fortune--2020-11-19--The hydrogen economy: Hyped for years, the most abundant element in the universe is finally having i

The hydrogen economy: Hyped for years, the most abundant element in the universe is finally having its moment

When it comes to the global energy transition, there’s one word that’s repeated so often it sometimes seems to have achieved silver-bullet status: hydrogen.
Hydrogen-powered cars, trucks and factories have been hyped for years as clean substitutes to their forebears that run on dirty fossil fuels. Better still for the planet would be green hydrogen, which is cleaner at its source.
It’s the latter that’s getting much of the attention these days.
Just this week, the U.K. government unveiled a plan to make green hydrogen a cornerstone of its “green industrial revolution,” snaring £500 million ($665 million) in public funding. It’s a policy that follows similar government initiatives in Australia, France and South Korea. Companies, too, are getting on board. Earlier this month,BP and Ørsted, the Danish wind power giant, announced a joint project to create a wind-powered hydrogen plant in Germany.
It’s easy to see why there’s this rush to innovate with an “H.” The most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen is viewed as a tantalizing substitute to natural gas and coal to help heavily polluting sectors such as aviation, steelmaking, and shipping de-carbonize. As an added bonus, some of the existing infrastructure in our carbon-dependent economy, from pipelines to refineries, can be retrofitted to hydrogen-based energy production.
Here’s what you need to know.
Hydrogen is not necessarily green
While hydrogen is often spoken about in the context of low-carbon fuels, it’s important to remember that hydrogen itself is not necessarily green, but only as green as how it was created.
“Right now, hydrogen is not a clean fuel, in general,” says Roman Kramarchuk, head of future energy analytics at S&P Global Platts. “You might want to think of hydrogen in the same way you think of electricity.”
To create hydrogen in the first place, abundant electricity must be used for the electrolysis process—or splitting water to create hydrogen. If that electricity comes from coal, the hydrogen itself will be far from green. It’s only green if it’s been created using renewable energy. That makes the future of green hydrogen inherently dependent on rising production of low cost, reliable energy from sources like wind and solar.
In fact, hydrogen has already been used for decades for oil or chemical refining and nearly all of it is created using fossil fuels, rather than “green” hydrogen. Currently, about 70 million metric tons of hydrogen are produced per year, according to the IEA. For context, about 4.6 billion MT of oil and gas combined was produced in 2019.
About 6% of natural gas supplies, and 2% of coal, is used to create hydrogen, according to the International Energy Agency. As a result, hydrogen is a surprisingly large source of our current emissions profile—surpassing the total emissions of the U.K. and Indonesia combined, the IEA says.
We’re a long way off
Investor momentum and government support for green hydrogen is starting from a very low base.
Wind and solar power are now so established they are competitive with fossil fuels in many markets and no longer need subsidies, but using those resources to develop hydrogen power is still, well, expensive. An analysis by BloombergNEF, the company’s research arm, put green hydrogen’s costs between $2.50/kg to $4.50/kg to make. For comparison, although the weight of a barrel of oil varies depending on the source, an average traded barrel of WTI crude is currently worth roughly $0.31/kg.
“Simply on its own, it’s not economic without a high carbon price,” penalizing its fossil fuel competitors, says Kramarchuk. “In order to really start displacing fossil fuels, it needs support.”
Analysts at Bank of America say green hydrogen prices would need to fall by 85% to be competitive with regular hydrogen, which they estimate could happen by 2030.
For that reason, green hydrogen is still only a tiny percentage of the total hydrogen production, and essentially nonexistent compared to other fuel sources. In 2019, global low-carbon hydrogen production was 0.36 metric tons per year, according to the IEA—about a half a percent of total annual hydrogen demand.
In terms of research and development, hydrogen also makes up the smallest share of any public investment area for IEA member countries. In 2019, R&D in hydrogen globally was roughly $800 million—out of $20 billion in total—less than half the amount marked out for fossil fuels.
So why is everyone so bullish?
Right now, hydrogen is high-carbon, and expensive—not exactly a promising state for a transformative, low-carbon fuel.
And yet, alongside fuel cells, which use hydrogen to produce electricity and unlike a battery does not need to be recharged, hydrogen is increasingly seen as a promising new addition to the energy puzzle. For one, it’s a promising replacement fuel for industries like shipping and aviation where it’s particularly difficult to reduce emissions. For another, green hydrogen can be produced when there is excess green power in the system—a particularly windy day, for example—and then stored for later use, helping manage the unreliable production challenge in low-carbon energy systems.
Hitting a net zero target requires using every available technology to decarbonize energy systems—and then using mitigating options or other technology to offset those emissions that are harder to eliminate. Hydrogen, like carbon-capture-and-storage, offers the chance to push those real cuts closer to an actual zero.
Also, like carbon capture and storage, hydrogen offers something else for legacy oil and gas giants: a way to repurpose their existing refining and pipeline infrastructure for a new fuel.
“There’s a number of energy incumbents that are trying to look at their own skill sets and think about what’s the best way they can be part of an energy transition,” says Kramarchuk.
Large-scale hydrogen adoption “allows them to see themselves having a role,” he added.
The result is that even if green hydrogen is coming from a low base, it’s moving quickly. The fuel is at a “pivotal moment,” according to the IEA’s executive director, Fatih Birol.
The IEA sees green hydrogen production increasing by nearly six times between 2020 and 2030 under their sustainable development scenario, and many countries—from France to South Korea to Australia—have announced national plans or investment stimulus for green hydrogen, both to cut their own emissions and to establish a head-start in what could one day be a lucrative energy export market, much like oil or gas are today.
That has resulted in some lofty predictions for the potential of hydrogen. By 2050, BofA analysts predict green hydrogen could make up 24% of our global energy needs by 2050, making it a critical fuel sources.
It’s certainly the definition of a long-term bet, which may not satisfy the green brigade, but it’s burnishing the climate-friendly reputation of plenty of politicians.


fortune--2020-11-19--How much reform does Big Tech really want?

One of the world ’ s strictest new lockdowns bans outdoor exercising and dog-walking

The CEOs of Facebook and Twitter agree with lawmakers on one thing: Congress should consider updating Section 230, a law that protects them from being held liable for what users post on their services.
Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey reiterated their stances at Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, where they were grilled for several hours over everything from elections to misinformation to censorship. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the executives’ suggestions for Section 230 reform sound a lot like what they already do or have been planning to do.
Zuckerberg said companies should be required to report on the harmful content on their services as well as what they did to address it. But, as he said on Tuesday, Facebook already does this in its quarterly transparency reports, the latest of which will be published on Thursday. Dorsey said companies should have to provide more transparency around why they make decisions to label or remove specific posts as well as provide users with the choice to switch on or off certain algorithms—but Twitter already does that to an extent too.
“They’re under political and public relations pressure to say they’re willing to entertain more government involvement in their businesses,” said Paul Barrett, deputy director of the New York University Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. “They’re talking mostly about transparency, which is good, but it won’t necessarily require these companies to do business in a different way.”
Barrett thinks companies should go even further and explain why algorithms are flagging, amplifying, or removing specific content, even if that’s somewhat hard to trace. “These guys always say these algorithms don’t favor sensationalist material,” he said. “Then what does it favor, and how does it favor it?”
Anurag Lal, formerly a member of a task force at the Federal Communications Commission, believes that Section 230 reform should also include some kind of penalty to hold companies accountable for failures. Industry leaders, he suggested, should work with lawmakers to determine best practices and accountability measures for large companies like Facebook and Twitter.
“Today, it’s everything goes,” he said. “Where the platform has been abused … there has to be some kind of liability.”
But Lal added Section 230 was created for a reason, and it should still exist for that very same reason: innovation. To avoid stifling the creation and growth of new Internet companies, lawmakers should limit new requirements to large companies and refrain from the knee-jerk reaction of revoking it all together.
“We cannot let it get politicized and torn down,” he said. “It’s not a zero-sum game.”
Danielle Abril
@DanielleDigest
danielle.abril@fortune.com
***
In this episode of Fortune‘s Brainstorm podcast, our own Robert Hackett argues the cryptocurrency is approaching bubble territory. CoinShare’s Meltem Demirors says otherwise. But the two agree on one thing: More and more investors are turning to cryptocurrency as a means of diversifying their portfolios. Listen to the episode here.
NEWSWORTHY
COVID concerns. More than 200 of Facebook’s contract content moderators criticized the social media company and their respective employers for requiring a return to the office amid the coronavirus pandemic. The contractors on Wednesday sent a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, and executives of their respective firms arguing that their health is being sacrificed for Facebook’s business. They also asked the companies for the ability to work from home, hazard pay, and better healthcare and mental health services.
Deepfakes bare all. Law enforcement authorities and regulators are investigating messaging app Telegram after an A.I. bot on its service continues to generate fake nude images of women. The news comes one month after researchers discovered the bot on Telegram that uses a tool to create deepfake images of real women without their clothes. The researchers reported the bot to the app, which has already posted digitally altered images of more than 100,000 women, but it still remains.
Slow burn. Apple has agreed to pony up $113 million to settle an investigation of its previous practice of slowing the speeds of older iPhones to preserve battery life. More than 30 states were investigating Apple’s the claim that the company throttled the speeds when it released new phones. Apple also is required to disclose how it's managing the battery life of its devices, as part of the agreement.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
The California Partners Project, a nonprofit founded by California's first lady Jennifer Siebel Newsom, recently explored how children are dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, during which school and social lives are largely online. Researchers conducted interviews with 46 California teens between the ages of 14 and 17. One of their findings reinforces the concerns of child and mental health advocates, who have long been worried about the addictive nature of social media. "Even as they say they suffer headaches, poor sleep, and exhaustion, teens feel the consequences of being 'addicted' to their phones and social media as too mild to matter or warrant a change in behavior. However, these times of instability and emotional frailty can be breeding grounds for the development of destructive habits," the report reads.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Marissa Mayer launches her first startup By Lucinda Shen
Why Biden must rely on innovation to rejuvenate the economy By Joe Crowley
Google revamps Google Pay app, adds 11 bank partners By Robert Hackett
‘Challenger banks’ are on track for a record year even as business model remains uncertain By Jeff John Roberts
EV startup Arrival goes public at $5.4 billion valuation in SPAC deal By David Z. Morris
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
Though watching Charlie Brown classics was never really a tradition in my family, there has always been something comforting about randomly finding them on TV during the holidays.
So I was a little saddened when I heard Apple+ bought the rights to Peanuts content earlier this year, since I don't have the service. Luckily for all of us, a new deal between Apple and PBS means A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and A Charlie Brown Christmas will be headed to public television again this year. Hooray! Christmas is saved!


