fortune--2020-12-06--The best books of 2020, according to Fortune staff

Amid everything that happened this year, at least there were plenty of good books to read.
Certainly, some publishing houses pushed off a few releases here and there to 2021. Regardless, there was no shortage of quality content, and book publishers and authors alike made strides in promoting their work via digital channels, perhaps attracting many more readers and communities they have not reached out to in the past.
Fiction and nonfiction, business and nonbusiness, here is a list of recommendations from the Fortune staff, hoping one (or more) of these titles can help you escape the chaos that was 2020.
“A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor” Courtesy of Dutton Books
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green
Hank Green’s punchy follow-up to his debut novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing centers on a low-odds attempt at saving humanity from extraterrestrial sabotage. Infused with social media–savvy prose and all the latest tech fads—from cryptocurrency to brain-computer interfaces—the story unfolds through retelling from the alternating points of view of an alien emissary’s closest friends. The book is as pleasant an escape as a breezy spring day in a virtual reality simulation. Besides, how many books can claim to feature portions of narrative from the perspective of an A.I.-equipped monkey possessed by a superpowerful consciousness from outer space? —Robert Hackett, senior writer
“A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond” Courtesy of Metropolitan Books
A World Without Work by Daniel Susskind
For centuries, machines have replaced people at work, but people have found new jobs and the economy expanded. Economist Daniel Susskind argues that with artificial intelligence, this time could be different, drastically exacerbating wealth inequalities unless governments step in. —Aaron Pressman, senior writer
“Blood and Oil: Mohammed Bin Salman’s Ruthless Quest for Global Power” Courtesy of Hachette Books
Blood and Oil: Mohammed Bin Salman’s Ruthless Quest for Global Power by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck
Even knowing much of the MBS story—the partnership with SoftBank, the friendship with Jared Kushner, the death of Jamal Khashoggi, the hostage taking in the Riyadh Ritz—this high-drama look at the Game of Thrones antics of the Saudi court surprised me again and again. Its core readers will be followers of the worlds of oil and geopolitics (or anyone who was obsessed with the dysfunction and bluster of the WeWork saga). But it’s entertaining, grisly, horrifying, and fascinating enough to work as a broad-appeal page turner. —Katherine Dunn, associate editor
“Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” Courtesy of Random House
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
The author of The Warmth of Other Suns walks the reader through all the ways in which U.S. social and justice systems are designed to keep white people as the dominant caste, perpetuating advantages built in since their arrival on American shores. The book is particularly useful for executives leading diversity and inclusion initiatives in understanding who and what impediments keep minorities, notably Black people, from rising. —Phil Wahba, senior writer
The perfect book for all of those who woke up suddenly after the George Floyd killing, and recognized that they didn’t understand the fundamental inequity built into American society. —Alan Murray, president
“Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism” Courtesy of Princeton University Press
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Anne Case and Angus Deaton
The rage and distrust that are (still) eroding American politics are rooted in a broad collapse in the basics of a well-lived life: jobs, health, security. Anne Case and Angus Deaton give us reams of data that hit like a truck, showing that declining life expectancy, family dissolution, and suicide by means fast and slow have skyrocketed alongside income inequality. —David Z. Morris, tech writer
“Eat a Peach: A Memoir” Courtesy of Clarkson Potter Publishers
Eat a Peach: A Memoir by David Chang, with Gabe Ulla
The multi-hyphenate David Chang forever changed the U.S. dining scene when he opened his Momofuku restaurant in Manhattan in 2004. Chang’s memoir takes you along on his journey from that tiny noodle bar to food empire and celebrity chefdom, capturing both a formative period in the evolution of U.S. dining as well as a window into what it takes to make it in the cutthroat restaurant world. Released in the middle of the pandemic, Eat a Peach provides new perspective on an industry decimated by COVID-19. But Chang also gives you an unvarnished view as he grapples with his Korean-American identity, anger issues, and mental health. It’s an intimate look that will resonate with foodies and non-foodies alike. —Beth Kowitt, senior writer
“Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity” Courtesy of Harvard University Press
Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity by Joseph G. Allen and John D. Macomber
Among the most luckily timed book releases ever, this exposé of the widespread under-ventilation and pollution inside modern buildings arrived just as shared indoor space became truly deadly. Though there’s now light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, these insights and guidelines for improving indoor air quality should play a huge role in post-pandemic reforms. —David Z. Morris, tech writer
“Kings of Crypto: One Startup’s Quest to Take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street” Courtesy of Harvard Business Review Press
Kings of Crypto: One Startup’s Quest to Take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street by Jeff John Roberts
Kings of Crypto (by Fortune senior writer Jeff John Roberts) tells the story of a ragtag band of rebels who saw the future of finance before anyone else and who wrenched the revolution into their orbit. Reading this book is like sticking a stethoscoped ear to the vault containing the cryptocurrency industry’s origins. Click, click, click—and a wealth of secrets spills out. —Robert Hackett, senior writer
“Open Book” Courtesy of Dey Street Books
Open Book by Jessica Simpson
Celebrity memoirs aren’t always known for their candor. But Jessica Simpson this year delivered a remarkable entry into the canon with her aptly named Open Book. The insightful, vulnerable memoir relies on two decades of Simpson’s journal entries, covering everything from her years as a pop star to her career pivot to head a $1 billion clothing brand. —Emma Hinchliffe, associate editor
“Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future” Courtesy of Penguin Press
Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future by James Shapiro
Literature professor James Shapiro unearths little-known but remarkably rich material on Shakespeare’s reception in the United States—from the early 1800s to the present—to illustrate the ways in which Shakespeare has served as a sort of Rorschach test: Everyone, from Abraham Lincoln to John Wilkes Booth, sees what they want in the Bard. In the process they inadvertently reveal their inner selves and cleavages—racism, xenophobia, and class conflict—which remain all too familiar today. The stories are remarkable. —Erika Fry, senior writer
“The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters” Courtesy of Riverhead Books
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker
At this point in 2020, gathering with anyone outside your household (or for some of us, anyone at all) seems like a foreign concept. But author Priya Parker—also a strategic adviser who has worked on peace processes in the Middle East, southern Africa, and India—reminds us why meetings in real life are so important to both our work and personal lives. (It’s no wonder that Zoom, among other work-from-home stocks, took an immediate dive upon news of the Pfizer vaccine efficacy.) In The Art of Gathering (Riverhead Books), Parker clearly lays out what makes meetings work (and what doesn’t), offering guidance that will change every way you meet after the pandemic, from the boardroom to barbecues. —Rachel King, editor (Editor’s note: This title was first released in 2018, but released in paperback in April 2020.)
“The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir” Courtesy of Ballantine Books
The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir by André Leon Talley
If you’re coming for a sequel to The Devil Wears Prada that simultaneously functions as a tell-all about Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, you might actually be disappointed. André Leon Talley is rightfully the star of his own show in this incredibly vulnerable and acerbic memoir, recounting his childhood in the Jim Crow South to his Ivy League education to bouncing between the sidelines of catwalks in Paris and New York City while working at Women’s Wear Daily, W magazine, and, most famously, Vogue.
Talley repeatedly describes himself as the first most powerful Black man in fashion journalism, and it’s hard to dispute that early in his career. Talley is also brutally honest not just about race and the fashion industry, but also his struggles with comprehending his sexuality and a lifelong battle with eating disorders. (This memoir is also one that would make for an enjoyable listen as Talley brings all of his personality to the audiobook narration in a way that few authors can manage to do successfully.) —Rachel King, editor
“The Glass Hotel” Courtesy of Knopf
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
Fans of Emily St. John Mandel’s last novel, 2014’s smash hit Station Eleven, have long been waiting for the Canadian author’s next work. But while Station Eleven’s post-pandemic plot might have seemed more fitting (if not downright eerie) for the miserable year that has been 2020, The Glass Hotel brings back dark memories of the the most recent recession of 2008 instead. Launching from the hotel bar (remember those?) of a quiet but upper-crust hotel in the calm mist of British Columbia—possibly as far removed (at least in mood and pace) from Manhattan as one can get—The Glass Hotel follows a cast of characters whose actions inevitably result in (sometimes dire, even lethal) consequences for people they know and people they don’t. —Rachel King, editor
“The Hollow Places” Courtesy of Gallery/Saga Press
The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
Horror in the 21st century is profoundly influenced by a tradition of “weird fiction” dating back to the early 20th century, including Algernon Blackwood’s incredibly unnerving 1907 novella The Willows. In The Hollow Places (Gallery/Saga Press), T. Kingfisher filters Blackwood’s excessively agile trees and other weird fiction touchstones through a style that’s unusually straightforward for the genre, making for a read that’ll go down easy…then haunt you for months. —David Z. Morris, tech writer
“The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III” Courtesy of Doubleday Books
The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser
American political culture is broken, but it hasn’t always been that way. James Addison Baker was the consummate master at actually getting things done in Washington. We need him back. —Alan Murray, president
“The Mirror & The Light” Courtesy of Henry Holt & Company
The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel
This is the third and final book in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall fiction trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell, who rose from obscurity to become a chief adviser to King Henry VIII and one of the most powerful men in England. This doorstop of a novel (it’s approximately 800 pages long) is worth reading for Mantel’s beautifully crafted prose, but also for the insightful lessons her telling of Cromwell’s rise and fall offers about power’s corrupting influence, and the thin line between glory and infamy. —Jeremy Kahn, senior writer
“The Splendid and the Vile” Courtesy of Crown Publishing Group
The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larsen
At a time when fact and fiction have lost all clear distinction, it’s a pleasure to read a nonfiction book by an author who still knows what it means to stick to the facts, yet can tell a story with all the drama and character and excitement of a first-rate novel. —Alan Murray, president
“The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers” Courtesy of Back Bay Books
The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers by Bridgett M. Davis
Fannie Davis possessed the kinds of skills that could have made her a top-notch executive: She was a savvy strategist, a meticulous planner, and a “people person” with the emotional intelligence to be stern or generous as the situation demanded. But as a black woman coming of age in the Jim Crow South and, later, in segregated Detroit, corporate avenues were closed to her—so she made her mark instead as a leading player in “the numbers,” the illegal, lottery-like gambling racket. In this memoir by Fannie’s daughter, novelist and filmmaker Bridgett Davis, Fannie emerges as a figure of incredible diligence and ingenuity—able to earn comfort and security for her family and become a financial pillar of her neighborhood, even while living under the threat of arrest and the shadows of the social upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s. —Matthew Heimer, senior editor
“Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” Courtesy of Simon & Schuster
Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump
No single book will ever be the definitive account of the Trump era, but this one—which barely mentions 21st-century politics—is as close as any. The firsthand account of rampant psychological and emotional abuse in the Trump clan doesn’t explain what’s happening in America, but it does explain, in a way that’s almost comforting, the manifest brokenness of the man who has become the avatar of that disquieting change. —David Z. Morris, tech writer
“Want: A Novel” Courtesy of Henry Holt & Company
Want by Lynn Steger Strong
Want is a work of fiction, but it read to me like an examination of millennial economic anxiety and the myth of having it all. Our protagonist, Elizabeth, has a Ph.D., two kids, and serious financial struggles. Watching her attempts to balance her life and her aspirations was both vivid and heartbreaking—and very real for many women of Elizabeth’s generation. —Beth Kowitt, senior writer
“What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era” Courtesy of Simon & Schuster
What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era by Carlos Lozada
Reading 150 books about the Trump presidency is a punishment I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But Carlos Lozada did just that—he’s the nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post, so at least he got paid for it—and his synthesis of those books is both an entertaining read and an urgent call to greater civic engagement. Lozada draws on authors from the left, right, and center as he creates a lucid, disturbing portrayal of the economic and cultural forces that Trump tapped into to fuel his political rise—forces that other leaders will probably continue to tap long after Trump has left office. —Matthew Heimer, senior editor


