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© AT&T 2020. All rights reserved.

December 7, 2020

THE PEOPLE WHO DEFINED

AN UNPRECEDENTED YEAR 41
 EVER
CONNECTED
Innovative technology that breaks down silos
Supply chain technology is only beneficial when it connects you, your suppliers and
manufacturers, your transportation networks, and your customers together. And, when
implemented, the technology integrates with your current systems, creating a continuous
web to capture data that creates business intelligence and predictive analytics. That’s why,
at Ryder, our technology RyderShare™ connects your supply chain more than ever before
and builds a digitalized network with complete visibility across your operation. Discover how
Ryder Supply Chain Solutions can make you Ever better™ at ryder.com/everbetter.
 ADVE RTI S E M E NT

Driving Business Forward:

Three Trends Impacting Supply
Chains During Covid-19

Virtually no business has escaped by Ryder’s RyderShare™ platform, which

the supply chain disruptions wrought allows retailers to give their consumers
by the coronavirus pandemic. real-time insight into the location and
In March, 95% of companies said that expected timing of each delivery.
their supply chains had been or would be “Having that real-time visibility—to know
disrupted by Covid-19. But in the eight exactly where the product is and when
months since the pandemic’s emergence, it will arrive—is critical to our customers
forward-thinking businesses have been and our operations team,” says Sensing.
able to strengthen their supply chains Ryder Last Mile delivery service also
and seize the opportunity to prove their benefits retailers shifting into e-commerce,
dependability to their customers.
Covid taught companies that they
need to be flexible and quickly adapt to
2 An outsourced transportation network
can be a competitive advantage.
providing delivery of bulk items at whichever
level a retail customer prefers—from simply
dropping them inside the consumer’s
changing conditions across both their As business needs to shift instantaneously front door to a full-service setup.
supply chains and transportation networks. during these uncertain times, companies
Those that have managed to do so are must be able to rely on their fleets to
poised to thrive, not only for the duration meet quickly changing demands. Ryder
of the pandemic, but also in the “new proved its reliability last spring when
normal” that lies on the other side of it. shipments to its consumer packaged
Here’s a look at three trends goods (CPG) customers skyrocketed
shaping supply chains now: 150% as they stocked up on everything
from toilet paper to thermometers.
At the same time, as many of Ryder’s
automotive clients shuttered temporarily
due to shelter-in-place orders, Ryder
was able to redirect its thousands of
trucks, tractors, trailers and drivers Reactive data and technology evolve
from automotive routes to CPG runs. to become more predictive.
“That flexibility allowed us to
support those food-and-beverage In addition to providing transparency
customers and keep those trucks around delivery, the RyderShare™ platform
running to their warehouses and to their also generates valuable data, which Ryder
retail storefronts,” Sensing says. uses to automate its warehouses and
find other cost savings for customers.

1 Diverse, regional supplier networks

have never been more important. 3 The shift to e-commerce
has accelerated, along with
customer expectations.
“It’s helping us drive more waste
out of the system and be more
effective in moving out customers’
At the height of disruption last product on the right transportation
spring, companies that fared the best Customers nervous about visiting mode and carrier,” Sensing says.
were those not dependent on a single stores during the pandemic have shifted While challenges remain as businesses
supplier, and those in geographic more of their shopping to e-commerce, rebound from the effects of the pandemic,
proximity to their suppliers. with sales expected to reach nearly ample opportunities exist for agile
“Step one to a resilient supply chain $800 billion this year—a 32% increase enterprises. Companies with operational
is not having all of your eggs in one over last year and a figure analysts flexibility, reliable partners and a focus
basket, and step two is being in the region didn’t expect to see until 2022. on efficiency will adjust—and flourish—
with your suppliers, as much as you More than a thousand new retail as the new normal takes shape.
can be,” says Steve Sensing, President, customers have turned to Ryder since
Global Supply Chain Solutions, Ryder the pandemic hit to help them meet Learn more at www.ryder.com
System. “When the pandemic came, increased demand, particularly because
those companies that were positioned consumers still expect total transparency
locally were in a much better position. in the status of deliveries. This is provided Sponsored by
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 December 7, 2020

