veto over company strategy.
German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said the state’s investment would be temporary, but he also stressed that the timing of an exit would depend on the pace of Lufthansa’s economic recovery.
“When a state spends that much money, it has the obligation to make sure that this investment does not come at the taxpayers’ expense,” Scholz said.
Like airlines the world over, Lufthansa is fighting for survival as restrictions to contain the coronavirus puncture a decades-long aviation boom. The company plans to operate fewer aircraft when flights resume and is closing discount arm Germanwings to resize for what it warns could be years of depressed demand.
The package represents the biggest corporate rescue in Germany during the pandemic crisis. It’s also the only one that involves a direct investment by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, but more may be coming. The government set up the 100 billion-euro fund to buy stakes in stricken companies as part of its effort to stabilize Europe’s largest economy.
As part of the deal, the government will pay about 300 million euros for new Lufthansa stock at the discount price of 2.56 euros, the nominal value of its shares on the balance sheet. Lufthansa shares, which have nearly halved this year, closed at 8.64 euros in Frankfurt trading.
The deal also includes a 5.7 billion-euro investment via a so-called silent participation — a debt-equity hybrid instrument that wouldn’t dilute shareholder voting rights. The company will pay a guaranteed dividend on the investment of 4% in 2020 and 2021, rising to 9.5% in 2027. A portion of the silent participation can be turned into 5% of Lufthansa’s stock if the company doesn’t pay the guaranteed dividend, according to the statement.
The state will also back a three-year loan of 3 billion euros.
The government aims to sell its stake by the end of 2023. Exiting the holding depends on Lufthansa repaying the aid and the share price being above the purchase price plus interest.
Merkel’s government has been eager to avoid losses suffered on bank bailouts after the 2008 financial rout, while safeguarding links to far-flung markets on which the export-led economy depends.
Lufthansa had already secured aid from Switzerland for its unit there in the form of credit guarantees worth 1.28 billion Swiss francs ($1.3 billion) and is negotiating separate packages for divisions in Austria and Belgium.
As part of the bailout, Germany isn’t allowed to interfere in day-to-day operations but will get to fill two seats on Lufthansa’s supervisory board. The representatives will be “independent experts” rather than government officials, a point of contention as the company pushed back against state influence.
While Lufthansa’s management board accepted the offer, the company’s supervisory board will debate and vote on the package before asking shareholders to do the same at an extraordinary general meeting. Europe’s largest airline last week warned that it required “urgent” assistance after the fallout from the coronavirus grounded most of its fleet.
As part of the deal, Lufthansa will continue to reduce its per kilometer emissions by investing in cleaner aircraft and buying alternative fuels where possible, according to the Finance Ministry statement. Lufthansa’s total greenhouse gas emissions rose to a record last year as improvements in fuel efficiency were overshadowed by an increased number of flights, according to the firm’s 2019 sustainability report.


fortune--2020-05-25--The Coronavirus Economy: A surge in demand for food delivery has changed how this DoorDash courier w

The Coronavirus Economy: A surge in demand for food delivery has changed how this DoorDash courier works

Who should be on your COVID-19 task force ?

