Society

Equality is failing at shareholder ballot box, too

17 Jul 2020

Investors rarely push for votes advocating greater diversity and garner little support when they do, in part due to financial-industry demographics. George Floyd’s death may change that. But firms have a lot of latitude to downplay investor votes – unless they’re about pay.

Chancellor: Wall Street is firmly in Wonderland

9 Jul 2020

As society melts down, markets melt up. The constant manipulation of interest rates has turned the world of finance upside down. Serious investment has become impossible. It’s the sort of topsy-turvy state Lewis Carroll might have imagined if Alice was putting money to work.

Facebook’s new best friends are a weakening link

8 Jul 2020

Small firms account for a large chunk of the social network’s ad revenue. The pandemic has also made them more dependent on the platform just as big companies from Ford to Unilever boycott it. But a Covid-19 surge may hurt the minnows when CEO Mark Zuckerberg needs them most.

Food rations point to India’s fiscal poverty

8 Jul 2020

New Delhi is handing out free grains to 800 mln people, a frugal way to support households. Two-thirds of citizens in the world’s fifth-largest economy are vulnerable to income shocks, but the small tax base constrains redistribution options.

Review: The callous roots of caffeine capitalism

3 Jul 2020

“Coffeeland” recounts Englishman James Hill’s rise from travelling salesman to king of El Salvador’s coffee industry. Though his farms brought wealth to some, they made the country less equal and heavily reliant on one resource. Many African nations face a similar dilemma today.

China smothers Hong Kong in heavy security blanket

1 Jul 2020

A harsh new law will quash protests that have vexed the business community. The definition of subversion is ominously vague, while allowing for extradition and secret trials. It also applies to non-residents, further complicating risk management. The price of order is high.

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.