fortune--2020-11-19--PG&E’s new CEO is the first woman to leap from top of one Fortune 500 company to another

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Marissa Mayer is back, a governor flips on a mask mandate, and a female CEO puts up a Fortune 500 first. Go get your Thursday!
– A Fortune 500 first. Regular readers will know that we’re in a habit of announcing new female Fortune 500s with a bit of fanfare—after all there are only 37 of them! But today’s new addition is a particularly unusual case.
Patti Poppe has been named CEO of PG&E, which, when we published the Fortune 500 earlier this year, was No. 189 on the ranking. However, Poppe’s new job won’t increase the number of women running Fortune 500 companies, since she’s coming to the gig directly from CMS Energy, No. 443.
Given the rarity of female leaders among these massive companies, going directly from one to another was, until this moment, unheard of. The last woman to come close was Meg Whitman, though in her case there was a significant gap between leaving eBay in 2008 and joining HP in 2011. (As you may recall, she ran for governor of California in between.) Our resident Fortune 500 guru, Scott DeCarlo, couldn’t come up with any other examples—but if any of you can, please let us know!
Interestingly, Poppe also narrowly missing a female CEO-to-female CEO handoff; Geisha Williams stepped down as chief of the energy giant in early 2019. We first saw that kind of transition back in 2009, when Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy passed the baton to Ursula Burns.
Of course, this isn’t quite a feel-good tale of corporate triumph. Williams left PG&E in the wake of admissions that the company’s equipment started more than a dozen wildfires that collectively killed more than 100 people. Facing more than $30 billion in potential liabilities, the company sought bankruptcy protection last January and just emerged from Chapter 11—after pleading guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter—this summer. Poppe takes the helm at a time when the company has a lot of work to do to get back on track—and a massive challenge in terms of winning back public trust.
The Wall Street Journal reports that, at CMS, Poppe led efforts to move away from coal plants and double down on solar and wind farms and other clean tech. Here’s hoping she is able to bring that same kind of forward-thinking and innovation to PG&E’s 16 million customers.
Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Addressing it. Fortune's Lucinda Shen talks to former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer about her new company, Sunshine, which is developing "a better address book"—or an app for organizing your phone's contacts. Fortune
- Mask mandate. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds was one of the Republican governors who strongly objected to implementing mask mandates. Now Reynolds has reversed course, requiring masks indoors. She still says, "I don't want to do this," but faced pressure from local lawmakers and doctors. New York Times
- Calling for a first. Indigenous leaders are calling for President-elect Biden to name a Native American secretary of the Interior—and specifically, to name Rep. Deb Haaland to the position. Haaland would be the first Native American person to serve in a presidential Cabinet; the Interior position oversees matters such as tribal land and Indigenous education. Vox
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Lululemon Athletica has added Kourtney Gibson, president of Loop Capital Markets, to its board. PRO Unlimited appointed Rebecca Perrault, formerly of Deloitte, senior director of Diversity and Inclusion.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
-Professor mom. In the wake of New York City's announcement that it will pause in-person schooling amid rising COVID-19 numbers in the city, a reflection on who steps in when schools shut their doors: moms.
- A second look. Victoria's Secret is trying again, launching a second investigation into parent company L Brands and founder Les Wexner's ties to Jeffrey Epstein. The first attempt produced few results. Shareholders asked the company's board for this investigation, worrying that the attorney running the first was himself too close to Wexner. New York Times
- In a bind. Friends and colleagues of Emily Murphy, the General Services Administration administrator who controls the mechanics of the presidential transition, say she feels like she is in "a hard place" and is "afraid on multiple levels." Murphy hasn't signed off on the transition process, preventing President-elect Biden from moving forward with the usual funding and backing. CNN
ON MY RADAR
Why do we care so much about Diana's dresses? New York Times
The last children of Down syndrome The Atlantic
Pimco accused of ‘fraternity culture’ in suit by female workers Bloomberg
PARTING WORDS
"Strong women intent on doing their own thing are like magnets for me."
- London gallerist Alison Jacques who's focused on repositioning female artists overlooked in the canon of art history.


fortune--2020-11-21--Facebook’s latest efforts to combat hate speech aren’t enough, ADL says

The 21 best stocks to buy for 2021

Daily Facebook users see more than half a trillion posts annually that include hate speech, according to a new report, countering the social network’s recent claim that the problem is minor.
The finding, published by hate-fighting group Anti-Defamation League on Friday, is intended to force Facebook to do more to police hate and harassment on its service. The organization has long complained that the company has merely payed lip service to cleaning up racism and anti-Semitism.
The ADL report comes a day after Facebook for the first time detailed the scope of the hate speech on its service. The company said that only 10 to 11 of every 10,000 posts that users view contain hateful content.
But the ADL said that fails to take into account the algorithms that can amplify exposure to hate speech for users who are already searching for it. And looking at Facebook’s data in another way shows that the problem is widespread rather than an aberration, the group said.
“Weekly exposure to hate speech thus could be as high as 10 billion views, monthly exposure, 40 billion views, and yearly exposure, 520 billion views,” the ADL said in a blog post. “These are startling numbers and they demand an urgent response.”
About the ADL report, Facebook told Fortune that its new metric provides a broad look at overall levels of hate speech, but that they shouldn’t be used to make assumptions about the experience of the average user.
On Thursday, Facebook described that data, referred to as ” prevalence,” as its “North Star” for how it polices content. The prevalence figure, the company said, more accurately reflects the experience of its users and the number of hateful posts the company fails to remove.
In its report on Thursday, Facebook said it had removed 22.5 million posts for hate speech during the second quarter and 22.1 million during the third. Meanwhile, Instagram removed 3.2 million in the second quarter compared to 6.5 million in the third.
But the ADL said it had expected to see a rise in the number of posts removed due to new Facebook policies, including a ban Holocaust denial and of images containing blackface. Instead, the number of posts removed on Facebook remained relatively unchanged, even though they more than doubled on Instagram under similar policies.
The ADL lauded Facebook for catching 94.7% of the violating content before users flagged it, but the group said that figure doesn’t provide the full picture. Facebook should also report how many posts users flagged for hate speech because it often fails to remove them after they’re reported, the group said.
Lastly, the ADL wanted more insight into how hate speech affected specific communities, such as Muslims, Black people, Jews, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Without that targeted data, civil rights groups will have a harder time suggesting fixes for the problem, the ADL said.
“To show they are taking real steps to reduce hate speech, platforms must try to understand the scope of the problem by collecting the relevant data and using rigorous research methods,” the ADL said. “Failure to do so will result in vulnerable groups continuing to be at the mercy of toxic users on social media.”