When the coronavirus outbreak began, DoorDash deliveryman Bentley Koup worried about his livelihood. The former life insurance salesman had been delivering food orders for a little more than two years, using the money he made to support his dream of running his own fashion line. But as consumers stockpiled groceries amid city shutdowns, Koup feared the meal delivery business would slow and diminish paychecks for couriers like him.
“I thought we were going to be in trouble,” says Koup, a 36-year-old resident of Charlotte. “Instead, we got pushed to the front lines.”
Koup is now part of one of the few industries that have grown rapidly during the pandemic. Restaurants have shifted to takeout as regulations across the nation have restricted people from gathering inside eateries. As a result, people are turning to companies like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub to get their favorite foods delivered to their homes.
The rising demand has allowed Koup to cut down his hours, as he makes the same amount of money in less time owing to the high number of orders coming in as well as the increase in tips. It also has changed how restaurants handle deliveries, with many of them working to improve the efficiency of their delivery, on which their business now heavily depends.
Koup, who says he uses a pseudonym instead of his last name for privacy purposes, has been video blogging his journey as a DoorDasher for the past year on YouTube. In his videos, he provides other couriers with advice on making the most money possible through the app. Lately, that counsel has covered making no-contact deliveries—in which delivery agents and customers don’t meet—and navigating new coronavirus-inspired policies at restaurants.
As part of a new series, The Coronavirus Economy, Koup tells Fortune how the coronavirus has changed his job—in some ways, permanently—and what he expects food delivery to look like in the future.
A masked Bentley Koup delivers an order for DoorDash. Bentley Koup
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Fortune: Describe your job pre-pandemic and what you enjoyed about it.
Koup: One of the things I love most about the job is when you’re having a bad day, the task is simple enough that you can stay to yourself. But not only do you see and meet different and new people—I’ve delivered to NBA star Tony Parker—but you also see a lot of the same people at the restaurants. I know Miss Robin works at the Chick-fil-A. I don’t know Miss Robin from a can of paint, but I know she has a bad knee, and her birthday is in June.
So it’s the best of both worlds. You can wait until the pickup time, walk in, pick up, and go. But if there are days you’re feeling good, you’re able to talk to customers or people at the restaurants.
How did the day-to-day routine change during the outbreak?
It’s really weird. I know I’m living through history, but I wouldn’t have expected anything like this. One of the reasons why I choose to work downtown is because of all of the people. Usually in the morning, everyone is at Starbucks. At 2 p.m., everyone’s out again. Now, none of that is happening.
The no-contact deliveries are big on the Dasher and customer side. That’s helped and hurt us. On its face, there’s value in not having interaction with customers right now. We set down the order, then the customer picks it up. It’s the default setting. But one of the biggest issues we face as Dashers is customers saying we didn’t deliver their food [because they’re unaware of the new policy]. So it makes the experience a little rough.
Bentley Koup making a pickup for DoorDash from Chick-fil-A. Bentley Koup
Has the rise in demand affected how much money you’re able to make?
I was typically doing six- to eight-hour days and making $120 to $140 a day [pre-pandemic]. Between the last week in March and the first week in April, I could make $140 in five hours.
We’ve seen some crazy numbers. I’ve seen some people make $400 in a 12-hour day. It used to be that $300 a day was a great day, but everything had to go perfect for that. Now $250 a day is standard for 10 to 12 hours. People are really seeing a boost in income.
It’s the perfect storm of more orders and more tips. And there are a lot of first-time customers.
Scenes from DoorDasher Bentley Koup’s day. Bentley Koup
How have restaurants changed how they’re working with delivery people?
Previously, you would walk in and check in with a cashier or manager, get the food, and get back in the car. Now a lot of the restaurants have tables that they sit the food on. Each table is labeled “Uber Eats,” “DoorDash,” or “Grubhub.” So they make being able to walk in and pick up food faster.
Other restaurants have created a plastic bubble by the door. They literally have a plastic covering over the door, and you can’t get within three feet. And a lot of restaurants take a table and block the door so you can’t physically come into the restaurant. They sit the food on the table, and you go from there.
Has the pandemic changed the future of food delivery? In what ways?
I definitely don’t think it’ll ever go back to the way it was. The no-contact delivery will stay. It works for customers and Dashers.
I also honestly think the future of restaurants is really going to change. You had a lot of restaurants unsure if food delivery was going to work for them, but now a lot of them need us. I think some restaurants are going to be Starbucks-sized and do express delivery/takeout like at the airport. You come in one door, pick up the food, and go out the other door. There will be no place to sit inside.
I don’t see delivery going anywhere, but I see the perception of [delivery app] drivers changing. The persona that this is the person who got fired from Pizza Hut will completely change because of the number of people that are doing it now.
Any concerns for the future of your industry?
The biggest concern I’m having is that we’re creating a bubble, and it’ll bust. Eventually, the orders will slow down, and some of the restaurants that were open [pre-pandemic] aren’t going to open back up. You’re going to end up with way more Dashers than orders for some time.


fortune--2020-05-25--Who should be on your COVID-19 task force?