Australia’s comic relief I Gen Z’s preferred brokers I The Mideast

peacemaker I Activists against racial injustice I Cinema’s class
warrior I Amazon.com’s defector I The GOP’s controversial
twentysomething I The Trump needler-in-chief I The pandemic
number crunchers I Pop’s edgiest star I Nigerian allies to
#EndSARS I America’s voice of science I The fundraiser of
Flavortown I Quarantine’s exercise king I The woman shattering
Wall Street’s glass ceiling I The front-line workers I A helping
hand at the IMF I Morgan Stanley’s strategist I Sudan’s pioneering
reformer I A best friend to binge-watchers I The director who
went one-on-one with Michael Jordan I The super-secretive
macro trader I The founder seeking shelf space I New York’s
dogged AG I South Korea’s incomparable contact tracer I The QB
who became a civil rights trailblazer I Tap-to-pay’s top supporter 5

I The humans behind Animal Crossing I The president with a

plan for Uruguay I Universal’s visionary I The No.1 entrepreneur
in Southeast Asia I Zimbabwe’s messenger of hope I A WNBA
do-gooder I Soccer’s advocate for hungry kids I The A student in
online ed I A Philippine free-press fighter I The chief drone officer
I The high court’s middleman I Rocket woman I Your dog’s
favorite exec I The hottest investment vehicle I The rap-battle
buds I Taiwan’s Covid crusher I The homemaker turned
opposition leader I The vaccine chasers I China’s livestreaming
queen I The lockdown delivery guy I A banker for the
forgotten I Elon Musk’s friend in China I Crypto’s influence miner

THE BLOOMBERG 50 41 From politics and finance to tech and entertainment, the people who
defined this trying year

76 A few names you may know more intimately soon enough

 ◼ CONTENTS Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

◼ IN BRIEF 9 DoorDash IPO ● Bitcoin soars ● A super Cyber Monday ◼ COVER TRAIL
◼ OPINION 10 Biden’s opportunity to remake U.S. diplomacy How the cover
◼ AGENDA 10 EU leaders meet ● Chewy earnings ● ECB sets rates gets made

①
“So, this week it’s
◼ REMARKS 12 World leaders can agree on one thing: Big Tech is too big the fourth annual
Bloomberg 50, our list
of people who made
BUSINESS 15 A collision course for Elon Musk and German labor
1 17 Chinese brands make inroads at home
significant and—this
part is important!—
quantifiable
18 Vaccine distribution will rely on Covid-battered airlines contributions in 2020.”
19 A maker of synthetic psilocybin on treating depression “Did I finally make it?!”

“Alas, no employees.”
TECHNOLOGY 20 Airbnb’s successful pandemic pivot
2 22 EU antitrust enforcers and Amazon try to play nice “So you just pick 50
people, and that’s that?”
23 Salesforce’s Slack deal ups the pressure on Microsoft
“The Bloomberg 75 just
wasn’t as sexy.”
FINANCE 25 A new team of small, cheap stocks keeps the bull running
3 27 ▼ The pandemic takes a toll on microloan borrowers
“Well, last year we had
all 50 people on the
cover. Maybe we do one
person this year?”

GHANA: PHOTOGRAPH BY NICHOLAS SENU ADATSI FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK. SWIZZ BEATZ: PHOTOGRAPH BY TRACY NGUYEN FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK
“But it’s Bloomberg 50.
We need all 50.”

“Fifty is too big a crowd

for a 2020 cover. It’s
making me panic! Let’s
just show 5 people.”

“No, 25 people.”

“How about 12?”

“OK, 12.”