fortune--2020-12-06--This new sneaker brand is meant for health care workers

Los Angeles ’ s new COVID lockdown bans most walking , driving and use of public transport

This is an installment of Startup Year One, a special series of interviews with founders about the major lessons they have learned in the immediate aftermath of their businesses’ first year of operation.
Clove, a new sneaker brand developed with nurses and doctors in mind, entered the market during an incredibly interesting time: right before the COVID-19 outbreak.
Inspired by the founder’s wife, a nurse who struggled to find the right work shoes, the brand’s first sneaker design was drafted in compliance with rigid hospital footwear requirements, which have made it difficult for health care workers to find footwear that both looks good and feels good. So Clove conducted more than 2,000 hours of research to design a sneaker that specifically met the needs of health care workers: a sneaker that was fluid-repellent, easy to slip on, and incredibly comfortable.
This approach seems to be working: Clove’s first sneaker sold out within two days of its initial release back in July and has been in high demand since.
Fortune recently spoke with founder Joe Ammon to learn more about Clove’s business, the lessons learned, the hurdles overcome, and the brand’s plans for next year.
The following interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Clove founder Joe Ammon. Photograph courtesy of Clove
Fortune: What were you doing professionally prior to launching Clove?
Ammon: Clove was born out of the time I spent in Wharton’s MBA program in Philadelphia. Prior to that, I worked in Deloitte’s M&A transaction services group in New York. I had always dreamed of running my own business—ever since my first enterprise of buying and refurbishing instruments with my brother in Ohio and selling them to families on the coasts as a teenager. The goal was always to build something impactful and lasting from nothing.
What inspired the launch of Clove? How can this better serve frontline workers, especially health care workers?
The inspiration for Clove came directly from my wife Tamara’s experience as a registered nurse. She was constantly researching and going through countless shoes, trying to find a pair that suited her needs on the hospital floor, without having to sacrifice her own personal style. It just became an ongoing conversation in our house, where we’d talk about the problems she had with each of them.
It was really frustrating for her, and I understood that this was an incredibly common pain point for so many health care workers. I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a brand eager to listen to their needs and eager to create a solution that supports them throughout their shift.
So when we decided to explore the idea of Clove, everything started with asking what seemed like a simple question: What if we designed a shoe where every single decision point—from the materials to the lace design, even down to the stitches—was made with health care workers in mind? Could we make something that was supremely functional that you’d be proud to be seen in grabbing groceries on your way home? It took over 2,000 hours of wear-testing in a hospital and months of iteration, but we created a design that does it all.
At the start, what was equally important was clarifying how we show up in the world and what we stand for and living by it—not just for our customers but for our team. Our leadership team went deep on why Clove’s mission was important to us as individuals—outside of the business case—and that was to create a culture of care. This is a practice that we continue to do today to renew our commitment and redefine our accountability. I do think this is why we have built such a fantastic team at Clove; we’re dedicated to the cause and not just the product we’re offering.
When Clove launched, which was right before the pandemic became a reality, it was important to us to be honest about what it means to be in health care. Yes, we sell sneakers, but to serve our mission and continue to create the right product, we have to be forthright and truthful about who we’re serving, what they’re going through, and what keeps them going. So we built the Clove brand to be fully aware of the highs and lows of life in this profession, from the feeling of losing your first patient—which my wife will never forget—to a family thanking you for saving a loved one’s life. Working in health care brings the full range of human emotion, and we wanted to represent an honest depiction of that in the stories we told and the people we worked with.
Right now, the world is seeing health care workers as heroes (and they are!), but they are also real people going through real trials and tribulations and barriers and a personal life full of different passions outside of the hospital. We’re excited to create a storytelling platform that amplifies the voices that often go unheard and is grounded in truth, empathy, and connection.
The Clove sneaker in pink. Courtesy of Clove
What went into the research and development process of designing footwear, especially for nurses and doctors on their feet all day? Did you interview or shadow any health care workers? What were they looking for most in a sturdy pair of sneakers?
We spent over 2,000 hours conducting extensive research trials at one of the world’s leading academic medical centers to develop a sneaker expressly designed for health care workers. I had learned firsthand from my wife which features were important to her and others in her field, but it was an incredible experience to get a deeper understanding of their needs, why certain features were important, and how even the smallest tweak could make a world of difference.
Through these hours of research, we interacted with hundreds of health care workers—from nurses to technicians to physicians, via interviews, surveys, and in-hospital observation. Many of them had very little, if any, opportunity to talk with other brands about their needs, so they were really eager to be part of this journey with us. And likewise—we continue to be so grateful to all of the health care workers who were part of testing in our early days and who continue to be part of our ongoing product development.
What we found that health care workers cared about most was cleanability, as they’re continuously exposed to blood, toxic chemicals, and bacteria on the job. So in response, we meticulously designed the Clove sneaker with fluid-repellent laces and uppers made from liquid-repellent and stain-resistant Clarino™ fabric, which can be cleaned easily with the same antibacterial wipes used in the hospital. We constantly hear that this is one of the most loved features of the shoe.
Comfort was also incredibly critical to our shoe design (the average nurse, for example, walks a marathon every week—and that’s only at work). In our research, we found that many health care workers had worn clogs or athletic shoes, which didn’t provide them with the support and protection they needed on the job simply because they weren’t designed to handle the rigors of a hospital setting. This gave us the opportunity to completely reinvent their sneaker. So we started by creating a rigid set of specifications and then designing around those. It’s been amazing to see how many customers have written in to say it has fixed their lower back pain, removed foot aches, and helped them feel just as comfortable at hour 12 of a shift as hour one. We’ve continued to innovate on this since launch, releasing a brand-new midsole foam formulation that has even higher rebound while maintaining the same durability for a shoe health care workers will wear more than any other in their life.
Over the course of talking to nurses, we realized that many kick off their shoes when they’re sitting at a nurses’ station, but need to put their shoes on very quickly when there’s a code blue alarm. So we also designed a laceless sneaker that would make it easy for them to slip on within seconds. These were little things that seemed relatively easy to solve for, but few brands appear to be addressing nurses’ needs at this level of detail.
We also discovered that every hospital had their own footwear guidance and policies, which makes it challenging to find a sneaker that fits your personal style. Some hospitals are restrictive of big logos or too many colors, while others ask nurses-in-training to wear white shoes to match their uniform. Taking all of these different restrictions into account, we carefully designed our sneaker so that it would be permitted at any hospital, while keeping a chic aesthetic that health care workers could look and feel good in.
Clove conducted over 2,000 hours of research to design a sneaker that specifically met the needs of health care workers: a sneaker that is fluid-repellent, easy to slip on, and incredibly comfortable. Courtesy of Clove
Retailers have taken quite a hit during the pandemic, but then this is more of a niche product for a profession smack in the middle of the biggest medical crisis of the past century. What has it been like launching a company in 2020? What has it been like to work with supply chain partners and develop the initial collection?
At the onset of the pandemic, doctors and nurses started buying multiple pairs of Clove shoes to prepare for the long days ahead, quadrupling our sales. PPE was at an all-time need, as we all saw, and at Clove, it felt like we had a greater responsibility to do everything we could to serve a community that could really benefit from feeling comfortable and protected as they took on some of the greatest challenges in their professional career.
When orders started to pour in, in the months of March and April, we faced never-before-seen challenges around transportation as the pandemic froze many of the traditional supply chain routes. While we lost two weeks of manufacturing, our team moved heaven and earth to get sneakers out the door, but above all to be super communicative and transparent with customers about what we were experiencing and empathetic about what they were experiencing. It was inspiring to see how our customers reacted when we’d hit snags, like a shipping delay. We expected to have angry customers as they had already been waiting weeks for their order to come in, but instead they were thanking us for doing what we were doing and for working hard to navigate the unknowns. Part of me thinks that at their core these are some of the kindest and most giving individuals you can serve, but another thought is that we were jumping into the unknown—just like they were—and they appreciated us being honest and candid with them when we hit a roadblock.
Through these challenges, we felt that it was even more important to go back to our mission to support health care workers, and to our responsibility as a business, not just in this moment but beyond. Early in the pandemic, we were receiving a hundred emails a day from health care workers asking if we could donate sneakers in the areas that were hit most by COVID. In the emails, they expressed what they were going through, sharing that they had been wearing the same PPE for weeks, that their coworkers were falling ill with coronavirus. There were so many stories of loss and grief. It was heartbreaking.
Clove added a new all-black shoe on Black Friday this year. Courtesy of Clove
To Clove, health care workers have been the unsung heroes of our world, putting their patients’ mind-body needs above their own. But since COVID-19 has thrust these workers into stressful and uncertain environments, it raises a question we all should have all been thinking about long before the outbreak even started: Who is taking care of our health care workers?
In our first year of business, we launched our “Clove Cares” program, where we donate product to health care workers in overwhelming need. To date, we’ve donated over $150,000 of products to COVID-19 teams across the country. Our team is really proud of that, and we’re eager to do more.
We also launched the Clove Collective, our give-back, ambassador program composed of 14 diverse health care workers who use their voices to ignite positive social change for themselves as well as their peers in the health care community. Each time a member’s community code is used to receive product perks, the Collective member makes a commission. Clove then matches each commission and donates to an organization that each member believes in wholeheartedly throughout each fiscal quarter. We were honored to kick off this program in partnership with the National Black Nurses Association (NBNA). In doing so, we were able to fully sponsor students to attend the NBNA’s 2020 annual conference. We’re excited to share more partners and causes that support our mission here soon.
Clove founder Joe Ammon with wife Tamara. Courtesy of Clove
That said, what has it been like to secure funding for Clove? Is it primarily self-funded, VC-backed, or some mixture of both?
I was lucky enough to find a group of investors early on who believed in Clove’s mission as deeply as we did. From the earliest days, investors like Brian Spaly, the founder of Bonobos and Trunk Club, Andrew Mitchell at Brand Foundry Ventures, and Deepa Gandhi and Melissa Mash, two all-star founders at Dagne Dover, rolled up their sleeves to help us navigate launching a new business. We’ve been on the journey together ever since.
Post-pandemic and five years down the road, where do you see Clove in the market?
Our mission is “to take care of those who take care of you.” So we’ll continue to stand by that with a commitment to creating the highest-quality products possible, while offering a platform that shares the diversity of their stories, both the highs and the lows.


