Society

Corona Capital: U.S. recovery, Small-business aid

30 Jun 2020

Concise views on the pandemic’s corporate and financial fallout: White House virus adviser Anthony Fauci’s estimate that U.S. cases could breach 100,000 a day is bad news for the economy. Plus: Uncle Sam’s loan program for small businesses comes to an end with money in the bank.

Corporate boycotts expose an inconvenient truth

26 Jun 2020

Brands like Ben & Jerry’s and Verizon are pulling ad spending from Facebook because of racist content. It’s as if capitalism sprouted a conscience. But much as some might claim otherwise, companies just aren’t wired to drive social change. The possible exception: Facebook itself.

Review: Russian capitalism binds “Putin’s People”

26 Jun 2020

The president’s murky networks blur the line between public, private and criminal cash, Catherine Belton writes. Tycoons must obey the omnipresent Kremlin to survive. Half of ordinary Russians do the same: They rely on the system for work. It helps explain Putin’s survival.

Unilever’s fairness agenda gets harder to manage

26 Jun 2020

The Anglo-Dutch giant is renaming skin-lightening products popular in India which generate $500 mln in sales. Dropping them, like J&J, would better fit with CEO Alan Jope’s values-driven ethos. Multinationals trying to be global and progressive will face more of these dilemmas.

Vaccine victory would be half cure for economy

25 Jun 2020

Governments have ploughed over $5 bln into efforts to create a barrier against Covid-19. Promising trials raise hopes the virus can be made less lethal. But as even effective vaccines would still allow the disease to spread, they will only allow a partial return to normality.

Viewsroom: Reparations math, the coming WFH battle

25 Jun 2020

As America continues to grapple with the legacy of slavery, Breakingviews columnists debate the financial question of whether the government, and some corporations, have a debt to repay. And Pete Sweeney dives deep into the post-pandemic future of working from home – or not.

The looming war over working from home

24 Jun 2020

After decades of false starts in telecommuting, the pandemic has ushered in a real revolution. It’s great for collaborative technology developers, less so for office landlords. The next big clash between labour and capital over the fruits of productivity is also set to kick off.

Cox: Companies can go first on reparations

19 Jun 2020

As Pepsi’s move to retire Aunt Jemima shows, corporations are grappling anew with America’s original sin. The soul-searching should lead them to their archives to quantify the role slavery or other forms of racism played on their income statements. It’s complicated but doable.

U.S. racism’s $13 trln legacy is just the start

19 Jun 2020

The world’s wealthiest country built its economy on unpaid black labor. Centuries of discriminatory policies, like redlining and mass incarceration, compounded the inequity. There are many ways to weigh what reparations might be due. The racial wealth gap offers just one way in.

Lloyd’s makes apt Black Lives Matter target

18 Jun 2020

The 334-year-old insurance market has pledged an undisclosed sum to atone for its role in the Atlantic slave trade. Amid global protests, it has little choice but to rethink its past. But there’s also a need to change its approach to diversity in the present.

ESG takes on new meaning with U.S. private prisons

17 Jun 2020

CoreCivic is halting dividends and may ditch its REIT structure. That comes as social risks prompted most banks to stop lending to the incarceration business. An LBO is one option. But with leverage hard to come by, CoreCivic would need investors for whom the E means equity.

The Exchange: Bruce Flatt

16 Jun 2020

The office is not dead, though hot-desking may be. The elevator needs a rethink. And don’t rule out the shopping mall. Brookfield Asset Management’s chief executive made these and other predictions for the post-pandemic global economy in a recent chat with Breakingviews editors.

LGBTQ ruling adds to the great American workaround

15 Jun 2020

Outlawing workplace discrimination was a job for Congress, not the Supreme Court. But with government so dysfunctional, change had to come from elsewhere. Big companies know the feeling: they are already working around the political void on everything from climate to Covid-19.

Baseball risks strike-out with its labor squabble

15 Jun 2020

Major League Baseball and the players’ union have been arguing about pay and the length of the 2020 season. Meanwhile, other sports may soon be back in action. Baseball had problems before Covid-19. By focusing on short-term gains, the union could undermine the sport’s future.

VCs mistake diversity for a new asset class

12 Jun 2020

Andreessen Horowitz and SoftBank have new funds to back entrepreneurs of color, prompted by U.S. protests against racial injustice. Yet the problem isn’t a lack of capital – it’s that what’s there rarely goes to black founders. The fix starts with the VC firms themselves.

Corona Capital: Instacart stocks up

11 Jun 2020

Concise views on the pandemic’s corporate and financial fallout: Grocery-delivery firm and lockdown beneficiary Instacart tops up on capital while the getting is good.

Twitter is the new, virtual picket line

9 Jun 2020

Employees and customers are taking to social media to vent grievances. Executives at Facebook, the New York Times, CrossFit and more have come under fire. It’s a way to show worker solidarity that was once provided by organized labor. But it's also easily misdirected.

IBM makes a virtue of facial-recognition necessity

9 Jun 2020

New CEO Arvind Krishna is ending the $117 bln firm’s attempts to develop the technology and questioning whether police should use it. Companies rarely abandon potential profit for PR wins, but it’s easier when operations are small, rivals pull ahead, and regulation threatens.

Dixon: Wean firms off debt by rejigging taxes

8 Jun 2020

Excess corporate leverage makes the global economy wobbly. After the pandemic, governments should use the tax system to encourage more equity and less debt so the world can better resist future shocks. They may even be able to raise some cash to repair their own balance sheets.

U.S. jobs surprise mixes hope with division

5 Jun 2020

The unemployment rate unexpectedly fell in May despite continuing lockdowns. That revives hopes of a V-shaped recovery and makes roaring stock markets look less out of touch. But 21 mln Americans are still out of work, with minorities in a protest-hit country faring worst.