fortune--2020-11-20--Dolly Parton loves you

Dolly Parton loves you

The 21 best stocks to buy for 2021

As stakeholder capitalism slowly gains ground, immigrant kids are working in sweatshop conditions in suburbs across the U.S. and some employees are more likely to be in urgent need of pandemic-related support than others. And batter up! Major League Baseball breaks a glass ceiling on behalf of four major U.S. sports.
But first, here’s your Dolly Parton week in review, in Haiku.
It took years and years
of nine-to-fives to sing a
song this pure. One verse
to stoke the inner
joy of children far away;
another to slay
vampires, real and
imagined. Jolene raises
roofs, comforts all her
neighbors and stands up
for love is love is justice.
Such a simple song.
Dolly loves us, this
we know: Because her vaccine
will tell us all so.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
On point
Larry Fink: Get smart about stakeholder capitalism, make more money This is part of the takeaway from BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s remarks at a Bloomberg New Economy Forum event this week. Across the board, investors are focused on climate change mitigation with an emphasis on the next phases of a green economy. Fink characterized President-elect Joe Biden’s decision to re-engage the Paris climate agreement as “monumental.”
Bloomberg
Immigrant teens are forced to work overnight shifts in factories in suburbs around the U.S. Because we have lost our capacity to be shocked, I don’t expect this story to make much of an impact. But if we were still able to feel things, I imagine the idea that immigrant teens, forced to work grinding hours in unsafe conditions to pay debts to smugglers and support faraway families would trigger a profound sense of horror. In suburbs from Urbana-Champaign in Illinois to New Bedford, Mass., children are laboring in food processing plants, construction sites and warehouses. Remind me why unfettered capitalism is a good thing?
ProPublica
How to help “diverse” employees around the world People of color, LGBTQ+, women, working parents and the many intersections therein are struggling in some specific ways, says new research from McKinsey. While workers across the board are struggling with mental health, work overload, life balance, and isolation, these challenges are more urgent among certain key populations. “In majority-white countries, people of color (POC) are especially worried about workplace health and safety, as well as career progression and balancing responsibilities at home,” they find. This comes at a time when many companies are aware of the issues facing their employees, but are still struggling to execute on their DEI strategies. Click through for some ideas.
McKinsey
Johnson & Johnson pledges $100 million to promote better health solutions for communities of color The commitments outlined in their statement describe an interesting mix of potential interventions, including equitable community health care, addressing the racial determinants of health, and initiatives to create inclusive workplace cultures. Add this to the list of big company commitments that we will need to keep a close eye on going forward. “The quality of your healthcare should not be determined by your race and ethnicity,” said Alex Gorsky, Johnson & Johnson’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. More from the company below.
Johnson & Johnson
The painful journey of baseball’s Kim Ng Ng is being correctly celebrated as the first woman and the first East Asian American general manager in baseball history. (In fact, when the Miami Marlins hired her, she became the first female general manager in any of the four major U.S. sports leagues.) But a racist incident in her past which has recently resurfaced offers a reminder of how often people feel comfortable saying the quiet parts out loud. In 2003, Ng worked as an assistant general manager for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and former player Bill Singer, then an executive with the New York Mets, decided to get aggressively ugly with her in a hotel bar during an industry confab.
NBC News
On Background
Spend a little time with Dolly Parton She’s an enduring legend, a savvy brand, an effective philanthropist—she helped fund a COVID vaccine!—and a dedicated employer operating in an otherwise overlooked part of rural America. And, as this wonderful profile makes clear, Dolly Parton is someone we can all agree on. Jad Abumrad was the host of WNYC Studios’ nine-part 2019 podcast Dolly Parton’s America, and had one of the best quotes in the piece. “We talked to these fervent Dolly fans, from Appalachian queer kids to Brooklyn hipsters to [conservative] people in the South. Everyone sees her as theirs.” And then this: “I say this with humility and as someone who is not a believer: There’s something very Christ-like about her.”
Billboard
Rejected by his adopted country, a Japanese artist found—then created—American beauty Chiura Obata (1885-1975) had been trained in sumi-e, the traditional Japanese ink and brush painting technique, since he was a small child. Obata left his restrictive parents behind and moved to San Francisco shortly before his 18th birthday to continue his work in the arts. “But the American Dream was not on offer,” explains Maria Popova, in Brain Pickings. “[I]nstead, Obata was met with the era’s prevalent racial animosity toward Japanese immigrants, who were socially ostracized, denied entry into restaurants, hotels, and entertainment establishments, and legally prohibited from owning land.” Looking away from the ugliness of humans, he instead turned to the glory of the American West. What followed was an extraordinary body of work celebrated the natural beauty of nature, and which earned him a central spot in the California Watercolor School, a movement which would play an outsized role in twentieth-century art.
BrainPickings
raceAhead is edited by Aric Jenkins.
Today's mood board
When you find out from Dr. Anthony Fauci that you're immune to COVID-19 and Christmas can still go on, as long as everybody else stays inside and wears a mask.


fortune--2020-11-20--Saturday is the final deadline to get your CARES Act $1,200 stimulus check

The 21 best stocks to buy for 2021

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The $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed in March sent most Americans a one-time $1,200 stimulus check.
Most Americans saw that $1,200 stimulus check automatically deposit into their bank accounts. However, Americans who did not submit a 2019 tax return were required to provide additional information to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). That information includes their name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, bank account information, and personal information of their dependents.
And the deadline to do so is fast approaching: Non-filers must submit their information to the IRS by Saturday, November 21 at 3 pm in order to register for the $1,200 stimulus payment. You can submit that information here.
There could be a fair amount of money on the line, depending on your situation. The CARES Act mandated a stimulus check worth as much as $1,200 for individuals or $2,400 for married couples, plus $500 for each qualifying child. That amount decreases for adjusted gross income above $75,000 per individual or $150,000 per qualified couple. And the checks phase out for individuals earning above $99,000, head of household filers with one child above $146,500, and joint filers with no children at $198,000.
For months Congress has debated sending Americans a second $1,200 stimulus check as part of another economic aid package. However, Democratic and Republican leaders have been unable to reach an agreement. The consensus on Capitol Hill is that another massive economic aid package won’t come until after the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20.


fortune--2020-11-20--Americans sharply divided on election integrity, Trump’s conduct: Pew survey

The 21 best stocks to buy for 2021

Nearly two weeks after former vice president Joe Biden was declared the winner of the bitterly contested 2020 presidential election, there are few signs that America’s sharp political divides are healing.
A new survey by Pew Research Center has found stark disagreements among the American public—and specifically between supporters of President-elect Biden and current President Donald Trump—”over nearly all aspects of the election and voting process, including whether their own votes were counted accurately,” according to Pew.
Of the nearly 12,000 U.S. adults surveyed by Pew, 59% said they believed the 2020 election in the U.S. was “run and administered well.” But along political lines, opinions differ greatly; only 21% of Trump supporters shared that view, compared to 94% of Biden supporters, with Pew noting that Trump voters who were already skeptical of the integrity of the electoral process “have become much more so since Biden’s victory.”
In fact, only 35% of Trump supporters said they were “very confident” that their own vote was counted accurately in this election, as opposed to 82% of Biden supporters. Those reservations come despite state and federal election officials describing the 2020 election as “the most secure in American history” earlier this month.
“Disagreements between supporters of the winning and losing candidates over the accuracy of the accuracy of presidential vote counts are not unusual, but the magnitude of the differences between Trump and Biden voters is striking,” according to Pew.
The survey also sheds light on public opinion of how both candidates have conducted themselves since the election—a time in which Trump has made vehement, baseless claims of voter fraud and stifled the transition of power to a Biden administration.
A 57% majority of all voters said the Trump campaign should end its legal challenges to the voting and ballot-counting processes in battleground states, with 54% describing Trump’s conduct since the end of the election as “poor.” By contrast, 62% characterized Biden’s post-election conduct as “excellent” or “good,” while only half as many (31%) described Trump’s conduct in the same way.
Still, the survey shows that voter opinion of both men is delineated along sharply political lines. Pew found that 85% of Trump voters are supportive of his legal challenges to the election and believe they should continue, while 96% of Biden voters believe they should end.
Elsewhere, respondents also shed light on how political views correspond with public opinion about the coronavirus pandemic, and how the government should handle it as COVID-19 cases surge across the United States. A 66% majority of Biden voters said they are in favor of tighter restrictions on public activity in their communities, compared to only 16% of Trump voters. In fact, 44% of Trump voters said there should be fewer restrictions, with 40% believing that restrictions should remain the same as they are currently.
Yet Biden continues to draw more public confidence in his ability to handle the pandemic, an issue that may well have driven him to victory over Trump. The survey found “only modest changes” in how both candidates polled in this regard, with 58% of respondents “very or somewhat confident” in Biden’s ability to handle the public health impact of COVID-19, compared to only 39% who expressed confidence in Trump.
Meanwhile, respondents were overwhelmingly in favor of more public aid to help Americans households and businesses deal with the economic impact of the pandemic. A significant 80% majority said lawmakers should pass more coronavirus aid, with a strong 68% majority calling for Trump and current Congress to act “as soon as possible” and pass a new stimulus package now, rather than waiting until after the presidential inauguration in January.
Congress continues to be deadlocked over additional coronavirus aid since passing the $2.2 trillion CARES Act in March, though House and Senate leadership are said to be in negotiations as pressure mounts for more relief.


fortune--2020-11-20--Online marketplace Wish files for initial public offering

The 21 best stocks to buy for 2021

Online retailer Wish has filed for a U.S. initial public offering, joining the rush of consumer technology companies seeking to go public before the end of the year.
Wish’s parent company, San Francisco-based ContextLogic, plans to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol WISH, according to a filing Friday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It listed a potential offering size of $1 billion, a placeholder that will likely change.
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America are leading the IPO, according to the filing.
While Wish filed confidential paperwork for its IPO in August, this is the first chance potential investors have had to scrutinize its financial performance.
Wish’s losses, as well as its sales, have increased during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the filing. It had a net loss of $176 million on revenue of $1.7 billion during the first nine months of this year, compared with a net loss of $5 million on revenue of $1.3 billion during the same period in 2019.
The company joins a glut of consumer-facing tech companies that are aiming to hold their IPOs before the end of 2020. Home-rental giant Airbnb, food delivery company DoorDash, online loan provider Affirm and video-game platform Roblox have all filed this month to go public.
Founded in 2010 by CEO Peter Szulczewski and Danny Zhang, who met at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, Wish is an online marketplace that connects sellers to potential buyers of everything from clothing to electronic goods and kitchenware. ContextLogic owns other online marketplaces, including Geek, Mama, Home and Cute, according to the Wish website.
‘Value conscious’
It differentiates itself by focusing on “value conscious consumers” who it says have been underserved by traditional e-commerce players, according to its filing.
Wish said that most of its vendors are in China, although it’s trying to expand its roster of local suppliers. It mentions “economic tension between the U.S. and China” as a risk that could impact its business.
The company is backed by venture capital firms DST Global, Founders Fund, Formation8 Partners and GGV Capital.
Like many technology companies looking to go public, Wish has a dual-class share structure giving more voting power to its founders. Its Class B shares will carry 20 votes each, compared with one each for the Class A shares sold in the IPO.
Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, UBS, RBC Capital Markets and Credit Suisse Group are also working on the IPO.


fortune--2020-11-20--Robinhood co-founder steps down as co-CEO, leaving Vlad Tenev as sole chief ahead of a rumored IPO