fortune--2020-12-05--How China’s COVID-19 vaccines could fill the gaps left by Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca

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In recent weeks, a string of vaccine makers including Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca have released promising phase III trial data, injecting the world with hope that the COVID-19 pandemic will come to an end.
On Wednesday, the U.K. became the first western country to approve a vaccine for COVID-19, authorizing Pfizer to distribute its vaccine on an emergency basis to frontline medical workers and other high-risk groups. The U.S. and the European Union are expected to follow suit in coming days or weeks and give vaccine makers the green light to start distributing their candidates.
But amid the optimism, experts have raised some concerns about the accessibility of Pfizer and Moderna’s candidates, which require costly cold-chain distribution mechanisms, and about the quality of the data provided by British vaccine maker AstraZeneca.
At the same time, China’s two leading vaccine makers—the private Sinovac and state-owned Sinopharm—appear close to rolling out their vaccines in coming weeks with candidates that don’t require expensive cold chain networks.
Western vaccine makers appear to have taken the lead in the global race to produce a vaccine, but Chinese vaccine makers may help fill in the gaps they leave behind.
Data limits
In mid-November, American firms Pfizer and Moderna each announced preliminary trial results for their experimental vaccines indicating that they were over 90% effective in preventing infections of COVID-19. The results far exceeded expectations, given that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it would require a vaccine to be just 50% effective or better to gain approval.
Still, Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines are based on newly-developed mRNA technology that requires the candidates to be kept at sub-zero temperatures during shipments. Such temperature restrictions will make it difficult for lower- and middle-income countries to access the vaccines because they will need cold-storage infrastructure to distribute the doses.
In Indonesia, for example, the country’s state-owned vaccine manufacturer Bio Farma said that Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous nation, effectively cannot purchase Pfizer’s vaccine given the logistical challenges in distributing it.
“Indonesia does not have such [cold-chain] capabilities, and it is hazardous if this vaccine is not stored at the proper temperature,” Honesti Basyir, head Bio Farma, told Indonesian news outlet the Jakarta Globe on Nov. 22. In India, the country’s 28,000-unit cold chain network used for distributing vaccines only handles vaccines between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius.
Pfizer’s vaccine, which was originally developed by the German firm BioNTech, must be shipped at -70 Celsius (-94 Fahrenheit), colder than average winter temperatures at the South Pole. Moderna’s needs to be kept at -20 Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit), roughly equivalent to the temperature of a home freezer.
Pfizer has developed its own shipping containers that keep its vaccines at -70 Celsius for up to ten days. Otherwise, keeping the vaccines cold for a longer period of time requires an extensive network of airport freezer warehouses, refrigerated trucks, and on-site freezers that can cost up to $10,000.
An employee makes dry ice pellets at Capitol Carbonic, a dry ice factory, in Baltimore on Nov. 20, 2020. The vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna require expensive cold storage, making the vaccines out-of-reach for some nations. SAUL LOEB—AFP/Getty Images
These freezer-chain fears partly dissipated when, weeks later, British pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca announced that its vaccine candidate was also up to 90% effective in phase III trial results. AstraZeneca’s vaccine candidate, based on adenoviral technology, which induces an immune response by infecting cells with a weakened form of a live virus, only needs to be kept between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius (36 to 47 degrees Fahrenheit), roughly the temperature of a home refrigerator, making it easier to distribute.
But in the days after AstraZeneca’s announcement, experts raised questions over the “transparency and rigor” of AstraZeneca’s data. Scientists questioned why the most effective results emerged from an apparent dosing error, and how datasets from multiple countries were combined and tabulated into the final results. In response, a spokesperson for AstraZeneca said its trials were conducted to the “highest standards.” Still, amid the questions over its trial data, AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot pledged that the company would conduct an additional study to validate its results
AstraZeneca’s woes and the potential distribution limitations of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have left a hole in the global supply that may be filled by Chinese vaccine makers, says Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Sinovac and Sinopharm, China’s two leading vaccine makers, are currently testing three vaccine candidates in phase III trials with candidates that could be distributed without cold storage chains. Sinovac’s candidate, called CoronaVac, uses inactivated forms of COVID-19 to induce immune responses. Sinopharm’s two unnamed candidates are both based on similar technology.
Beijing “absolutely” sees these Chinese-made vaccines as a potential substitution for AstraZeneca’s candidate, says Huang. In state media outlets, Beijing is presenting Sinovac and Sinopharm’s candidates as “particularly attractive to lower and middle income countries, especially the ones who cannot afford or don’t have the capacity to sustain cold chain to distribute vaccines,” Huang says.
Because they rely on inactivated forms of the virus, Sinovac’s and Sinopharm’s candidates are more stable in comparison to vaccines based on mRNA technology, meaning they don’t need to be kept quite as cold. Similar to AstraZeneca, Sinovac says its vaccine can be stored and shipped at temperatures ranging from 2 to 8 degrees Celsius. Chinese state media reports that Sinopharm’s candidates can likely be stored at a similar 2 to 8 degree Celsius range. Sinopharm declined Fortune’s request for confirmation.
Sinovac and Sinopharm
Sinovac and Sinopharm have both recently indicated that they are nearing the finish line in the vaccine development process.
Sinovac, which is conducting large-scale clinical trials in Brazil and Indonesia, said last week that it expected to release clinical data from its CoronaVac candidate in Brazil in a matter of days. The Butantan Institute, a vaccine research center and Sinovac’s partner in Brazil, told reporters on Thursday that it expects Sinovac to publish clinical data before Dec. 15. Joao Doria, governor of Brazil’s Sao Paolo state, also said Thursday he aims to begin distributing CoronaVac by January. Sinovac did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment on its trial data.
Sinovac published results of its phase II trial in mid-November that suggest CoronaVac induced immune responses among volunteers and may offer COVID-19 protection. Researchers noted, however, that Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines induced stronger immune responses.
Meanwhile, on Nov. 25, Chinese state-owned vaccine maker Sinopharm asked regulatory authorities in China to officially make its vaccine available to the Chinese public. In an interview with state-run news outlet Xinhua, a Sinopharm executive did not specify when the company expects to receive a response from Chinese regulators.
Sinopharm has not released any data to the public on its phase III trials, but says it has already distributed the vaccine to nearly a million people in China under the country’s controversial emergency-use program.
Of the two drugmakers’ candidates, Sinovac’s CoronaVac is likely China’s most “promising” vaccine, with the best chances of getting approved and distributed internationally because Sinovac has released more data, says Huang.
A boy looks at Sinovac Biotech LTD’s vaccine candidate for COVID-19 coronavirus on display at the China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) in Beijing on Sep. 6, 2020. NOEL CELIS—AFP/Getty Images
Authorities in Brazil, Turkey, and Indonesia have already struck deals with Sinovac to purchase tens of millions of doses of CoronaVac if phase III trials prove successful.
Admiral Craig Fuller, the U.S.’s top commander in Central and South America, told reporters this week that while the U.S. is focused “on taking care of the U.S. first,” China is poised to deploy its vaccines around the world.
Still, Sinopharm may have a built-in edge given its established distribution networks within China and the fact that it is testing its vaccine in a broader array of countries than other Chinese vaccine makers.
“[Sinopharm’s] large scale rollout [via China’s emergency use program] also means that there is already a large distribution system, which has already been stress-tested,” says Nicholas Thomas, a vaccine expert and health governance professor at the City University of Hong Kong. “This is a major advantage in the future distribution.” Sinopharm is also already distributing vaccines to the United Arab Emirates via that country’s emergency use program, and is testing, or plans to conduct trials, in at least ten countries including Egypt, Jordan, and Argentina.
Home stretch
The U.S.’s apparent success in producing effective COVID-19 vaccines has turned the global race to develop an immunization for the disease into an all-out sprint. Globally, China does not want to be seen as losing in a scientific competition with its chief rival, the U.S. Domestically, China is under pressure to quickly roll out vaccines so it can loosen travel restrictions and cease the cycle of sporadic lockdowns when new outbreaks arise.
“If the U.S. manages to mass produce their vaccines for their populations by say, May, it would make China look bad if they don’t have their population vaccinated,” says Huang. “They have strong incentives to get vaccines to their populations as soon as they can.”
If and when Sinovac or Sinopharm’s vaccines come to the market, Thomas says, the next big phase in the vaccine race will be a bifurcation of nations based on which vaccines they seek, China’s or ones made by Western countries.
“There is a significant commercial advantage to be gained if the public prefers one manufacturer over another,” says Thomas. “The competition at the global level is only just beginning.”