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In late February, John Kelly was asked to take on a new role at IBM: build and direct the tech giant’s COVID-19 Task Force, a global group of senior leaders responsible for the safety and well-being of employees throughout the current crisis. The executive vice president and former head of IBM Research, who joined Big Blue back in 1980, had held many roles in the company. Still, this was unprecedented territory. Over the course of about 10 days in early March, IBM moved 95% of its 350,000 global employees from offices to work-from-home environments. Now, the task force has shifted gears to focus on bringing everyone back.
“It was difficult moving to working from home, and it’s going to be a lot more difficult rewinding this,” says Kelly.
There’s no singular playbook for how to do so, though IBM has taken a stab at developing one. But many companies who have the resources to do this are starting with putting together a task force dedicated to figuring out the right processes for their employee base. Having the right people in place, who represent diverse voices across your organization, is probably a good first step. But who should be on the task force? What expertise should they draw from? And how should global businesses navigate the different regions (and regulations) they must work across? Fortune talked to Kelly and executives helping to lead similar initiatives at other big companies to learn about some early best practices. Here are some takeaways:
Realize that it’s a full-time job. IBM’s outgoing CEO, Ginni Rometty, asked Kelly to step away from his day-to-day responsibilities and lead the COVID-19 Task Force 24/7. There’s good reason: IBM has a massive employee base, spread across the globe. Coming up with a plan to shut down and then reopen offices is equally massive. Smaller companies can also benefit from the full-time dedication of the person at the helm.
Appoint people who know your company well. This isn’t the time or place to enlist people who are still wondering “who does what” within your organization. Kelly has been with IBM for four decades. “I know the wiring system of this company and the countries and governments where we operate,” says the longtime executive, when asked why he thinks Rometty asked him to take on this new role. “And it was clear that speed mattered here.”
Embrace diversity. Health care provider Blue Shield of California also put together a formal COVID-19 task force at the onset of the pandemic. The working group consists of about 10 people, including the organization’s chief information officer, head of real estate, and chief health officer. But Mary O’Hara, chief human resources officer and head of the task force, says she realized she was missing a point of view early on: someone who could advise on external affairs. “Our goal is to strengthen the communities that we serve,” says O’Hara. “We needed to have someone who would bring a community lens to the way we were thinking through everything.” It’s not just diversity of thought that matters. Employee bases represent different genders and sexual orientations, people of color, and those who are more or less at risk for the virus. Task forces should also represent this range because your decisions will impact different employees in different ways.
Communicate, communicate, communicate. Your company’s task force needs to be in constant communication with employees, and the flow needs to go both ways. “The appetite right now for clear and factual information and two-way dialogue is insatiable,” says Blue Shield’s O’Hara. The human resources executive worked in banking during the 2008 financial crisis and says she learned then that when people have an absence of information they have a tendency to make things up. Figure out how to get information in and out with much higher frequency than before, and flatten existing communication hierarchies to make sure everyone feels that they have access to the task force.
Bring in the experts. Heather MacDougall, Amazon’s VP of workplace health and safety, already had a team of 2,500 safety professionals on hand, tasked with the well-being of employees. But as she and others at the company have had to rewrite regular processes owing to the unique risks of the virus, she brought on more expertise from outside the company. “We added people like industrial hygienists and epidemiologists,” says MacDougall, who now has upwards of 3,500 safety professionals on her team. (Earlier on in the crisis, some of Amazon’s frontline workers voiced concerns about insufficient protective gear and a lack of other safety measures; Amazon has said it is investing about $4 billion on COVID-related initiatives and that it has provided more than 100 million masks to its sites.) To be sure, not every company can afford to hire its own Dr. Anthony Fauci—the nation’s top infectious disease expert and member of the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force—but businesses can enlist contractors or at least pull from published resources written by experts.


fortune--2020-05-25--Do some Hong Kongers have the right to resettle in the U.K.? China’s new security law revives old de

Do some Hong Kongers have the right to resettle in the U.K.? China’s new security law revives old debate