The 21 best stocks to buy for 2021

Robinhood, creator of the popular stock-trading app of the same name, announced on Friday that Vlad Tenev will be the company’s sole chief executive, ending an arrangement in which Tenev and cofounder Baiju Bhatt have shared the top job since the company’s launch in 2013.
The move comes amid ongoing speculation that Robinhood plans to go public in the coming months, and after the company raised $660 million in a recent Series G funding round.
“Today, Robinhood co-founders Baiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev shared with our employees that Vlad will assume the role of sole CEO. Baiju will continue in his role as co-founder, supporting key business initiatives and serving on Robinhood’s board of directors,” said a Robinhood spokesperson.
A person close to the company, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the decision to name Tenev as sole leader came in part because Robinhood recognized that a dual-CEO structure had become less viable as the company expands. The person added that the move did not come about as result of political machinations and that Tenev and Bhatt, who became friends as Stanford undergraduates, remain close.
According to former Robinhood executives, Tenev is the more visionary and strategy-oriented of the two founders, while Bhatt is regarded as more jocular and focused on product development. The person close to Robinhood said the new arrangement will let Bhatt devote more time to projects he most enjoys.
Robinhood is riding high after its giant funding round, which valued the firm at $11.7 billion, and from an influx of new users who have helped fuel a record level of trading this year among retail investors. Earlier this year, the company said it has grown to 13 million accounts, 3 million of which were added in the first six months of 2020 alone. The phenomenon led BusinessWeek to dub the mass of new traders “Generation Robinhood” in a recent cover story.
Despite the hype, Robinhood faces numerous challenges. Critics have decried the app as casino-like and exploitive, arguing that it encourages reckless trading. Others have warned that novice users can easily get in over their head—a point driven home in June when a 20-year-old trader took his life after mistakenly believing he had incurred $700,000 in debt while trading complicated options contracts. The company has also incurred a barrage of customer complaints and fines from regulators, and bungled major product rollouts.
While Robinhood has become a darling among venture capitalists, it’s unclear when or if it will turn a profit. The firm doesn’t charge users to trade—an innovation that led the rest of the industry last year to follow suit. Robinhood has earned $453 million so far this year from “payment for order flow,” which involves obtaining rebates from market-making firms like Citadel Securities that execute Robinhood customers’ trades. The tactic accounts for around 70% of Robinhood’s revenue, raising questions of whether this is sustainable and if the firm will be able to diversify its revenue stream in the future.
In stepping into the solo CEO role, the 33-year-old Tenev will be under considerable pressure to show Robinhood is built for the long term—pressure that will only increase once the company goes public.
In interviews with Fortune, Tenev predicted that the company’s young customer base (the median age of Robinhood investors is 31) will grow more affluent over time, allowing the company to sell them more products. He also described reading widely to buttress his leadership skills—mostly biographies of figures like Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Howard Hughes, but also science treatises like Steven Wolfram’s A Project to Find the Fundament Theories of Physics.
For now, Tenev has considerable runway to prove himself thanks to Robinhood’s fat balance sheet and a surge in stock trading. The company’s lead investor, Jan Hammer of Index Ventures, said by email he is confident Tenev is up to the job.
“Vlad’s leadership has been instrumental to Robinhood’s success in reaching incredible scale. I’m confident that Robinhood will continue to lead in building innovative products and serving customers as the company moves into its next phase of growth,” Hammer wrote.
More must-read finance coverage from Fortune:


fortune--2020-11-20--Piracy is thriving off the coast of West Africa despite COVID nearly crushing global marine traffic

The 21 best stocks to buy for 2021

This August, the final captives held hostage by Somali pirates were finally released after an excruciatingly long captivity.
The stretch of coast off East Africa where the captives were taken in 2015 was once famous for its speedboat hijackings. And then, suddenly, it went quiet. There haven’t been any recorded attacks in the region since 2018.
But that doesn’t mean piracy has disappeared. The locus of piracy has simply shifted—to the West.
Since the beginning of November, at least eight vessels have been attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Guinea, a major region for maritime trade that borders Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, and other major West African economies.
It’s just the latest in a bumper year of piracy for the region, reversing what had been a decline in global piracy. Last year, piracy and attempted piracy was at its lowest level in 25 years. Now, at least in West Africa, attacks are increasing—even as the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed marine traffic; the UN estimating that port calls were down 8.5% year on year in the first half of the year (traffic now appears to be recovering.)
From January to September, 132 attacks were reported in the Gulf of Guinea alone, according to a report by the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre released in October. In that period, the organization says hijacking rose by 40% compared to the same period in 2019.
Some believe the increase has actually been due to the economic pain of COVID-19.
“The medical and economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic seems likely to pose severe challenges for countries with few resources and weak governments,” Brandon Prins, an expert in sea piracy at the University of Tennessee, wrote in an editorial in May. “West African and South American countries already struggle to police their territorial waters.”
Sinking revenues from weakened trade could also affect maritime companies’ abilities to protect their vessels, while the impact of the disease could strain staffing for crews, he warned.
Starts on land, ends at sea
Piracy is usually caused by instability on land, marine security experts say. In the Gulf of Guinea, it has been linked to environmental degradation—including oil spills during bunkering off the coast of oil-rich Nigeria—which has disrupted fishing stocks and livelihoods, the marine security agency Dryad Global reports on its website. It also attributed a crackdown on residents in the Niger Delta, after attacks on oil infrastructure in the region, to contributing towards conflict and exacerbating piracy.
This month alone, the incidents included six attacks logged by the Piracy Reporting Centre, all involved armed pirates on vessels off the coasts of Nigeria, Ghana or Benin. Earlier this week, the Italian navy also reported two hijackings involving the same vessel, occurring within days—confirming that the Gulf has become one of world’s most dangerous marine areas, military officials said. In one of the hijackings, an injured crew member had to be airlifted by helicopter to a hospital on land.
In April of this year, the NATO Shipping Centre—the liaison between the maritime industry and NATO—warned of the complexity and danger of piracy in the region, and provided a manual on how to manage the risks.
In a report on best practices for managing the risk of piracy in the region, the Centre sketched out the huge variations in attacks, which have occurred at any time of night and day, and involve opportunistic attacks as well as carefully planned assaults, whether for ransom-taking or to steal cargo. Such attacks even sometimes involve rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), the Centre warned.


fortune--2020-11-20--How Lowe’s and Home Depot plan to keep growing even after the COVID home improvement boom

The 21 best stocks to buy for 2021

Sometimes even a blowout quarter isn’t enough for Wall Street.
After Lowe’s on Wednesday reported U.S. comparable sales rose 30.4% last quarter, shares fell 6%. Home Depot’s very strong quarterly report on Tuesday, reflecting Americans’ continued spending on home projects during the pandemic, was also met with a stock price dip.
While some of that had to do Wall Street worries about the expenses at both companies linked to compensating workers and making stores safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, the hit to shares reflected a nagging fear among investors: how will Lowe’s and Home Depot keep up this torrid pace?
The companies hope to answer that question by branching out beyond their traditional bread-and-butter offerings. Next week’s Black Friday shopping occasion will provide some insight into how much customers will respond to newer products from these retailers. Lowe’s is making its biggest play yet for holiday season sales this year by adding fun to its assortment in an attempt to get beyond things like drywall and power tools. That means adding products like scooters, trampolines, exercise bikes, air hockey tables, and kitchen items on the assumption that people’s spending on their homes during the pandemic can go beyond setting up spaces suited for work-from-home and home schooling.
“We already service home office and home school needs, but we didn’t have a lot going on for the entertainment piece of it,” Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison tells Fortune. “Our data tells us that when the customer trusts us and buys products for their homes, they will trust us for buying other non-core items.”
He is taking a page from Home Depot’s playbook, which last year credited a strong Black Friday period, never previously that important to home improvement chains, for its stellar fourth quarter results. Last year, Home Depot created gifting areas in its stores and doubled down on home decor items. More recently, the company made Halloween a big sales event, enjoying strong results driven in part by a $300 12-foot skeleton that sold like hotcakes.
Both Lowe’s and Home Depot argue that even once COVID-19 fades and customers aren’t spending as much time at home, the boom will continue.
Ellison says that roughly two-thirds of revenue comes from things customers have no choice but to address, such as replacing a broken heater or appliance, or fixing a leak, so the bulk of the business is stable. Growth will come, he says, because of an aging of U.S. housing stock; some 50% of U.S. homes are older than 40 years and will need work in the coming years.
And unlike the 2009, when collapsing housing values dented spending on home improvement, this economic downturn has seen home prices hold up nicely, a trend that spurs homeowners to invest in their houses, and feel more invested in them, an idea one analyst on Wall Street echoed in a research note.
“We encourage investors to consider homeowners’ strengthened emotional attachment to their properties,” wrote Jefferies analyst Jonathan Matuszewski. What’s more, the analyst added, many large home improvement projects have been on hold because of social distancing requirements. “A wave of projects” could come once the vaccine arrives, he said.
More fundamentally, the companies see a cultural shift that will last beyond the current pandemic, with people likely to keep working from home more often even when offices re-open, and learning to love fixing stuff around the house.
“We’ve re-introduced people to home improvement during this period and doing it themselves,” Home Depot finance chief Richard McPhail told Fortune this week.


fortune--2020-11-20--Black bankers push Biden administration to secure leadership roles for minorities