ECONOMICS 30 The Fed’s lifeline for Main Street comes up short

4 32 The pope is getting pushback on financial reforms

POLITICS 35 The pot industry looks to Georgia’s runoffs—and beyond

5 37 A budget win for Chicago’s mayor leaves no one happy Cover:
Photographs by
38 Scotland declares access to menstrual products a right Djeneba Aduayom,
Braylen Dion, Andy Ryan
Flores, Lelanie Foster,
How to Contact Bloomberg Businessweek Giulio Ghirardi, Laurel
EDITORIAL 212 617-8120 ● AD SALES 212 617-2900, 731 Lexington Ave. New York, NY 10022 ● EMAIL bwreader@bloomberg.net Golio, Jeremy Liebman,
● FAX 212 617-9065 ● SUBSCRIPTION CUSTOMER SERVICE URL businessweekmag.com/service ● REPRINTS/PERMISSIONS Andrew Miksys,
800 290-5460 x100 or email businessweekreprints@theygsgroup.com ● Letters to the Editor can be sent by email, fax, or regular mail. Bethany Mollenkof,
They should include the sender’s address, phone number(s), and email address if available. Connections with the subject of the letter Tracy Nguyen, Justin J.
should be disclosed. We reserve the right to edit for sense, style, and space ● Follow us on social media ▶ FACEBOOK facebook.com/ Wee, all for Bloomberg
bloombergbusinessweek/ ▶TWITTER @BW ▶ INSTAGRAM @businessweek Businessweek
 IBKR charges
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rate tier listed on its website. Rates shown apply to IBKR Pro clients only. Rates subject to change. For additional information on margin
loan rates, see ibkr.com/interest 11-IB20-1387CH1358
 Bloomberg Businessweek By Benedikt Kammel
 IN BRIEF
○ Coronavirus cases have ○ Exxon Mobil will ○ Cyber Monday in th he U.S.
topped 63.4 million, and set a sales record, bassed on
almost cut the value of its reports from 80 of thee top
North and South 100 online retailers.

1.5m
people have died. The
American natural
gas fields by up to
$11b

U.K. became the first $20 billion.

Western country to
approve a Covid-19 vaccine
when it cleared Pfizer
$4b
and BioNTech’s shot.

The writedown, following this year’s

steep decline in energy prices, could
be the industry’s largest impairment in
a decade. 2014 2020

○ U.K. retail ○ S&P Global agreed to ○ DoorDash is s

buy IHS Markit for about
emporium seeking an IPOO
Arcadia filed for
protection from $39b
in stock. The deal, the
before yearend
The proposed
d.

creditors on second-biggest corporate share price

Nov. 30. acquisition so far this year, would value 9
speeds a consolidation the U.S. food
wave among the finance
industry’s data providers. delivery compaany
at as much as
$32 billion.
Maradona, celebrated as the
○ Diego Maradona
greatest soccer player ever, died of a
The holding company of billionaire heart attack on Nov. 25 near Buenos
Philip Green operates 466 stores with Aires, where he was recovering from
MARADONA: STEVE POWELL/GETTY IMAGES. HORTA-OSÓRIO: SIMON DAWSON/BLOOMBERG. DATA: ADOBE ANALYTICS

13,000 employees. Brands include surgery to remove a blood clot from his
Topshop, Dorothy Perkins, and Burton. brain. He was 60.

○ Bitcoin topped ○ Credit Suisse picked

○“It has $19,857

on Nov. 30, reaching a new
record and pushing this
year’s surge to more than
170%. The cryptocurrency
António Horta-
Osório as its next
chairman. A native
of Portugal, Horta-Osório
recently announced his
departure as CEO of

to stop.” remains highly volatile.

After reaching its
previous high, in December
2017, it lost 70% over the
following year.
Lloyds Banking Group. He’ll
seek to repair the Swiss
bank’s reputation, which
has been tarnished by a
spying scandal.

Gabriel Sterling, a Republican election official in Georgia, denouncing President

Trump and the state’s two Republican U.S. senators for not condemning threats
of violence being made against election workers.
 ◼ BLOOMBERG OPINION December 7, 2020