fortune--2020-12-07--Tesla stock at $780? It could happen says Goldman Sachs

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Talk about an upgrade.
Tesla got a major boost this past week as analysts at Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock from neutral to buy, driving their 12-month price target from $455 to $780. Tesla shares closed on Friday at $599.
That’s capped a run of positive news for the company, including its fifth consecutive quarter of profits, the announcement that it would be added to the S&P 500, and of course Elon Musk being named Fortune‘s Businessperson of the Year.
Goldman’s analysts cited a few reasons for their change of heart. They believe EV adoption is accelerating due to battery prices falling faster than they had expected, combined with an increase in regulatory proposals to limit or ban the sale of internal combustion engines over the next few decades. As a result, the analysts “now expect EVs to comprise 18% of sales globally in 2030 and 29% in 2035 (with 50% adoption in 2035 in both the US and in Western Europe).”
The incoming Biden administration also bodes well for Tesla’s prospects. “Using the prior Obama plan of ~55 MPG of corporate average fuel economy by 2025 as a starting point for analysis purposes, we believe that companies may need a double digit percent of sales to come from EVs to comply with stricter emissions standards (especially if there is no bonus treatment for EVs in the calculation),” the report states. What’s more, the Goldman analysts also suggest Tesla’s Energy and FSD (full self driving) businesses could be worth more than previously assumed.
Though Goldman’s price target of $780 might strike some as overly bullish, they aren’t the only ones feeling optimistic. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives also upgraded the stock last week, sticking a “bull case” target of a $800-$1,000 on TSLA shares (his 12-month target, meanwhile, is below Goldman’s at $560). As my colleague Anne Sraders wrote, “electric vehicle demand ‘is really starting to inflect, especially in China,’ Ives tells Fortune. He notes globally 3% of auto sales are EV, and ‘We think that now has potential to be 10% by 2025. With Tesla being the clear leader, we believe China could represent 40% of sales by 2022, up from 15% today.'”
To be sure, every analyst report about Tesla is filled with caveats and risk factors, and as my colleague Shawn Tully has written about extensively for Fortune, there are fundamental questions about Tesla’s business model and it’s over-reliance on the business of selling emissions credits.
That said, the Goldman report also highlights how tough it has been to bet against Tesla this year. The analysts write that they had downgraded the stock in June after Tesla lowered prices more than had been expected and there had been some reports of manufacturing challenges with the Model Y. “This concern that we had about a 2H20 growth slowdown was incorrect, and since our downgrade on 6/11/20 the stock is +192% vs. the S&P 500 +22%,” they wrote.


fortune--2020-12-06--Nearly a third of workers don’t want to ever return to the office

The vaccines are on their way. So far, they appear so effective that Dr. Anthony Fauci even thinks we may have packed stadiums return in the summer of 2021.
That also means more employers will begin to reopen their offices—and we’ll get to see to what degree WFH sticks around.
To get an eye on the future of work, Future Forum by Slack conducted a three-month survey of over 9,000 knowledge workers or skilled office workers around the world—something they used to build their Remote Employee Experience Index. Future Forum by Slack gave Fortune Analytics exclusive access to that raw data.*
Here’s what we found.
The numbers to know
27%
… of knowledge workers say they’d never (13%) or rarely (14%) work from their employer’s office in an ideal world. 39% say they’d want to always (12%) or usually (27%) work from the office. And 34% are in the middle.
48%
… of workers say they expect their employer to make permanent policies changes to expand remote working post-pandemic. 31% say they don’t expect permanent changes, and 21% are unsure.
43%
… of hiring managers say they’re likely to consider a remote candidate when hiring for a position on their team. 32% said they’d be unlikely to, and 25% are neutral.
33%
… of workers are feeling burned out.
The big picture
Workers are split on returning to the office. Around 3 in 10 workers would never or rarely want to return to the office, while 4 in 10 would like to go back to the old normal. We should expect a mixed approach from employers, tailoring new work policies based on how their staff works best. Simply put: The future of work won’t look like fully packed offices nor a wasteland of empty buildings.
A few deeper takeaways
1. Older workers prefer WFH the most.
This isn’t the ’90s: Older workers are damn good at digital communication. And these employees aged 55 to 64 are the most likely to say they’d prefer to never work from the office, with 17% of them indicating so.
Only 11% of workers aged 25 to 44 say the same thing. What may be the reason? As I’ve pointed out before, younger staffers are struggling the most to be productive while working from home. Some find it challenging because they’re still learning the ropes in their industry or job. This age group includes many parents—a group that is struggling to balance WFH and childcare.
2. Burnout is hitting lowest-paid workers hardest.
In April alone, more than 20 million Americans were laid off. Smaller staffs mean those who were lucky enough to escape pink slips are being asked to do more. That, paired with disruptions in everyone’s personal lives, is a perfect recipe for burnout. In all, 33% of workers say they’re burned out.
Those at the bottom of the office chain are most likely to be struggling with burnout. Among those earning less than $50,000, 39% agree they’re feeling burned out. 29% earning more than $200,000 are feeling the same.
Workers paid less are more likely to see their jobs cut during the crisis. That means many of these modest earners are working extra hard to avoid the corporate axing—and burning out faster.
*Methodology: The Slack Work Tracking Survey was conducted between May 30 to August 11 among an audience of over 9,000 “knowledge workers” or “skilled office workers” in Australia, France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States.


fortune--2020-12-06--Why aren’t we in another Great Depression?