The 21 best stocks to buy for 2021

Black financial executives are pushing back against progressive Democrats’ demand that President-elect Joe Biden’s administration exclude anyone with corporate ties.
They argue that shutting out finance-industry executives would unfairly disqualify experienced minority candidates from top jobs in the new government. The campaign is focused on senior White House staff posts, as well as the heads of agencies like the Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“All of these leadership positions play a critical role in the development of economic policy in an administration and the execution of goals, strategies, and practices that impact all Americans,” the groups wrote in a letter to Biden sent on Wednesday. “Unless you are intentional about leveraging inclusion as a strategy to navigate the intersecting dynamics of race, economy, inequality, and power, we will not address these issues with the best minds possible.”
Biden, who’s widely considered a moderate, has yet to announce ethics rules for staffing the administration, though his transition has banned lobbyists, with some exceptions. The letter highlights how the president-elect and his team have to navigate a tricky path while conducting the fullest search possible to form a government they’ve promised will be reflective of the U.S. population.
Read more: Biden Says He’s Picked Treasury Secretary, Announcement Soon
“President-elect Biden will build a diverse administration that looks like America, starting with the first woman of South Asian descent and the first Black woman to serve as Vice President-elect,” said Cameron French, a transition spokesman. “As he did during the campaign to his transition, Joe Biden will be intentional in finding diverse voices to develop and implement his policy vision to tackle our nation’s toughest challenges.”
The request by the financial groups follows another recent one by the Washington Government Relations Group, a trade association of African American lobbyists. It sent a letter last week to leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus, asking for their help advocating against the progressives’ call for barring registered lobbyists from the Biden administration.
A stint in government often helps propel people to high-level private sector jobs. But on the flip side, experience in the corporate world can be beneficial for government work, giving policy makers insight into an industry they are charged with overseeing.
Elizabeth Warren
More liberal Democrats, led by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have taken a hard line against filling economic and regulatory roles with workers from Wall Street and major corporations, contending that such appointees may put the interest of their businesses ahead of the American people.
Warren, however, in comments earlier this week may have given Biden some cover when she pointed out that she had hired people from Wall Street when she set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “The question is: What does your overall team look like?” she said at a New York Times DealBook conference. “It is important to have a team that brings a lot of different perspectives.”
The groups representing minority financial firms and executives make a similar argument. And, they may be difficult to ignore, especially because Biden won the presidency with massive support from African Americans and other minority voters.
Read more: Only One in the Room: What It’s Like Being Black on Wall Street
Though Biden has yet to announce any of his picks for cabinet posts, he has chosen a number of senior White House staffers. Among them are Representative Cedric Richmond, a Louisiana Democrat and member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Another African American, former KeyBank NA executive Don Graves, is leading the transition team that will review the Treasury Department.
In the letter signed by the heads of the National Bankers Association, the National Association of Securities Professionals, the Association of African American Financial Advisors and several other groups, the executives note that only White men have served as Treasury chief and director of the National Economic Council.
In addition, they pointed out that there has never been a Black leader of the Federal Reserve, the SEC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency or the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
“A review of the people who have served in the top economic policy making positions in our country’s history shows a stunning and complete lack of racial and ethnic diversity,” the letter said.
The letter, which was also signed by civil rights groups that advocate on behalf of Latinx people and African Americans, called on Biden’s team to interview three or more candidates of color for those key roles.
Though still early in the process, Biden’s transition team is considering potential Black nominees for several economic jobs, people familiar with the matter have said. Still, only one prominent candidate with direct ties to the financial industry has emerged: retiring TIAA Chief Executive Officer Roger Ferguson, a potential Treasury secretary. Others who may get positions are from academia or the government, including Raphael Bostic, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and Chris Brummer, a Georgetown University law professor.
With assistance from Jennifer Epstein.


fortune--2020-11-20--Stimulus update: McConnell and Schumer discuss averting a shutdown and economic aid

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Staff for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy met on Thursday to discuss more COVID-19 relief and a spending bill to avert a federal government shutdown. The measures were discussed separately, a senior Democratic aide tells Fortune.
The most pressing matter is the government spending bill—something that is needed by December 11 in order to avert a federal government shutdown. But Capitol Hill is also under increased pressure to pass more stimulus, especially as COVID-19 cases soar and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits expire at the end of the year.
“There’s been a little bit of a breakthrough in that McConnell’s folks are finally sitting down and talking to us,” Schumer told reporters on Thursday.
A senior Democratic aide tells Fortune the party hopes to continue these talks. On Friday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC that top Republican leadership will “come up with a plan to sit down with Pelosi and Schumer and try to get a targeted bill done for the people that really need it.”
But while the two sides reportedly discussed programs that were part of the initial package like pandemic unemployment and small business loans on Thursday, they did not talk about details for a massive stimulus package, Politico reported.
And just because they’re talking, doesn’t mean Congress is any closer to a deal. Indeed, following Schumer’s Thursday remarks both Democratic and Republican Congressional aides told NBC News that Schumer may have exaggerated the latest development in the talks.
The reason for pessimism? These talks will struggle to translate into a deal until control of Congress is figured out in January when a pair of Republican Georgia Senate seats hold runoffs. If Republicans hold one Georgia seat, they retain the chamber. But if Democrats take both, they’d have power of the 50–50 spilt chamber through the tie-breaking vote the Constitution grants the Vice President (Vice President-elect Kamala Harris).
Following the election, McConnell reaffirmed his support for a stimulus package under $1 trillion, adding that a “highly targeted” bill is more appropriate. And if Republicans retain control of the chamber, McConnell would have the power to pressure Democrats into lowering their asking price.
But if Democrats take the Senate, they’d have the power to use budget reconciliation to move forward with a potentially massive stimulus package like the revised $2.2 trillion HEROES Act that House Democrats have proposed—a package that Biden said this week he supports. Unlike Senate Republican’s $500 billion ‘skinny’ package, the HEROES Act would send Americans another $1,200 stimulus check.