Restoring U.S. credibility and leadership in international

Biden Must Build affairs will require its diplomats to be as fluent in hitherto
neglected issues of global import—such as climate change,
U.S. Diplomacy pandemic preparedness, and economic inequality—as in mat-
ters of traditional strategic importance.
Back Better Biden should work with Congress to devise policies to
attract a more diverse and digitally savvy diplomatic corps,
including making it easier for midcareer professionals from
In January, Joe Biden will take charge of an executive branch in the private sector to serve overseas and encouraging diplo-
woeful disrepair. Practically every important federal institution mats to spend time working outside of government. To appeal
has been scorched during four years of sustained assault by his to younger recruits, State’s system of promotion and career
predecessor—none more so than the State Department. advancement should be revamped to reward innovation and
Donald Trump has harmed U.S. diplomacy in word and performance, not personal connections and length of service.
deed. His secretaries of state, first Rex Tillerson and then Mike Biden’s campaign promises to “build back better” were
Pompeo, have damaged the department deeply. Their open directed to the economy, but he has an opportunity to
hostility toward career foreign affairs professionals has led to apply the credo to U.S. diplomacy. He shouldn’t waste it. <BW>
an exodus of talent, leaving important roles either unfilled or, For more commentary, go to bloomberg.com/opinion
worse, manned by unqualified political appointees.
As a result, morale in the department has plummeted, as
has its prestige. The Colombian ambassador to Washington ◼ AGENDA
was caught on tape lamenting that “the U.S. State Department,
which used to be important, is destroyed, it doesn’t exist.” He
might have been speaking for U.S. allies and enemies alike.
Trump has also accelerated a trend, already conspicuous
during the Obama administration, of conducting foreign policy
10 from the White House. His tendency to base foreign relations
on his personal ones has often left diplomats with the task of
squaring the president’s fondness for strongmen with the cir-
cle of U.S. interests.
All this is now Biden’s to fix. To lead the repair effort, he
plans to nominate former Deputy Secretary of State Antony
Blinken as head of the department. A career diplomat, Blinken
has an insider’s knowledge of what needs fixing and the cred-
ibility with fellow professionals to do the job. It will help that
Jake Sullivan and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Biden’s candidates
for national security adviser and ambassador to the United
Nations, have also held top positions at State.
▶ One Meeting for Many Crises
Those are promising choices, but the president-elect must EU leaders will gather in Brussels on Dec. 10-11 to
also conquer his own proclivity for personalizing foreign coordinate their efforts on Covid-19, climate change,
affairs. As a longtime member of Washington’s foreign pol- security, and external relations. And there’s always Brexit
icy establishment, he has more than a passing familiarity with left to resolve, as an accord remains nebulous.
many world leaders and often cites old friendships when asked
how he might deal with difficult diplomatic challenges. ▶ The European Central ▶ On Dec. 8, the ▶ The Milken Institute
Bank decides on National Federation of holds its virtual Future
The U.S. would be better served by returning foreign interest rates on Dec. 10. Independent Business of Health Summit on
relations to the realm of institutions rather than individuals. Economists predict the monthly report on U.S. Dec. 7-9. Participants will
ECB will expand and small-business optimism explore the converging
Under Trump, only one of 28 assistant secretary positions is extend its pandemic is expected to show that crises of public health,
filled by an active-duty career officer confirmed by the Senate. bond-buying program by companies are more economic insecurity, and
about €500 billion. upbeat about the future. social injustice.
Biden should rebalance the department’s leadership, so the
majority of Senate-confirmed positions are held by career
ILLUSTRATION BY JACKSON GIBBS

diplomats. He should reduce ambassadorships awarded to ▶ Goldman Sachs’s ▶ New York’s school ▶ Online pet-food
U.S. Financial Services system is set to resume retailer Chewy reports
loyalists and fundraisers. Shrinking the size of the National Conference on Dec. 8 in-person classes earnings on Dec. 8. With
Security Council staff would also help restore the role of the features JPMorgan CEO beginning on Dec. 7, dog and cat parents
Jamie Dimon, KKR co- with students in 3-K avoiding walk-in stores
State Department in carrying out foreign policy. President Scott Nuttal, and pre-K programs and animal adoptions
The experience of Biden’s team also gives it credibility and Citigroup CFO Mark among those being soaring, its business
Mason as speakers. allowed to return. has boomed.
to carry out much-needed reforms of the diplomatic corps.
“We share a client-focused philosophy with First Republic.
They understand what we need to grow.”
BLEND
Nima Ghamsari, Founder and CEO

(855) 886-4824 | firstrepublic.com | New York Stock Exchange symbol: FRC

MEMBER FDIC AND EQUAL HOUSING LENDER
 ◼ REMARKS
Amazon.com Inc. of stealing their sales during the

A Global latest coronavirus lockdown.

The pandemic has “put a big magnifying glass
on the competition issues that you all know already

Reckoning for existed,” U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told

a gathering of antitrust lawyers in November. “We
could emerge from this pandemic with markets that

Big Tech are much more concentrated and less competitive.”