Why aren’t we in another Great Depression?
It’s a major mystery, at least for most people. The U.S. economy crashed spectacularly last spring when the number of daily COVID-19 cases peaked on April 24 with 36,741 new cases. GDP plunged in the most vertiginous drop ever recorded, and millions of workers lost their jobs almost instantly. So now, with daily new cases around 200,000, why aren’t we suffering the same thing—or something much worse?
The pandemic outlook is the grimmest it has ever been. CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield says the next few months will be among “the most difficult in the public health history of this nation.” Hospitals are filled near capacity. Redfield predicted that total COVID-19 deaths, recently around 277,000, could approach 450,000 by the end of February.
Economists seem happily oblivious of it all. The view of 26 economists polled by Consensus Economics is that the U.S. economy will grow at a 3.6% annualized rate in this quarter and by 3.1% in next year’s first quarter. A few brave souls are gloomier. JPMorgan’s team predicts -1% next quarter. For comparison, remember that the contraction in this year’s second quarter was -31.4%.
Yet these upbeat economists just might be right, at least broadly speaking. They cite four factors to justify their seemingly clueless optimism:
The economy has adapted quickly. Nearly everything in the 2020 economy has happened at Formula 1 speed. Last spring, U.S. GDP fell further in a matter of weeks than it did over three and a half years in the Great Depression. It then recovered most of that loss in just a few months. A strong benefit of such speed is that the economy suffered little “scarring,” as economists say. In a long downturn, workers’ skills get rusty and machinery deteriorates or becomes outdated. Not this time. Companies innovated fast, and while many businesses failed, entrepreneurs started new businesses at the highest rates in at least a decade. The economy resumed growing through the summer lull in new cases and kept growing as cases increased into the fall.
Vaccines are on the way. They won’t immunize a significant part of the population for months, but just knowing they’re en route prompts companies to start planning for an upturn. While the winter may still be bleak for businesses, it won’t be as bleak as if they were looking at potential lockdowns indefinitely. Goldman Sachs’s latest forecast—titled “V(accine)-Shaped Recovery”—predicts, “As the population builds immunity to the virus in the spring and summer, we expect economic activity to rebound sharply in depressed sectors such as travel, accommodation, and food services.”
A substantial stimulus package and continued Fed support are assumed. These are crucial. The upbeat forecasts are contingent on Congress enacting at least one stimulus package analogous to, if not as big as, the CARES Act and other measures last spring. Goldman assumes a trillion-dollar package “potentially enacted” before Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. JPMorgan, which forecasts a 1% contraction in the first quarter, also assumes a trillion-dollar package but not until the quarter is nearly over. Everyone assumes low interest rates from the Fed as far as the eye can see.
The economy is still climbing out of a hole. The U.S. economy was flying high before the pandemic hit, and even after a few months of rebound, it still isn’t producing as much as it was a year ago. That means the country has capital and labor sitting idle, waiting to be used, so at least the components of growth are more available than they were. There’s certainly room to grow: Even after its recent surge, GDP would have to increase 3.6% just to regain its level at the end of 2019.
Economists are notoriously reluctant to forecast a recession, and, in any case, no one has been through an experience like this pandemic. If COVID-19 cases and deaths continue rising on their recent steep trajectory, it’s hard to see how the economy could escape another decline. But the pandemic has been full of surprises, and one of them may well be that even through the projected long, dark winter, the country may at least be able to sustain people’s material well-being.


fortune--2020-12-06--Netflix rejects calls to add disclaimer to ‘The Crown’

Netflix has “no plans” to add a disclaimer to The Crown stating that its lavish drama about Britain’s royal family is a work of fiction.
In a statement Saturday, Netflix said it has always presented the drama, as just that—a drama.
“We have always presented The Crown as a drama—and we have every confidence our members understand it’s a work of fiction that’s broadly based on historical events,” it said.
“As a result we have no plans—and see no need—to add a disclaimer.”
Netflix was urged last week by British Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden to add the disclaimer, in the wake of the broadcast of the drama’s fourth series.
Questions of historical fidelity weren’t a major issue during earlier seasons of the show, which debuted in 2016 and traces the long reign of Queen Elizabeth II, which began in 1952.
But the current fourth season is set in the 1980s, a divisive decade in Britain. Characters include Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose 11-year tenure transformed and divided Britain, and the late Princess Diana, whose death in a car crash in 1997 transfixed the nation and the world.
Some Conservatives have criticized the program’s depiction of Thatcher, played by Gillian Anderson. Britain’s first female prime minister, who died in 2013, is portrayed as clashing with Olivia Colman’s Elizabeth to an extent that some say is exaggerated.
The Crown creator Peter Morgan, whose work also includes recent-history dramas The Queen and Frost/Nixon, has defended his work, saying it is thoroughly researched and true in spirit.
Charles Spencer, Diana’s brother, was one who called on Netflix to add a disclaimer.
“I think it would help The Crown an enormous amount if, at the beginning of each episode, it stated that, ‘This isn’t true but it is based around some real events,’” he told broadcaster ITV. “I worry people do think that this is gospel and that’s unfair.”


fortune--2020-12-06--What ‘Schitt’s Creek’ can teach us about climate action

Schitt’s Creek has risen in the ranks as one of the most popular TV shows of the past decade, reaching its pinnacle at this year’s Emmy awards, where the show swept the comedy category. A significant part of the Canadian sitcom’s appeal lies in the utopian world that writer and producer Dan Levy created—a world where everyone belongs and a world where frankly, everything is better than the reality we all occupy. By reimagining how queerness is portrayed in television, Schitt’s Creek invites us to a story, a family, and a town where being gay is not accompanied with struggle and where coming out does not necessitate strife.
The result is reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s essay, Decay of Lying, and its concluding revelation that “the telling of beautiful untrue things is the proper aim of Art.” Put simply, we must believe we can live in a beautiful, accepting world before that world comes to fruition. In creating Schitt’s Creek, Levy put pen to paper to let the world know what society could look like with less judgment and prejudice. The way this alternative approach to society’s challenges resonated with audiences has been dubbed the “Schitt’s Creek effect.”
Communicators should take note, as the efficacy of this approach likely extends well beyond television to some of our world’s most pressing social issues.
Let’s look at climate change through the lens of the Schitt’s Creek effect.
There is virtually universal agreement in the scientific community as to the human-driven causes behind our rapidly changing climate. Climate change should not be up for debate, but too often the conversation focuses solely on the veracity of claims about the climate crisis, hitting an immediate roadblock and inhibiting our ability to further the discussion on possible solutions.
As companies move forward with bold climate action, communicators should create social impact messaging that focuses on the opportunities and benefits of client climate initiatives. Doomsday messaging may be accurate with regards to the gravity of the problem at hand, but it holds little sway over a public wracked by empathy burnout.
Undoubtedly, more severe hurricanes and raging wildfires are very real impacts of climate change that have already disrupted and even taken lives, with climate impacts disproportionately affecting communities of color. But especially in a year that has brought so much grief, uncertainty and destruction, people do not want to hear that they must change their habits before their house burns down or is swept away by rising seas.
We must recognize that fear tactics are not the only tool in our arsenal.
To create a better climate future, we’ll need to bring everyone to the table. Business leaders, policymakers, and consumers—many of whom hold differing perspectives—will all play a role in our collective response to climate change. But just as Levy approached queerness in Schitt’s Creek, we’ll need to imagine and portray that ideal, collaborative climate response before it becomes our reality.
Which unlikely allies could come together to advance meaningful climate action? What real- world benefits will Americans see from strong mitigation practices? How will our natural areas be prettier, our food healthier and our water cleaner?
Our stories should encourage folks to get creative. Imagine taking your families to their favorite campsite along the coast or hiking through the Sierra Nevada foothills. In urban areas, envision cleaner air on your walk to work or at the neighborhood park where your children play after school. Messaging should be showing policymakers and business leaders the opportunities that will be created by a major investment in clean energy—more jobs, healthier workers and communities, more stability and greater energy independence.
We must take it upon ourselves to remind people that these benefits are directly related to the decisions that companies are making now. The holdup on climate action is not in the science; it’s in the public’s reception of climate change and what a response will require of them as individuals. A little bit of idealism will go a long way in softening the ground on a daunting issue.
Too often, we solely approach big issues from where we are. It’s time to start working back from where we want to be. The public needs to see more of that ideal, and it’s our job as communicators to make that happen.
Lindsay Singleton is managing director and Sammie Yeager is an account executive at ROKK Solutions, a bipartisan public affairs firm in Washington, D.C. Singleton leads ROKK’s recently launched Social Impact Communications practice.


fortune--2020-12-06--Why Mastercard is publicly trying to fix its gender and racial pay gaps

Mastercard is hoping that disclosing some of its internal imperfections will help it close its gender and racial pay gaps for employees.
“What gets measured gets managed,” Ann Cairns, the payments company’s executive vice chairman, told me in a virtual video interview Friday at the Web Summit conference. “It’s a question of holding yourself up to the outside world and coming under scrutiny. And I think it’s a good thing to do.”
Earlier this year, Mastercard said that its female employees worldwide make 7.8% less than its male employees, on a median basis, and that its U.S. employees of color make 7% less than white employees. Similar gender pay disclosures have been made by other Fortune 500 companies, including Citigroup, Starbucks, and this week, Adobe.
Cairns on Friday said that Mastercard pays “dollar for dollar” the same amount for the same work, and that its pay gaps “are not because we’re paying any individual less than any other individual…It’s just that we have more senior men in our company than women, as many companies do in the world. And we need to adjust the ratio of Black Americans.”
The company in June pledged to increase the number of Black employees at the vice president level and above by 50% by 2025. (Mastercard is also investing externally in racial justice, pledging $500 million over the next five years to promote financial inclusion in Black communities. As outgoing CEO Ajay Banga recently told Fortune editor-in-chief Clifton Leaf, “Our idea of stakeholder capitalism starts with our employees. We can then figure out what else we need to do in our community, including our efforts at financial inclusion.”)
On the employee side, Cairns says that Mastercard is putting some accountability muscle behind its efforts to close its pay gaps: “They’re very much in our goals and targets, and they come up during performance reviews,” she says. “And we’re looking at the promotion rate and the retention rate of people at every layer in the organization, because it’s not just fixing one layer. It’s fixing from the top to the bottom of the company.”
Cairns, who has regularly appeared on Fortune’s annual Most Powerful Women International list, spends a large part of her time advocating for gender diversity, including outside Mastercard. She also chairs the 30% Club, a high-profile U.K.-based organization that campaigns for more women at all levels of global business.
It’s a daunting task, and one that the pandemic and its catastrophic economic impact on women risks undermining. In the U.S. alone, women have lost a net 5.3 million jobs since February, and almost 2.2 million women have dropped out of the labor force—meaning they are not even currently looking for work—according to the National Women’s Law Center. These staggering numbers are the result of factors including the disproportionately high job losses suffered by Black and Latina women, and the tremendous remote-schooling and childcare burden that has fallen on mothers but not fathers.
“It’s really difficult and very scary that that’s actually happening,” Cairns says. But given the imminent distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, “I hope that it’s a hiatus and that the women can start returning to the workforce earlier next year than later.”


fortune--2020-12-07--Rudy Giuliani tests positive for COVID-19 amid election-results challenges

Why aren ’ t we in another Great Depression ?