fortune--2020-11-20--An unminted Black unicorn

An unminted Black unicorn

The 21 best stocks to buy for 2021

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Unlike the founders in Silicon Valley who sought to elevate the world’s consciousness or sell happiness, Tope Awotona’s start in startup land was refreshingly capitalist.
Sure, part of building a company was about bettering himself, but much of it was also about making money. “Initially it was for financial reasons—I literally needed to pay my bills,” the founder and CEO of scheduling company Calendly told me.
That mindset, combined with a cocktail of desperation and determination (and maybe a dash of stupidity, by his own reckoning, as he flew into Ukraine during a revolution to build the company), has turned Calendly into something investors like Accel, Iconiq, and Sequoia are now courting, sources told me. The three firms declined to comment.
Awotona’s unusual story is at the center of my new profile for Fortune. Calendly struggled in its early days to raise funding. But when its prominence grew and the company became profitable, Awotona was the one to say no to taking on new investors. The company has raised only $550,000 from investors such as Atlanta Ventures since its founding in 2013. But today, some of Calendly’s would-be suitors have casually valued the company “well north” of $1 billion, said Awotona.
Indeed, as this story published, sources told me that the company has engaged in conversations that value it around $3 billion and would seek to provide liquidity to existing shareholders. Productivity software companies like Calendly have shot up in value amid the pandemic.
To be clear, the company isn’t a typical unicorn: The company has yet to consummate a deal that would value it at over $1 billion, and whether a conversation turns into a full deal is yet to be seen. Also what makes this company exceedingly rare: Awotona is one of the few Black founders with VC dollars who could breach the unicorn club.
Read the full story here.
MARCH OF THE UNICORNS: No doubt investors will be on overdrive in coming weeks. Following the IPO filings of Airbnb, DoorDash, and Affirm, gaming company Roblox has also submitted its S-1. Gaming has surged amid the pandemic, with revenue surging 68% to $588.7 milli,on in the nine months ending September compared to the same period a year earlier. But during the same period, the company said net losses grew 338% to $203.3 million. Popular among children under 13, the company hopes to also bolster its usage for those between 17 to 24. Roblox is backed by Altos Ventures, Meritech Capital, Index Ventures, and others. Read more.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Forter, a New York-based e-commerce fraud prevention company, raised $125 million in Series E funding. Bessemer Venture Partners, Felix Capital and Itai Tsiddon led the round and were joined by investors including Sequoia Capital, NewView Capital, Scale Venture Partners, March Capital Partners, and Commerce Ventures. The round values the company at over $1.3 billion.
- Loadsmart, a New York-based digital freight technology company, raised $90 million in Series C funding. BlackRock and Chromo Invest led the round and were joined by investors including TFI International (NYSE: TFII), Maersk, Perry Capital, and Bramalea Partners.
- olist, a Brazil-based sales platform, raised 310 million reais ($58 million) in a Series D funding. SoftBank Latin America Fund led the round and was joined by investors including Valor Capital Group, Península, VELT Partners, FJ Labs, and Kevin Efrusy.
- Verbit, a New York-based transcription and captioning platform, raised $60 million in Series C funding. Sapphire Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Vertex Ventures, Stripes, HV Ventures, Clatech, and Vertex Growth.
- Purespring Therapeutics, a U.K.-based gene therapy company focused on kidney diseases, was launched by Syncona (LON:SYNC) with £45 million ($60 million) in Series A funding. Syncona will have an 84% stake in the business.
- Zapata Computing, a Boston-based software company focused on quantum applications, raised $38 million in Series B funding. Comcast Ventures, Pitango, and Prelude Ventures led the round and were joined by BASF Venture Capital, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, The Engine Accelerator Fund, Ahren Innovation Capital, Alumni Ventures Group, Honeywell Venture Capital, ITOCHU Corporation, and Merck Global Health Innovation Fund.
- FirstVet, a Swedish digital veterinary clinic, raised $35 million in funding. Mubadala Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Cathay Innovation, OMERS Ventures, and Creandum.
- AI21 Labs, a natural language processing startup, raised $34.5 million in funding. Pitango First led the round and was joined by investors including TPY Capital.
- Canvas, a San Francisco-based company using machine learning to install drywall at construction sites, raised $19 million from investors including Innovation Endeavors, Obvious Ventures, Brick & Mortar Ventures, and Grit Ventures.
- Obligo, a New York-based provider of deposit-free residential leasing tech, raised $15.5 million. Investors included 83North, 10D, Entrée Capital, and Viola Credit.
- Deepfence, a Milpitas, Calif.-based cloud protection platform, raised $9.5 million in Series A funding. AllegisCyber led the round and was joined by investors including Sonae IM and Chiratae Ventures.
- NestEgg, a Chicago-based helpdesk for rental properties, raised $7 million in Series A funding. Hyde Park Venture Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Bonfire Ventures, BAM Ventures, Financial Venture Studios, Dreamit Ventures, and Hyde Park Angels.
- Cottage, a San Fracncsico-based company focused on building additional housing on existing properties, raised $3.5 million in seed funding. Base10 Partners and Susa Ventures led the round.
- PLLAY, a Philadelphia-based video game wagering platform, raised $3 million in seed funding. Screen Play Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including NBA All-Star Bradley Beal.
- Juni, a Swedish online banking platform, raised €2 million ($2.4 million) in seed funding. Cherry Ventures led the round.
- Aya Payments, a Toronto-based healthcare payments startup, raised $2.9 million in funding. MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund and Luge Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Anthemis Group, BDC Capital, and StandUp Ventures.
- Wave, a Los Angeles-based producer of virtual entertainment programs, raised an undisclosed of funding from Tencent Music (NYSE: TME).
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Investors led by Digital Colony invested nearly $1.3 billion in Vantage Data Centers, a Santa Clara-based provider of data center campuses. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- The Carlyle Group has provided $95 million Zippy Shell, a to Wake Forest, N.C.-based moving and storage company. About $25 million was in the form of equity.
- Arcline Investment Management acquired Evans Capacitor Company, an East Providence, RI.-based specialty electronic components company. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- AutoQuotes, backed by Luminate Capital Partners, acquired Axonom, a Minnesota-based provider of virtual reality technologies. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- DeliverHealth Solutions, formed by Assured Healthcare Partners and Aeries Technology Group, acquired Nuance Communications’ (Nasdaq: NUAN) health information management transcription business and the Electronic Health Record business. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Investors including D1 Capital Partners, T. Rowe Price, Lone Pine Capital, and XN invested in Torchy’s Tacos, an Austin-based Taco restaurant chain, joining investor General Atlantic. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- PAI Partners acquired a majority stake in Euro Ethnic Foods, a European operator of the grocery section of food retailer Grand Frais. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Svoboda Capital Partners recapitalized Clarion Healthcare, a Boston-based consulting services to life sciences companies. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Warburg Pincus invested in McMakler, a German real estate agent. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Warburg Pincus invested in Quantum Health, a Columbus, Oh.-based consumer healthcare company. Great Hill Partners will remain the majority shareholder.
EXITS
- Nasdaq agreed to acquire Verafin, a Canadian money laundering and fraud prevention company, for $2.8 billion. Spectrum Equity backs Verafin.
- FireEye acquired Respond Software, a Mountainview, Calif.-based cybersecurity company, for nearly $200 million. Respond investors included CRV, Foundation Capital, and ClearSky.
- Inspecs Group agreed to acquire Eschenbach Holding, a German provider of eyewear. Eschenbach is backed by Equistone Partners Europe.
OTHER
- Experian acquired Tapad, a New York-based provider of digital identity solutions for about $280 million from Telenor.
- BuzzFeed agreed to acquire HuffPost, a New York-based media company owned by Verizon. Verizon will also invest in Buzzfeed as part of the deal. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Read more.
- Voyager Space Holdings plans to acquire The Launch Company, a maker of hardware, ground support equipment, and processes for space launches. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Leonard Green & Partners acquired a majority stake in ECI Software Solutions, a loud-based business management software company, from Apax Partners and The Carlyle Group. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
IPO
- Sotera Health, a Broadview Heights, Oh.-based provider of lab services, raised $1.1 billion in its IPO. It posted revenue of $778 million in 2019 and losses of $20.9 million. Warburg Pincus and GTCR back the firm. Read more.
- Maravai LifeSciences, a San Diego, Calif.-based maker of products used for drug development and research, raised $1.6 billion. GTCR backs the firm. Read more.
- Yatsen, the Chinese cosmetics firm, raised $617 million in its IPO. Backers include Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management, Boyu Capital, and Chinese Culture Group. Read more.
- NeoGames, a Newark, De.-based online gaming tech provider to lottery operators, raised $82 million (45% sold by insiders). It posted revenues of $33 million and losses of $4 million in 2019. Read more.
SPAC
- Liberty Media Acquisition, a blank check company formed by Liberty Media seeking a business in the entertainment or TMT space, filed to raise $500 million. Read more.
- Perella Weinberg Partners, the New York-based investment bank, is looking to IPO via merger with a SPAC, Reuters says citing sources. The firm is expected to fetch a $1 billion valuation. Read more.
- Butterfly Network, a Guilford, CT.-based digital health company, will combine with Longview Acquisition Corp, a SPAC sponsored by Glenview Capital Management. The combined firm will have an enterprise value of about $1.5 billion.
- Reinvent Technology Partners Z, the second blank check company formed by Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus seeking a company in the tech sector, raised $200 million.
F+FS
- Revolution, the venture firm co-founded by AOL co-founder Steve Case, raised $500 million in commitments for its fourth fund. Read more.
- Astanor Ventures, a venture firm focused on food and agriculture, raised $325 million for a fund.
- Sound Ventures, co-founded by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary, plan to raise $150 million for a third fund. Read more.
- OurCrowd, the Israeli venture firm, raised $60 million after Orix Corp (T:8591) took a stake in the firm.
PEOPLE
- QED Investors hired Sandeep Patil to lead its investments in India and Southeast Asia.


fortune--2020-11-20--Top tech CEOs join this year’s Brainstorm Tech conference

The 21 best stocks to buy for 2021

It took us a little while to find our way, but Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference is still on this year, running December 1 and 2, all virtually, of course.
Even in the year of COVID, we will hear from some of the leading figures in the tech industry including IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, who is unmaking part of his company so as to better remake the rest of it, Rakuten CEO Mickey Mikitani, who is at the forefront of using 5G to actually do something, and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, who shook up the Googleplex culture with the power of empathy.
And we will focus discussions on some of the most important issues raging in the world of tech. Assistant Attorney General and boss of antitrust Makan Delrahim and other experts in the field will offer perspectives on what’s become the most important year for suing tech companies since 1998. Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield joins a host of other leaders of companies that have benefitted from some of the changes to business wrought by the pandemic. And Under Armour CEO Patrik Frisk headlines a conversation about how tech is changing how we sweat and what we measure when we do.
If you are interested in attending this year’s virtual Brainstorm Tech conference, please check out the registration link.
Elsewhere in the Fortune multiverse, our year-end issue contains a package of stories to guide investors in 2021. I chuckled to read that the tech sector was left out of the main essay on the “21 best stocks to buy for 2021,” though my colleagues sneakily included Taiwan Semiconductor in the “International” category and a couple of cellphone tower plays like Crown Castle and Cellnex under “Energy and Infrastructure.”
One of my all-time favorite editors, Matt Heimer, played talk-show host to a panel of investors as they discussed some of the biggest risks and opportunities they see in the year ahead, as well as the implications of the IPO and SPAC boom, which seems like a microcosm of all of the risks and opportunities we face.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com
NEWSWORTHY
IPO like a wrecking ball. Did somebody mention IPOs? Seems like we will have quite a few more in coming weeks. Video game host Roblox's new filing says that two-thirds of all U.S. kids 9 to 12 years old play on its servers. It will go public despite a loss of $206 million in the first nine months of the year on revenue of almost $600 million. Online lender Affirm, the company behind oh-so-many of those monthly installment payment plans you see online, lost only $113 million in its most recent year as sales doubled to $510 million. And e-commerce platform Wish's filing reveals a net loss of $176 million on sales of $1.7 billion in the first nine months of 2020. Not every hyped startup will make the jump, however. Job listing service Hired is considering closing up shop after failing to sell itself, The Information reports.
The gaming is coming from inside the house. After Apple tried to block cloud gaming services from reaching iPhone and iPad users via mobile apps, the services are finding another way in. Following in Amazon's footsteps, or should we say click stream, Nvidia says it will make its GeForce Now service playable on iPhones inside the Safari browser instead of with its own app. And Google Stadia plans to do the same.
Ready, set, soar. In-house development of Amazon's delivery drones is apparently taking too long. The House of Bezos is cutting R&D and manufacturing workers in its drone efforts and contracting the work out to Austria’s FACC Aerospace and Spain’s Aernnova Aerospace, the Financial Times reports.
All we hear is radio shack ga ga. The vultures who hoover up old brand names and turn them into e-commerce destinations grabbed what's left of Radio Shack's intellectual property this week. And while we're on the topic of trading in old brand names, Verizon sold the HuffPost online news service to BuzzFeed for an undisclosed sum. It's also a reunion of sorts: Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti was a co-founder of HuffPost back in the day.
Tell me what you want, what you really, really want. Hollywood is slowly adapting to the new reality of empty movie theaters. On Wednesday night, AT&T said it will premiere big-budget comic book flick Wonder Woman 1984 online the same day it opens in theaters (Dec. 25). Now Disney is thinking of doing something similar with the live-action remake Cruella starring Emma Stone and some of its other major releases of 2021.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
We discussed some of the hype over hydrogen-powered vehicles on Wednesday. My Fortune colleague Katherine Dunn has a deep dive into the excitement around hydrogen and what could deflate those expectations.
"Simply on its own, it's not economic without a high carbon price," penalizing its fossil fuel competitors, says head of future energy analytics at S&P Global Platts Roman Kramarchuk. "In order to really start displacing fossil fuels, it needs support."
Analysts at Bank of America say green hydrogen prices would need to fall by 85% to be competitive with regular hydrogen, which they estimate could happen by 2030.
For that reason, green hydrogen is still only a tiny percentage of the total hydrogen production, and essentially nonexistent compared to other fuel sources. In 2019, global low-carbon hydrogen production was 0.36 metric tons per year, according to the IEA—about a half a percent of total annual hydrogen demand.
FOR YOUR WEEKEND READING PLEASURE
A few great long reads I came across this week:
The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done (The New Yorker)
How personal productivity transformed work—and failed to.
‘Like Being Grilled Alive’: The Fear of Living With a Hackable Heart (One Zero)
A device connected to my heart could save my life. It could also be hacked.
Times Change (New York Magazine)
In the Trump years, the New York Times became less dispassionate and more crusading, sparking a raw debate over the paper’s future.
Sustainable fashion? There’s no such thing (Financial Times)
The industry’s marketing may be ultra-green but the reality is very different.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Exclusive: Apple hires Intel’s Barbara Whye as its new head of diversity By Michal Lev-Ram
Facebook reveals that massive amounts of misinformation flooded its service during the election By Danielle Abril
There’s more 5G available in big cities. But which carrier is fastest? By Aaron Pressman
Meet the unicorn founder that braved war zones and missed meetings to make his mark on the startup world By Lucinda Shen
Facebook’s A.I. is getting better at finding malicious content—but it won’t solve the company’s problems By Jeremy Kahn
The cashless economy: How fintech is approaching the future of finance By McKenna Moore
To jump-start America’s economy, invest in women entrepreneurs of color By Charisse Conanan Johnson
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
It centered the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, had a starring role in the movie Contact, and assisted in advancing untold numbers of scientific endeavors. But now time has run out for the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. The National Science Foundation says the 57-year-old structure is near collapse and will be taken out of service. Guess we will have to find other means to continue exploring. Have a peaceful weekend.