In this new antitrust era, the old focus on usu-
rious pricing no longer applies, because several
of the biggest tech companies have established
trillion-dollar monopolies by charging consumers
● China, the EU, and the U.S. aim next to nothing. Tech giants are increasingly assum-
to rein in the power of Alibaba, ing powerful positions in banking, finance, adver-
tising, retail, and other markets that force smaller
Amazon, Google, and other giants businesses to rely on their platforms to reach cus-
tomers. Merchants both depend on and compete
● By Shelly Banjo with Amazon. Spotify and other apps appear in
Apple Inc.’s app store but also compete with its
music service. Google isn’t simply dominant in
The U.S. and China don’t agree on much these days. Germany search and advertising; it preserves its status as gate-
and France share a border and a currency but are frequently keeper to the internet by using exclusionary prac-
at odds. The U.K. and India like to march to their own drum. tices that crush competitors, the U.S. Department of
But there’s one issue on which all these countries see eye to Justice alleged in a lawsuit in October. And in China,
eye: Technology companies are too big, too powerful, and Ant funds only 2% of the microloans it originates on
12 too profitable. And that power is only likely to intensify, leav- its platform, according to the company’s prospec-
ing governments with no choice but to confront it head-on tus. The remaining 98% is underwritten by banking
by taking the companies to court, passing new competition partners that want to leverage Ant’s massive reach.
laws, and perhaps even breaking up the tech giants. “At some point these companies get so big that
China is the latest to implement an antitrust crackdown, even if you’re the Communist Party you start to think,
unveiling anti-monopoly rules last month that wiped $290 bil- ‘Who’s holding the reins here?’” says Sam Weinstein,
lion off the stock market valuation of China’s biggest com- an antitrust professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School
panies in two days. The draft rules followed the surprise of Law. The recent government moves are, he says,
suspension of a $37 billion stock offering by billionaire Jack “a reminder to these companies, ‘We’re holding the
Ma’s fintech powerhouse Ant Group Co., making clear that no reins. You may be very big and very powerful, but
company can evade the government’s crosshairs. The moves we’re going to remind you who’s boss.’”
in China coincide with accelerating efforts in the U.S. and For years, Europe alone confronted the power
Europe to rein in Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook, and Google. of footloose digital giants that chose to squat where
“The bigger get bigger and bigger but without being local rules and taxes suited them. Governments
better,” says Andreas Schwab, a German member of the were alarmed that European companies were fail-
European Parliament who championed a 2014 resolution to ing to match Silicon Valley’s innovations or to stop
break up Alphabet Inc.’s Google. “Growing economic power, Google and Facebook Inc. from vacuuming up per-
the growing influence on local markets all over the world, and sonal data and, with that, advertising revenue. Led by
a growing concern of competitors and consumers altogether Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s competition chief,
has made it happen now.” countries have sought to police the market and encourage
It’s no coincidence that the antitrust crusades have accel- fair play. Vestager sniffed out sweetheart tax deals she said
erated during the pandemic. A locked-down world has come unfairly benefited companies like Amazon and Apple and
to rely on tech companies more than ever, with many rack- now speaks of leveling the playing field so European com-
ing up gains at the expense of smaller competitors. Chinese panies can compete with Silicon Valley and Beijing in the
food delivery giant Meituan was forced to apologize after emerging areas of artificial intelligence, cloud computing,
a restaurant association accused it of abusing its domi- and 5G wireless technology.
nance during the outbreak by requiring merchants to sign In China the crackdown has been driven at least partly by
exclusive agreements and charging restaurants commis- fear that the homegrown tech industry is becoming too power-
sions as high as 26%. The French government postponed ful. The country has long championed Alibaba Group Holding
Black Friday to Dec. 4 to placate shopkeepers who accused Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., but their hoards of data on the
 December 7, 2020