President Donald Trump said his attorney Rudy Giuliani, who has been leading efforts to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 general election, has tested positive for the coronavirus.
The 76-year-old former New York mayor was admitted to Georgetown University Medical Center on Sunday, the New York Times reported, citing a source who wasn’t identified. Earlier in the morning, Giuliani appeared in an interview on Fox News and talked at length about the president’s election-result challenges.
Trump, who announced Giuliani’s diagnosis on Twitter, wished him well in a tweet on Sunday, saying “we will carry on!!!” Giuliani’s son Andrew, a White House aide who had Covid in November, tweeted that his father is “resting, getting great care and feeling well.”
My Dad @RudyGiuliani is resting, getting great care and feeling well. Thank you to all the friends who have reached out concerned about his well being. https://t.co/0FVceiNnHc— Andrew H. Giuliani (@AndrewHGiuliani) December 6, 2020
Giuliani’s diagnosis is the latest setback for the president’s effort to cling to power by asserting without evidence that the election was riven with fraud. Courts around the country have thrown out the claims by Trump and his allies, who are seeking to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.
Since the election, the former New York City mayor has repeatedly appeared at news conferences, before lawmakers and in other settings without a mask or practicing social distancing to prevent the spread of the virus.
Giuliani took the leading role in the president’s post-election effort after David Bossie, an outside adviser to Trump who was leading his post-election fight, was sidelined with the virus days after the election. Trump had tapped Bossie after his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was diagnosed with the virus.
Trump was hospitalized with Covid-19 in October, interrupting his re-election campaign. The president entered Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Oct. 2 after announcing that he and first lady Melania Trump had been diagnosed. He was released three days later.
Giuliani and his representatives didn’t immediately respond to calls seeking comment.
.@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus. Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2020
Giuliani has been a key force in spearheading Trump’s claims of a widespread and implausible election fraud to benefit President-elect Biden, whose victory has been certified by states comprising more than the required 270 Electoral College votes. Undaunted, Trump on Sunday again tweeted his unsubstantiated claim that he won the presidential vote.
The Trump campaign’s legal team issued a statement late Sunday saying Giuliani tested negative twice immediately preceding his trip to Arizona, Michigan and Georgia, and didn’t receive a positive test until more than 48 hours after his return. Giuliani was in Atlanta on Thursday on behalf of the president.
“No legislators in any state or members of the press are on the contact tracing list,” the statement said. “Other team members who are defined as having had close contact will be following their physicians’ directives and CDC guidelines on self-isolation and testing.”
Giuliani, who was mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001, has become the butt of late night comedians’ jokes over both style and substance.
Soon after networks called the race for Biden, Giuliani appeared outside a Philadelphia landscaping company, nestled between a crematorium and an adult film store, to declare that the president wouldn’t concede.
He was ridiculed for a later appearance at a Nov. 19 news conference to highlight his fraud allegations as a dark liquid — possibly hair coloring — dripped down his face. Giuliani and his colleagues alleged that Republican poll watchers weren’t allowed to observe vote-counting in Philadelphia and Detroit and that U.S. voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems Inc. used software made in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez. Chavez, who was that country’s president, died in 2013.


fortune--2020-12-07--Britons will roll up their sleeves on Tuesday for a COVID vaccine jab as the world anxiously watches

Less than a year after the coronavirus crisis erupted, a massive mobilization to deliver a vaccine is underway, and Britain has emerged as a proving ground.
Having cleared the shot from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, the U.K. is set to become the first Western country to vaccinate its citizens, a turning point in the battle to halt a pathogen that has killed more than 1.5 million people. Britons are expected to begin rolling up their sleeves Tuesday, with about 50 hospitals initially taking part in the campaign.
As the focus shifts from research and development to distribution, the country of 67 million people finds itself in the spotlight. Deployment of the Pfizer vaccine—along with potential shots from Moderna Inc., AstraZeneca Plc and others waiting in the wings—will need to overcome a series of production and logistics hurdles. Health systems also must convince some medical workers and members of the public that it’s safe to take the jab.
“We’ve demonstrated the power of science, ingenuity and ambition,” said Rajeev Venkayya, president of Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.’s vaccines business. “If we can do that as a global community, I believe we can certainly figure out how to get distribution done. That’s not to say we’re not going to run into problems. Of course we will. We’ve never done this before.”
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Britain, like some other Western governments, has faced criticism over its approach to testing, contact tracing and other parts of its response: The pressure is on to avoid such snags with inoculations. Heading into a potentially grim winter, hospitals across the country are already under strain.
The country should brace for some “hard months,” the chief medical officers of the U.K. wrote in a Dec. 4 letter, warning that socializing around Christmas could put additional stress on hospitals into the new year. Immunizations may help reduce Covid hospital admissions and deaths significantly by spring, they wrote, “but there are many weeks before we get to that stage.”
Getting a vaccine swiftly to tens of millions of people is a huge challenge, and Pfizer’s product adds to the complexities. The shot has to be transported at about minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit), colder than winter in Antarctica. After arriving, it can be stored in freezers, in a hospital fridge for five days, or up to 15 days in special Pfizer thermal shippers filled with dry ice.
Quality Assurance
Boxes of Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine, produced in Puurs, Belgium, have been dispatched to secure locations in the U.K. by truck or plane, each containing five packs of 975 doses. Upon arrival, the vaccine undergoes a quality assurance process that takes 12 to 24 hours.
People over the age of 80, care-home staff and health workers who are at highest risk of illness will be first to receive jabs, according to a statement from England’s National Health Service. Eventually, as many as 1,000 vaccination centers, operated by groups of general practitioners, will come online, the government said.
The U.K. regulator’s decision on Wednesday to clear the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine ahead of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and its European counterpart paved the way for the immunizations to begin. The government had signaled that possibility for months, positioning the regulator to authorize a shot independently before the end of the Brexit transition period on Dec. 31.
While speeding to deliver a vaccine, the nation also must grapple with concerns it’s moving too quickly. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious-disease specialist, slammed the U.K.’s drug regulator on Thursday, saying that it rushed to clear the Pfizer vaccine, though he later toned down the comments. Crowing from politicians about the U.K. being first has also drawn fire, though the U.S. may also authorize the vaccine this week.
Now the focus turns to mass immunization. The country has secured 40 million doses of Pfizer’s shot—enough to vaccinate 20 million people—and Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said that the country expects an initial 800,000 doses to arrive this week.
How the health system will get shots to elderly nursing home residents and staff remained unclear as of last week. It’s important that they’re brought to the facilities where they live and work, according to Liz Jones, policy director at the National Care Forum, which represents providers.
“We shouldn’t go to the default position that says, ‘you have to take the people to the vaccine,’” she said. “We want to see a rapid exploration of how we can take the vaccine to the people.”
Huge Stakes
As governments deliver vaccines, they will need to implement monitoring systems to look out for potential side effects, according to Takeda’s Venkayya, who’s also former special assistant to U.S. President George W. Bush for biodefense. The supply and demand equation also poses a dilemma.
“There will be challenges with the allocation of a scarce resource in the early days,” Venkayya said.
With the distribution of a Covid vaccine, the stakes are huge as governments including the U.K. desperately look for ways to reopen economies, lift restrictions — and save lives.
The U.K. will likely have enough vaccine for two-thirds of its population by July 2021, hitting that level three months after the U.S. but about two months before the European Union, according to an analysis by London-based research firm Airfinity Ltd. The estimates are based largely on the supplies governments have secured per capita and production capacity in each region.
“Where we go from here will determine not only how quickly we can get control of the situation and return to some degree of global stability,” said Daniel Bausch, an infectious disease specialist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, “but ultimately whether the Covid-19 vaccine effort will go down in history as the biggest public health success or failure.”


fortune--2020-12-07--One million text messages and betting on green hydrogen: A Q&A with Fortescue Metals CEO Elizabeth G

One million text messages and betting on green hydrogen: A Q&A with Fortescue Metals CEO Elizabeth Gaines