fortune--2020-11-20--Apple’s new D&I head has a track record of making a measurable difference

The 21 best stocks to buy for 2021

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Kamala Harris may be getting more briefings than Joe Biden right now, Nasdaq makes a $2.7 billion acquisition, and Apple gets a new head of diversity. Have a restful weekend.
– Whye yes. Fortune‘s own Michal Lev-Ram has the scoop on some interesting new hire news from Apple: the iPhone maker has named Barbara Whye, Intel’s head of D&I, as its new vice president of inclusion and diversity.
Whye—who is the first D&I leader we’ve named to Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women list during my tenure—is a force in her field. She joined Intel in 1995 and has been making her mark on the company ever since. Under her guidance, the chipmaker set—and achieved—a goal of reaching representation within its employee base: the racial and gender breakdown of its nearly 111,000-person workforce mirrors the breakdown of the “skilled” labor market in the United States. What’s more, the company reached that goal two years ahead of schedule. And she’s already made her influence felt beyond Intel, working with other tech companies to create and implement common metrics that will help the industry track and accelerate inclusion efforts.
She steps into the role most recently held by Christie Smith, who left last June. (Smith came on board after long-time Apple insider Denise Young Smith left the position and the company in late 2017.)
Apple said in a statement that Whye will concentrate on “expanding our companywide effort to hire, develop and retain the world-class talent, at all levels, that reflects the communities we serve.” There’s definitely work to be done there: In its most recent diversity report, the company said underrepresented minorities account for 24% its U.S. workforce—and that share dwindles further when narrowed to technical workers or leadership.
Whye starts next year. We’ll be watching.
Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- All in on EV. General Motors is all-in on electric vehicles. The company led by CEO Mary Barra analyzed a potential spinoff of the business but instead decided to create a unit devoted to "EV growth operations." GM says it will spend $27 billion on EVs by 2025. CNBC
- Intel gap. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris receives classified briefings. She's not able to share that information, however, with President-elect Joe Biden—who, because of the delay in presidential transition procedures, doesn't have access to the same intel. Politico
- Exchange says buy. Nasdaq, headed by CEO Adena Friedman, is acquiring Verafin, which offers technology for detection of financial crimes, for $2.75 billion. The purchase is part of Friedman's strategy for the exchange operator to provide more software and analytics to the financial industry. Bloomberg
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Jennifer Morgan, the former co-CEO of SAP, joins Blackstone as global head of portfolio transformation and talent. Paula Price, a veteran board member and executive, joins Reddit's board of directors. State Street Global Advisors promoted deputy global chief investment officer Lori Heinel to global chief investment officer. Lara Metcalf, former managing director at the Social Entrepreneur's Fund, joins VC firm The Engine as CFO and COO. Workiva added its COO, Julie Iskow, to its board of directors. Former Hershey's exec Mary-Ann Somers joins Alter Eco's board of directors. Lululemon has promoted of Meghan Frank to CFO.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Stacey says. Stacey Abrams gives one of her first in-depth interviews on flipping Georgia blue in the 2020 election. Of combatting voter suppression, she says, "It can be undone just as quickly and as effectively as we did it." The Cut
- Minks + Mette. Earlier this month, Denmark's government ordered that all 15 million farmed minks in the country needed to be killed to control a coronavirus mutation. The order has turned into a political controversy, with the opposition calling for Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to resign. Washington Post
- Game on. Organizers of the Tokyo Olympics are pitching the games, scheduled for summer 2021, as a kind of "light at the end of the tunnel" of the coronavirus pandemic. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike says she thinks the competition will be a symbol of "hope."
ON MY RADAR
BuzzFeed buys HuffPost from Verizon in latest new-media deal Fortune
Pelosi suggests she’ll serve her last term as speaker Politico
Inside Jennifer Lopez's pop culture empire Wall Street Journal
Rape, abuses in palm oil fields linked to top beauty brands Associated Press
PARTING WORDS
"We can’t be afraid as writers to bring discomfort to anyone."
-I May Destroy You creator Michaela Coel


fortune--2020-11-20--We can’t rely on just one company to distribute COVID vaccines

The 21 best stocks to buy for 2021

With cases of COVID-19 surging across the country, there has been incredible urgency for a safe and effective vaccine. But there are sobering messages from public health officials and vaccine company executives in recent days that the vaccine likely won’t be available to a majority of the U.S. population until well into 2021.
The approval of a vaccine, however, will only be the first step toward restoring the health and security of our nation. There is an important distinction between the creation of a vaccine designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and a successful process of manufacturing, distribution, and administration.
The development of a vaccine—particularly at the scale of supporting the needs of the entire population—takes time. In addition, manufacturing and distributing this vaccine is a monumental logistical and security challenge. A safe and efficient vaccination effort presents one of the most complex logistical challenges the nation has ever faced.
The COVID-19 vaccine deployment plan envisions administering at least 300 million doses in the U.S. alone—and more than 600 million if two doses are required. In the proposed Phase 1 alone, the target population for vaccines could involve approximately 5 million U.S. hospital workers and more than 8 million long-term care services users. This is six times the normal amount for the flu vaccine.
Thousands of vaccination locations will need to be identified and created, with many sites having to be accessible to lower-income individuals with transportation challenges. Many Americans living in rural areas do not have the facilities with appropriate refrigeration required to handle the temperature-sensitive vaccines. There will be a need for strict physical security, tracking and delivery controls, cybersecurity protections, sensitive handling, and temperature controls.
That is why, along with the Department of Health and Human Services, the President has turned to the Department of Defense—the nation’s experts in logistics—to lead Operation Warp Speed.
A key tenet in the military’s operational planning for any contingency is to never allow for a single point of failure. Our military regularly scrutinizes each part of an operation to ensure every contingency has been considered and no resources are left on the sideline. The scale and importance of a COVID-19 vaccination program demands the U.S. government focus on resilience. This necessitates bringing to the table every key player—from manufacturers, distributors, and delivery services to providers, payers, and public health experts—to build the strongest distribution approach possible.
The U.S. private medical distribution network consists primarily of three large distributors, which together service about 95% of pharmaceutical distribution, each covering about one-third of the market. This current system has built-in redundancy in case any of the companies experiences delays in their distribution.
Yet the U.S. government has thus far provided a contract to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine to a single U.S. company: McKesson. It will be an extraordinary challenge for one company to oversee vaccinations of more than 300 million people through one distribution network.
Putting all of our eggs in a single basket exposes our vaccination process to the potential for what we in the military call a single point of failure risk.
Just as our military contracts out to dozens of U.S. companies to support logistics efforts around the world, so should the U.S. government consider multiple distributors for the COVID-19 vaccine. There are a range of companies, both medical distribution companies and companies specializing in logistics, that have capabilities and strengths in different regions of the country and are ready to help.
The military is already conducting multiple tabletop exercises to plan for contingencies and potential distribution failures. The Defense Department would be prudent to use these exercises to test how multiple distributors could effectively deliver vaccines while reducing the single point of failure risk.
Multiple vaccine and therapeutic candidates are conducting the later phases of clinical trials needed to demonstrate their safety and efficacy. But there is less clarity around the national vaccination effort. The parameters around who will receive the vaccine, when, and how are still murky. The sooner the process is made more transparent, the more trust and confidence the public will feel.
The trust of the American people will be the most important factor in a successful vaccination effort. Any interruption in any part of the vaccination effort, particularly distribution, could destroy this trust.
The U.S. has the most professional military in the world. I have no doubt that with the Defense Department supporting the development, production, and distribution of COVID vaccines, America can carry out an effective vaccination program.
James Stavridis, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, was 16th supreme allied commander of NATO and 12th dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts. In both positions, he focused on global health concerns and issues, including the logistics associated with solving medical challenges in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.