nt. “There’s an increasing consensus that

omplished is likely not enough,” Bradford
imposed on Google have not significantly
dynamics or facilitated new entry.”
ooking for new tools. The EU hit Amazon
mplaint alleging that it uses independent
fit its own retail arm. New “gatekeeper”
d by yearend could head off bad behav-
ns by threatening fines, or breakups in
mpanies that don’t share customer data
as well as for operators of marketplaces
that favor their own services.
w breed of antitrust experts is looking
oncept that higher prices are the primary
ve harm. They say consideration should
, control over data, workers’ rights, and
on smaller companies, more than a fifth
ed in the U.S. since the start of the pan-
ans, in general, have grown increasingly
edia companies: More than 60% say the
e effect on the country, and almost half
ion for social media, according to a 2020
enter study.
ties of the incoming Biden administration
e continuing the Justice Department’s
oly abuse suit already under way against 13
le. It’s a reversal from a general embrace
tech giants, which rose from the ashes of
e dot-com crash and a major antitrust case
nst Microsoft Corp. 20 years ago.
David Cicilline (D-R.I.) is preparing leg-
landmark report he authored alleging
ust violations by Big Tech. His proposal
mpetition cops with new powers to safe-
umers but also “workers, entrepreneurs,
esses, open markets, a fair economy, and
according to the report.
ep ramping up its assault on tech compa-
i Jinping continues to consolidate power.
asy. The country will have to spur com-
naging it, says Andrew Polk, co-founder
a, a consultant in Beijing. “These tech
like every other company in China, are
e level, support state policy. And that’s
anywhere else in the world.”
ft rules are subject to change. But they’ll
act on the tech sector, says Scott Yu, an
Beijing-based Zhong Lun Law Firm. The
als that industry leaders seeking further
EU’s global influence. After visiting China in 2016, Vestager consolidation through acquisitions now face restrictions,
said meetings with Chinese officials provided her with a “first- as the government could force the companies to first divest
hand sense of the … urgency of China’s reform.” The govern- assets. “Chinese internet giants will no longer have that luxury
ment’s move against Ant shows it has more power to curb the to bypass the antitrust rules,” he says. <BW> �With Coco Liu,
dominance of tech companies than do Western democracies. Natalia Drozdiak, Aoife White, Colum Murphy, Gerrit de Vynck,
Indeed, few would argue that Europe’s antitrust efforts have David McLaughlin, and Zheping Huang
Small business is no small task.
So Progressive offers commercial auto and business
insurance that makes protecting yours no big deal.
Local Agent | ProgressiveCommercial.com
 Musk’s German 1
Charm Offensive
B
U
S
I
N
E
S
15

S
to attract investment. On Nov. 30, the Tesla chief
● The Tesla boss has won
executive officer swooped into the German capital
over many Germans, but labor for the third time in as many months to accept an
senses a growing threat award for his entrepreneurial achievements from
the publisher of the influential Bild tabloid.
But there’s one corner of the German economy
As Tesla Inc. builds its first European car factory, where the lovefest feels more like a standoff: the
in a patch of forest outside Berlin, Elon Musk has 2.3 million-member IG Metall labor union. The
been on a relentless charm offensive. He’s pledged group is on a collision course with the billionaire
to create thousands of jobs; he tweets in surprisingly that threatens to either undermine Musk’s ambi-
good German; and at a September event he donned tions or diminish the power of an organization that’s
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY 731

a heavy cord vest and wide-brimmed black felt hat long had an outsize role in the country’s auto indus-
like those traditionally worn by local craftspeople. try with its demands for better wages and shifts in
The message has been warmly received, with pol- strategy, backed up by the very real threat of strikes.
Edited by
iticians fast-tracking approvals for the factory and The conflict centers on Tesla’s refusal to sign James E. Ellis and
locals clamoring for jobs in a region that struggles the kind of collective wage agreements that are David Rocks
 ◼ BUSINESS Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