Elizabeth Gaines, the CEO of Fortescue Metals Group—and No. 5 on Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year list in 2020— has had a career that’s about as varied as they come.
The Australian executive began her career as a chartered accountant before moving on to work at an investment bank in London and other financial institutions. At the age of 37, she became the CEO of Heytesbury, then one of Australia’s largest private companies with an eclectic portfolio of businesses that included a West End theater company in London, Australia’s largest live cattle operation, and a large construction company.
Her husband’s career took her back to London, where she became the finance director for a UK-based media company and did much business in New York. She then returned to Australia to work in private equity, where she gained more international experience, focusing on assets across the travel and hospitality industries. In 2013, she became the first woman to join the board of Fortescue, an Australian iron ore miner that has had a meteoric rise over the past decade or so. In 2017, she joined the mining company’s executive team as CFO, and in 2018, she became its CEO.
Her three years at the helm have been impressive enough to land her on Fortune’s annual list of top business leaders twice. Most recently, even amidst a global pandemic and fast-souring relations between Australia and China (Fortescue’s main export market), the 17-year old iron ore producer posted record-breaking operational and financial results in its 2020 fiscal year (which ended in June).
Gaines, who also ranked No. 17 on this year’s Fortune’s Most Powerful Women International list spoke with Fortune recently about leading her company through the pandemic with humanity (and without shuttering operations), why she’s betting on green hydrogen, and what is changing (an urgent focus on climate) and what isn’t (the underrepresentation of women leaders) in the world of business.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
So, 2020?
It’s been an interesting year. I don’t think any of us would have anticipated this. We’ve continued to perform—I put that down to our culture and diverse workforce and there’s a strong market, so a combination of those things.
When did the coronavirus first come on your radar?
We have an office in Shanghai, so we first started dealing with coronavirus last January, when some of our team members who, because it was Chinese New Year, had traveled to various parts of China. As the virus spread there, they were in areas of lockdown, so our team members were impacted. We’d been dealing with that and supporting them and supporting our customers in China. We actually donated a million dollars to support the conversion of a sports stadium in Wuhan to a COVID Recovery Center, so it came on our radar early.
Then as we started to recognize it was going to hit Australia as well, we progressively made a number of decisions.
Tell us about that.
We are a mining operation. Most of our mines are in remote areas, we have a lot of fly in-fly out workforce. They fly in for the two-week shift and then they have a week R&R. Managing people and the movement of people and the measures we’ve had to put in place has been pretty extraordinary. We had to extend rosters from someone with up to four weeks on, two weeks off. Four weeks on is quite a big challenge—you’re four weeks away from your family.
We did that because it reduced the movement of people by around 40%. Of course, the way disease spreads is through people moving so we made that decision so that we could slow down the movement of people. And then we put in place a range of hygiene measures—we had to change our mining village facility to close some of the dining and other services and make it takeaway rather than have people gathering. We had to change the way we dealt with their flights [for] physical distancing on flights. It was a comprehensive.
I think one of the things about the mining sector is we always have these sort of safety plans in place, not just in response to infectious disease management. As an industry, we actually banded together. There’s quite a significant resource industry here in Western Australia and we have industry bodies. We met regularly with the state government, with the premier of Western Australia and his ministers to have ongoing dialogue about how to keep the mining sector operating. Interestingly enough, Australia’s economic situation is far more robust than I would say most other countries globally because the mining sector has continued to operate. The West Australian government here has just returned a budget surplus, and they will be the only state in Australia to return a surplus this year. That’s solely due to the role that they’re receiving from the mining sector. So we have literally kept Australia going.
Have you had any outbreaks at your operations?
We haven’t had one case. Obviously there has been community spread of cases in Australia, not so much in Western Australia, more in Victoria, which had a fairly severe lockdown for quite a long period of time. There were cases in Western Australia but we don’t have any on our mining sites, and I think that’s because of the measures we put in place.
Communication was key to your strategy in managing COVID-19. Can you talk about that?
Our management team, we met twice daily, seven days a week, for a long period of time. And we still meet regularly but not as regularly. Things were changing quite rapidly and as we started to see new measures being introduced and our government was introducing certain restrictions, we wanted to keep in step with those restrictions. We realized that just relying on the usual kind of email messages probably wasn’t going to quite get there because often our workers will be off shift. They’re on R&R, they’re not actually on site. We quickly realized that text messages were one of the best ways—a short SMS to people to say, now we’re updating our flight schedules or we’re introducing a roster change. We’ve sent over a million text messages since March. I think one gentleman mentioned that he’d had more text messages from me in the last few months than he’s had from his wife in 20 years of marriage. You can’t over-communicate in these circumstances. You really have to keep people informed.
At the heart of the pandemic, when we had to change some of our flight schedules. I’d go out to the airport—our flights generally go at very unpopular hours, like 4 a.m. So you go out to the airport early in the morning, and you can greet people, and have a conversation with them just to make sure they realize that they’re an important part of the team. We want to make sure that they feel supported. The combination of the human interaction, SMS messages, and then video content. We have weekly town hall meetings—video is available for people to watch, so we do spend a lot of time and effort communicating.
Given the pandemic began in China, your main export market, were you expecting record-breaking results this year?
We actually ran through a number of scenarios that you would expect. The remarkable aspect of this is the recovery in China. Despite the fairly significant lockdowns very early in the year, China dealt with this pandemic in a very managed and methodical way and actually got back to business very quickly. So what we’ve seen is a significant increase in crude steel production. And obviously, we’re a major iron ore supplier, and the strength of China’s recovery has been, I think, truly outstanding. We’ve seen increased demand for iron ore, and that has supported the current iron ore price, which has been at a higher level for some time now.
Crude steel production is one indicator of the strength of the [Chinese] economy. And that’s up four and a half percent for the nine months to the end of September, with China producing about 780.2 million tonnes of crude steel. They’re on track to exceed a billion tonnes of crude steel production this calendar year.
We did see other iron ore producing nations were impacted by COVID. South Africa had a complete lockdown including mining. Brazil had some impacts from COVID, not as significant, but I think Australia and Western Australia demonstrated that we are very reliable supplier of key commodities for steelmaking during the pandemic.
So first and foremost, for us, was to continue to operate, which we’ve achieved, and there were other measures we had to put in place. We had to look very closely at our shipping supply, because obviously the movement of ships in and out of ports has been under some scrutiny, and we put measures in place to address that. Against that backdrop, and the very strong performance from the team, we were able to achieve those records. And we’ve seen as a result of that strong demand for iron ore, that’s translated into record financial performance, as well as record operational performance.
Do you expect that strong demand from China to continue?
We have a lot of confidence in the ongoing strength of the Chinese economy, and certainly a lot of that is led through infrastructure investments. There is still quite a long pathway to reach peak urbanization in China. That drive to urbanize the country and transform the economy and lift people out of poverty is to an overarching desire of the Chinese government, and so that tends to mean that there’s further investment in infrastructure, whether that’s new airports or high-speed rail or road infrastructure.
To what do you attribute your record operational performance?
We continue to set ourselves stretch targets, and we’ve got a real culture of delivering against those targets. We’ve integrated our operations, and our mine planning and marketing functions so we’ve got better integration across our whole operational supply chain which I think which has given us better coordination across the whole business.
We’ve increased our capital investment over the last few years in our processing facilities. So we’ve increased sustaining capital, we’ve reinvested back into the business, and we’ve actually started to see the benefits of that investment.
You’ve mentioned Fortescue’s culture. What makes it distinct?
We pride ourselves on being low on bureaucracy, high on empowerment, and values like family, integrity, setting stretch targets, having courage and determination. We have a number of values that really drive people to do things differently, to seek innovation at every opportunity, to really feel empowered as though it’s their Fortescue.
It’s a bit hard to describe until you actually see it, but we literally have no barriers, no, bureaucracy. I sit in an office where everything is open plan. We kind of roll our sleeves up and get on with things.
Fortescue along the way has had it skeptics or people who thought we wouldn’t achieve our first iron ore train, which we did in 2008 or didn’t think we’d get to 170.5 million tonnes of annual production. We have done that, and we’ve repaid our debt—at the peak, we had $15 billion U.S. dollars of debt—and we’ve been very disciplined and repaid debts. Our recent quarterly results were a net cash position of a billion dollars. We’ve been a true entrepreneurial start-up that has achieved quite outstanding results.
I think this year, there’s no greater demonstration of the importance of that culture than with COVID-19. I think if we hadn’t had that culture, we might have had a different outcome.
What’s top of mind for you now?
Safety is always our number one priority. We aren’t out of a pandemic yet, and I think complacency will be our enemy in this. We have to stay focused. That’s not just a Fortescue issue, I think that’s more of a global issue. Australia is in a very different position than he U.S. Our case numbers are very, very low. And the government’s determined to keep it that way.
We’ve had a very strong start to this financial year. We just had our first quarter where we had record shipment—44.3 million tonnes. We have to continue our focus on delivering on that operational excellence. We’ve got two major projects underway or three actually, two iron ore projects and one energy project. One is about to be completed which is the Eliwana mine and rail project, that’s a new facility and a new mining area for us, so the first iron ore train is due in December. And we’ve got another big investment in Iron Bridge, which is a $2.6 billion investment. That’s a significant project for us that is well advanced. We’re about to enter peak construction phase, which is always a time where you got to a very, very focused and mindful of safety and getting things right.
Energy and climate change is a key focus for us… There was a report released this week by Deloitte Access Economics that said that Australia will suffer the economic equivalent of a COVID-19 crisis every year by 2050 if policymakers do not take decisive action now to combat climate change.
We’ve set a goal to reach net zero operational emissions by 2040. That’s a good decade ahead of our competitors, so we’re very ambitious to continue to reduce emissions. We’re backing that up with investment. Our energy project is Pilbara Energy Connect, which is a $700 million investment in large scale, renewable energy and transmission infrastructure—poles and wires incorporating large scale solar and battery storage. Once that’s all completed 25 to 30% of stationary energy will be sourced from renewables.
That’s just the start really. We have to incorporate more renewables, we have to find a way to transition our mobile fleet—these are the large mining trucks, our rail operations, the things that move around. They currently operate on diesel so we have to find the next generation of mining fleet that will move away from diesel and fossil fuels and naturally harnesses renewables.
Australia has the opportunity to participate in the next key export market. Our view is that will be green hydrogen, and so we actually see that there is significant opportunity for energy to be part of our future business—part of our decarbonization, but also a new market for us and a new export market which will assist with diversifying our markets more broadly.
Can you elaborate, how will Fortescue participate in this new market?
We’re an iron ore operator, but we’re also an exporter. We own our own rail infrastructure, we own some of our own ships, we own our own port infrastructure. So we actually manage large scale infrastructure, we develop markets, we develop customers. Hydrogen is in some respects another commodity. You can produce hydrogen from renewables in the Pilbara where we operate—there is plenty of sun and wind and water, so there is no shortage of the elements that you need to produce large scale green hydrogen. And then it’s about the infrastructure and the shipping, and transportation as well as obviously developing customers and markets, which is exactly what we do. We see an opportunity for us to participate through the entire value chain. We’ve got big ambitions, and there’s quite a bit of government support in Australia, both at the federal and state level for these initiatives. I think there’s recognition that hydrogen has the potential to be the next big export commodity for Australia in the same way that iron ore and LNG have been. We’ve got a number of partnerships already announced, and we’re working closely with prospective customers and partners as we develop this this market.
What do you think is the timeline for green hydrogen?
Obviously, there are countries like Japan and Korea that are transitioning away from fossil fuels. Hydrogen has been identified as a significant energy source, so those markets will transition. I think, by the end of this decade, it’s a significant opportunity. That demand will continue to grow during this decade. The focus is on identifying these markets. and these opportunities. We’re working on the technology. The technology exists but it’s getting technology to that bulk scale, and investment is required to achieve this. The investment in this sort of technology is relatively significant. The benefit of the work that we’re doing is it supports not only the development of that export market, but also provides an alternate energy source for our own operations so that we can decarbonize more rapidly.
There are not many women in the mining sector. And what has that been like and how does that affect your leadership?
If you look around the world at some of the good examples of countries in the way they’ve dealt with COVID—New Zealand, Germany—I think what’s demonstrated is this famous view historically that men can take the hard decisions and be more decisive, I think what COVID has demonstrated with female leadership at a political level is that you can be decisive and empathetic at the same time. That’s been a really important reminder seeing how those countries have dealt with the crisis.
Diversity is absolutely key. There’s research that shows that a diverse leadership team leads to better financial outcomes, value creation for shareholders and better innovation, so I’m a firm believer in the benefits of diversity. Certainly, at an Australian level, with the ASX 200, Australian Stock Exchange’s top 200 companies, the representation of female leadership has flatlined. So despite a lot of talk about increasing the gender balance, I’m personally disappointed that over my career, which is 30 years or so now, there doesn’t seem to be much change. We seem to be having the same conversation, which is disappointing because the evidence is there.
In Australia, we’ve seen examples recently of some pretty poor corporate behavior and cultures that have led to various inquiries and people leaving companies over just poor behavior. With greater diversity, you would get potentially a more balanced approach in some of these matters. I’m certainly looking forward to the day when being the only female CEO of a major mining company is not the novelty. But I think we’re a fair way away.
[At Fortescue], 44% of our board are women. We’ve been one of the leaders from a board perspective in terms of diversity. 26%, in our senior leadership roles are women, and across their whole operations, we’re at about 19%. We certainly want to see that continue to increase. We work hard to put settings in place that support men and women. Diversity for me is broader than just gender, it’s ethnicity, as well. And we’ve got such a diverse backgrounds of people across our organization. And that truly to me is what makes us achieve what we achieved.
Beyond Fortescue, what do you see in the sector in terms of diversity efforts?
There’s quite a lot of talk about it, and a couple of the other large companies have certainly have set themselves targets. The resources sector is everything from the large-scale operators like ourselves through to much smaller junior companies. it’s more of the larger companies that we’re seeing real action, and I think some of the smaller companies, maybe, maybe less so. Even lately, external stakeholders aren’t focusing on it as much. There’s not as much focus as I think it ought to be on continuing to encourage companies to push for greater diversity.