fortune--2020-11-20--Why remote work may be hardest on junior employees

The 21 best stocks to buy for 2021

We’re eight months into corporate America’s great work-from-home experiment, and it hasn’t gone quite the way business leaders expected. Their scattered workforces, even in the midst of a stressful pandemic while shouldering extra burdens like childcare, have been remarkably productive.
Of course, that doesn’t mean the period has been easy on employees, and leaders have also been surprised by what parts of their workforce remote work has been hardest on.
“The beginning of this was confusing. We thought our younger people would be the ones that love working from home and love the technology, and that it would our people in their fifties that would hate it. In fact, it’s the other way around,” said Carmine Di Sibio, global chairman and CEO of the the consulting firm EY, speaking at a Fortune Global Forum event on Tuesday. “It’s younger people who want to network and so forth. And it’s people in their 50s, who are comfortable, who have their networks, who can save two hours a day commuting, who therefore, kind of like it.”
The average age of EY’s 300,00-strong global workforce is 27. “We have a lot of young people who are in small apartments around the world, and being in a small apartment in this environment is just not great,” said Di Sibio, who notes the firm’s support resources have been in high demand. “We have had more people calling our hotlines wanting help, just from a mental state.”
Di Sibio said EY, which regularly surveys its employees, has done a number of things to try to ease the strain on employees around the world, including giving those in the U.S. an extra holiday—the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. “Our employees deserve it,” he said.
Annette Clayton, CEO of Schneider Electric North America, also acknowledged younger workers have been impacted by the isolation of remote working. She said that the company’s open talent market—a digital platform that connects employees with opportunities across the company, exposing them to new teams and allowing them to gain skills and experiences—has been helpful in keeping the company’s workers happy and growing in their careers even at this moment. She mentioned one example in which a young employee volunteered to pitch in with policy work on data centers and cyber security; the junior employee brought valuable subject matter expertise, so much so that the individual was brought to a meeting with U.S. Senators and is now being considered for other roles.
Sarah Franklin, an EVP at Salesforce who heads Trailhead, a platform aimed at reskilling, agreed that it’s a valuable strategy for keeping employees engaged and for diversifying talent across the business.
Thoughtful, personal communication has also been key, said Mark Hoplamazian, CEO of Hyatt Hotels, who describes the year for the company and the travel industry as “extraordinarily painful.” At tough moments, “picking up the phone impromptu and being able to connect with people has been very meaningful.”
Also important at this moment of employee stress and anxiety, he said: communicating “hope.” A quick and full rebound of the travel industry may not be right around the corner, but with the promising news on vaccines, “we at least have the ability to pick up our eyes and look into the future and understand there is going to be an end to this.”


fortune--2020-11-21--The best wines for Thanksgiving

The best wines for Thanksgiving

Saturday is the final deadline to get your CARES Act $ 1,200 stimulus check

While each family celebrates Thanksgiving in their own way, 2020 has us all changing up our plans entirely. And yet, if there’s one thing oenophiles can agree upon this Thanksgiving, it is that one of the most essential part of the holiday feast is choosing the right wines.
Here are a selection of bottles ideal for food pairings with a cornucopia of traditional and non-traditional dishes.
If there’s one thing oenophiles can agree upon at Thanksgiving, it’s that one of the most essential parts of the holiday feast is choosing the right wines. Courtesy of Trombella, McBride Sisters, Cakebread Cellars, Château Peyrassol, Wolffer Estate, Escudo Rojo
Sparkling wines
McBride Sisters: Launched in 2005, McBride Sisters has grown to what the female-founded winery says is the largest Black-owned wine company in the United States. Their Black Girl Magic NV New Zealand Sparkling Brut offers a foamy mousse mouthfeel with citrus and floral notes. On the nose, pear and candied lemon unite with soft gardenia. A blend of 91% Chardonnay and 9% Pinot Gris grapes, this smooth bottle of bubbles can be enjoyed on its own or with fruit and cheese. SRP: $25.
White wines
Baileyana Wines: The 2017 Zocker Grüner Veltliner 2017 from the Edna Valley, south of San Luis Obispo on the central coast of California, is a food-friendly option, ideal to pair with any Thanksgiving course, from appetizers to main meal and all the way to the dessert. Grüner Veltliner is a unique white grape in the United States, originating from Austria. Bright and energetic, the white wine has aromas of lemon and lime on the nose, and flavors of ripe melon and fruit cocktail. SRP: $20.
RG|NY: Located on Long Island’s North Fork, RG|NY launched in May 2019 as Rivero González family’s first segue into the United States. With deep rooted Mexican heritage, the winery grows, harvests, and serves wine that demonstrates a strong respect for Old World qualities while leaning on advantages of New World innovations. The White Merlot, a rare find, is packaged in a wooden box, and makes a great addition to Thanksgiving gatherings and is an easy gift. This white wine with a hint of red boasts a strong body with notes of juicy peaches. SRP: $37.
Trombetta Wines: Erica Stancliff, owner and winemaker for her family’s Trombetta Family Wines, as well as president of the Petaluma Gap Winegrowers Alliance, has leaned on her network and leadership skills to bring the wine industry community together and support those impacted by the devastating 2020 California wildfires. This Thanksgiving, the winery’s 2018 Gap’s Crown Vineyard Chardonnay is a prime choice for food pairings, with aromas of cream, vanilla, tropical fruits, fresh melon, and hints of baking spice. Its initial fruity taste, creamy minerality on the palate, and a voluminous finish make this wine a crowd-pleaser. SRP: $65.
Rosé wines
Château Peyrassol: Rosé can have a wide spectrum of flavor; it can be complex, fresh, and bold. And quality rosé is an affordable and flexible option for holiday festivities; it’s approachable for wine novices and the nuances will appeal to connoisseurs as well. This rosé is deceptively pale in hue—with a nose of bright citrus, as well as lush ripe peach, apricot, and blossom along with a dense palate and full body—and offers an experience that can be difficult to find in other styles. The delicate freshness and deceptively full body in a wine such as the Château Peyrassol AOP Côtes de Provence rosé can pair with a variety of dishes from seafood, vegetables, or poultry, including one of the most beloved dishes this time of year: turkey. SRP: $28.
Rumor: Produced and bottled in Côtes de Provence, France, Rumor’s new 2019 vintage is an easy-drinking blend of Grenache, Cinsault, and Syrah grapes. The blush-hued wine features fruit and sharp citrus aromas, with a crisp and dry well-rounded finish. Available nationwide in the U.S., Rumor’s rosé bottles are also served at some of the most elite hot spots in the country, from the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles to the Setai Hotel in Miami. Thus, this is a perfectly festive option bringing a little bit of star power to your holiday feast. SRP: $35.
Red wines
Cakebread Cellars: Deep and luxurious, the 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon features aromas of ripe boysenberry, dark cherry, and cassis, coupled with scents of sweet oak and herbal spice, introduce plush, deeply concentrated, black fruit flavors bolstered by bright acidity and well-structured tannins. This full and bold wine will warm you up on any winter night and makes a perfect pair to a hearty holiday dinner. SRP: $77.
Château Lassègue: Expect a wine with a brilliant color and pure aromatics that leap out from the glass, offering a panoply of fresh red fruit, and evoking notes of rose and violet. On the palate, the 2017 Lassègue Saint-Émilion Grand Cru is dense and round with silky tannins. There is a fine complexity of spices and ripe fruits that extends into a long and balanced finish. This vintage exudes freshness and refined minerality. SRP: $60.
Escudo Rojo: Looking at the colder months approaching, medium to fuller bodied reds like Cabernet Sauvignons and Syrahs tend to be enjoyed more with hearty meat dishes than other varietals. The Chilean winery’s 2018 Gran Reserva is a blend of four grapes produced in the Maipo Valley region: Cabernet Sauvignon (40%), Carmenere (38%), Cabernet Franc (2%), and Syrah (20%)—altogether forming a full body and density with a touch of spice. The powerful ripe red fruit aromas can be detected in this wine with the nose gaining in complexity from aeration. Ideal food pairings include glazed duck breast with spices or braised lamb shoulder with Sichuan sauce. SRP: $22.
Tolenas Winery: For award-winning winemaker Lisa Howard, wine and family are synonymous; her parents, Steve and Linda Tenbrink, ran a fruit stand in Suisun Valley, Calif., and eventually started their own wine label, Tenbrink Vineyards and Winery. After 10 years of being an agricultural engineer in Arizona, Howard’s Suisun Valley roots pulled her back home; she started her own label, Tolenas, with her husband Cliff. This winter, Tolenas is offering a new 2020 Port, a young, 100% Zinfandel ruby port harvested from dry-farmed, head-pruned vines. Lighter and fruitier than traditional ruby ports, this Port appeals to a broader demographic of wine drinkers and is a great bottle to finish the evening with after a holiday meal. SRP: $TK.
Une Femme Wines: The wine brand brought to life by former Riddler and Champagne Bar owner Jen Pelka, is debuting its third wine, “The Piquette,” a rare 2020 vintage from Sonoma Mountain, which is the brand’s first still red wine and its first step into the natural wine category. Pelka and her brother and co-founder, Zach, made this wine to give back to those affected by the wildfires that ravaged Northern California in August and September. Pelka’s family lost their cabin in Healdsburg, Calif. in the LNU Lightning Fires, and the wine brand wanted to focus on saving the agricultural product that would have otherwise been disposed of by purchasing grapes from a family that would have otherwise lost their crop from the fires. A portion of proceeds from The Piquette will be donated to TreeSisters, a nonprofit organization created in direct response to climate change and women empowerment. SRP: $25.
Wölffer Estate Vineyard: Located on the East End of Long Island, N.Y., Wölffer has become famous for its rosé wines and ciders, but do not overlook the winery’s premium bottles. The estate is preparing a limited release of its flagship wine, marking the 13th year in production. The first Christian’s Cuvée was created during the 2000 vintage, which debuted in 2004. The 2017 Christian’s Cuvée Merlot was named in honor of the estate’s “larger than life” founder Christian Wölffer, and the winery touts it to be the first $100 bottle of wine produced by a winery on the East Coast. The 2017 growing season was exceptional, being a warm year with a good amount of rainfall to fully ripen the fruit and maintain a nice acidity. The finished product is full of notes of lush fruit and licorice, fine leather aromas, and great concentration of ripe soft tannins and well-integrated oak. This Merlot can be aged and be enjoyed for many years to come. SRP: $100.