fortune--2020-12-07--How the business world has changed in the last few decades

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Good morning.
I caught up last week with Jim Collins, whose book Good to Great ranks high on my list of the best business books of all time. Collins recently released an update of an earlier work, Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0, originally published in 1992. I was eager to talk with him about how the business world had changed since then.
Collins work focuses on enduring rules of business leadership, and he resists those who trumpet change. In the new book, he tells of a conversation with a twenty-something who said his generation “requires a whole new way of leading to inspire and motivate us…We demand that our leaders not only provide direction, but that they also tell us why. And it needs to be a ‘why’ that’s much more than maximizing profits for shareholders.”
Collins’ response: “The greatest company builders have always done that. You are confusing what’s rare with what’s new.” His examples include companies like Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Patagonia.
Readers of this newsletter know that I believe much has changed. Intellectual property and intangibles are a bigger part of the value of today’s companies today than they were three decades ago; that forces companies to focus more on their employees. The pace of change is faster and scaling is easier than it used to be; that makes it harder for top leaders to provide detailed direction, and more important that they empower employees and set a bright North Star. Social media has enhanced transparency; that makes leaders more accountable for the impact of their companies on society. And the younger generation is indeed different—perhaps not in their desire for meaning, but in how they fulfill it. Millennials are slower to marry, less likely to belong to organized religion, less inclined to join civic clubs, than previous generations—leaving the employer as their main formal connection to society. They want meaning in their work.
Collins didn’t dispute those changes. And he acknowledged more businesses today are pursuing purpose beyond profit—although he warned of the need to distinguish between true purpose and ‘purpose-washing.’ Nevertheless, in his view, the fundamental rules have not changed. In the 1992 book he wrote: “We ask you to reject the classic business school doctrine. ‘Maximize shareholders wealth’ is a simple theoretical way of looking at a business, but it’s not supported by the reality of many great companies…For them, profit is simply a strategic necessity rather than the supreme end point.”
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Airbnb IPO
Airbnb will reportedly boost the proposed price range for its initial public offering, taking it from $44-$50 per share to $56-$60. Doordash is apparently also aiming high, suggesting the IPO market could end the year strongly. Fortune
Brexit crunch
After countless it's-crunch-time moments in the negotiations over the U.K. and EU's post-Brexit trading relationship, it's…crunch time! No, really. The EU's remaining member states are holding their last big meeting of the year later this week, and that will be the last, final, ultimate chance for them to approve any deal. So we should find out today or maybe tomorrow whether there's a deal or not. Chances are high that the talks will end in failure, and sterling is slipping accordingly. Bloomberg
Nord Stream 2
The much-delayed final few kilometers of the Nord Stream 2 Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline seem set for completion, despite the protests of the U.S. German shipping authorities have warned vessels to avoid the relevant area for the rest of the month, and Russia's pipe-laying ships are moving into the area. The Local
Taxing the rich
Argentina will institute a one-off "millionaire's tax" to pay for the country's pandemic response. The tax will affect around 12,000 Argentinians who are worth over $2.5 million, and who will pay a progressive rate of up to 3.5% on their wealth inside the country, and up to 5.25% on their assets outside its borders. BBC
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
WFH hopes
Nearly three in 10 workers would never or rarely want to return to the office after the pandemic, according to Fortune Analytics' parsing of raw data gathered by Future Forum by Slack. So expect a mixed approach by employers. Fortune
Australian wine
Fortune's Eamon Barrett takes a look at how Australian wine got caught in the middle of a wider trade dispute between the country and China, the biggest customer for Aussie wine growers. Treasury Wine Estates, owner of some big wine brands, "hopes it can stay in the market by sourcing grapes from different countries to skirt China’s tariffs and by potentially exporting more bulk wine, which is cheaper and stored in shipping containers, rather than a premium product packaged in bottles. Australian bulk wine isn't subject to the new tariffs." Fortune
Exxon pressure
Exxon has a new activist investor that wants it to reinvent itself as a greener business more quickly. Engine No. 1 LLC, which has the support of Calstrs and may find some sympathy among other investors, will tell the board to focus on clean-energy investments and cut costs elsewhere to preserve its dividend. Wall Street Journal
CEO priorities
Rubin Ritter, the co-CEO of Zalando—Europe's biggest online fashion retailer—will step down early to give greater priority to his wife's professional ambitions. Zalando chair Cristina Stenbeck: "While the Supervisory Board clearly regrets Rubin’s decision, we have the highest respect for the underlying personal motivation." The company, in accordance with Ritter's wishes, is not saying who his wife is or what her professional ambitions entail. CNBC
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.