standard in Germany. After the company ignored its warehouse workers. Musk wants to run his plant
a letter from IG Metall seeking a dialogue, things like a Silicon Valley startup—luring workers with
started getting testy. At a protest in Berlin, hun- unregulated salaries, stock options, and perks such
dreds of workers decried Tesla’s poaching of a key as a “mega rave cave” party space. If he succeeds,
manager from Daimler AG. And a local union leader he might well threaten IG Metall’s ability to get
released a statement admonishing Musk not to view what it wants from other automakers, who could
wage accords as “the work of the devil,” but rather point to lower costs at Tesla as they negotiate tough
as an essential component of peaceful labor rela- cutbacks to pay for investments in electric mobility.
tions. “It’s not good for an automobile manufac- Already, Musk has helped set a more con-
turer to be in permanent conflict with IG Metall,” frontational tone for German executives who’ve
says Christian Bäumler, deputy leader of a labor- long felt restrained by unions. VW CEO Herbert
affiliated faction of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party. Diess, a big fan of the Tesla boss, has repeatedly
“The union has organizational power, it has money, clashed with IG Metall and bemoans what he
it has experience. It can endure a long fight.” calls the “old, encrusted” structure of the world’s
Musk, too, has plenty of power, experience, and best-selling carmaker. Suppliers Continental AG
especially money—in November he surpassed Bill and Schaeffler AG have vowed to cut thousands
Gates as the world’s second-richest person—and he of jobs and close or sell factories despite heavy
rarely backs away from a fight. With his factory rap-
idly rising from the sandy plot adjacent to Berlin’s
beltway Autobahn, he’s managed to neutralize the
bureaucratic resistance that can slow big projects
in Germany, courting top officials such as Economy
Minister Peter Altmaier, who promised whatever
is needed to get the plant operating by mid-2021.
Musk’s pressure to go electric has started a “success-
16 ful revolution” in the car industry, Altmaier said at
a conference on Nov. 24. “Without him, we would
have never ever achieved this.”
The Tesla factory, Germany’s first new auto
plant in two decades, promises to create as many
as 40,000 jobs in eastern Germany, a region that lost
most of its heavy industry during World War II and
atrophied during the country’s decades of separa-
tion. It’s being built as domestic manufacturers and
suppliers lay off tens of thousands of employees in
anticipation of the shift to battery-powered vehicles, criticism from unions. And Daimler CEO Ola ▲ An IG Metall
protest in Berlin over
which require fewer parts assembled by fewer work- Kallenius has drawn labor’s ire by culling some Tesla’s poaching of a
ers. The site is central to Tesla’s European growth unlimited employment contracts in favor of more Daimler executive

plans and sends a signal to BMW, Daimler, and flexible arrangements.

Volkswagen that the U.S. upstart they long belittled Despite the threat Musk’s company poses to
or ignored has arrived on their doorstep. Germany’s big automakers, his foray into the birth- LIESA JOHANNSSEN-KOPPITZ/BLOOMBERG. DATA: EUROMONITOR INTERNATIONAL

Musk is no friend of organized labor. When an place of the combustion engine may ultimately
employee at Tesla’s plant in California in 2017 sought prove a blessing for an industry that can be slow
assistance from the United Auto Workers to unionize to change, says Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, director of
the site, Musk fired off an email suggesting the man automotive research at the University of Duisburg-
was seeking to undermine the company and later Essen. For unions, by contrast, there’s little upside
hinted that organizing the factory would mean no as Musk’s arrival represents growing peril for a
more stock options. A judge last year reprimanded model that may have run its course. “Our corpo-
Tesla for repeatedly violating the National Labor rate culture tends to keep things the way they’ve
Relations Act, a ruling the company has appealed, always been,” Dudenhöffer says. “Musk is some-
saying it was the result of a “smear campaign” by the one who can break that open.” �Stefan Nicola and
union and unsupported by the facts. Christoph Rauwald
For IG Metall, the concern is that Tesla will
follow in the footsteps of Amazon.com Inc., which THE BOTTOM LINE A Tesla factory is being built even as German
manufacturers cut thousands of jobs to adapt to making electric
has expanded in Germany without wage deals for vehicles, which require fewer parts assembled by fewer workers.
◼ BUSINESS Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

Where ‘Made in China’

Is Beautiful ● After decades of lagging behind foreign rivals,
domestic brands are increasingly competitive

In 2008 at least six babies died and 300,000 fell ill Local names account for seven of the top 10
after drinking made-in-China infant formula tainted cosmetics brands, up from just three in 2017,
with toxic chemicals. In response, many Chinese according to market researcher Daxue Consulting.
parents embraced foreign brands, catapulting the L’Oréal SA’s Maybelline makeup line has seen
likes of Danone SA’s Aptamil and Nestlé SA’s Illuma its share in China plunge, to 9.1% last year from
to the top of the market. Yet for the past two years, more than 20% in 2010, according to Euromonitor
the leading formula brand in China has been made International. In the skin care and lotion category,
by China Feihe Ltd., a Beijing company that empha- the share of L’Oréal Paris dropped, to 4.5% last
sizes its local roots rather than seeking to obscure year from 5.6% in 2014, putting it neck and neck
them. “More suitable for Chinese babies,” the com- with local brand Pechoin. The growing strength of
pany’s advertising boasts. Chinese cosmetics makers can be traced to their
In categories ranging from baby food and bottled smart online strategy, according to Derek Deng,
water to sportswear and skin cream, Chinese brands a partner in Shanghai with Bain & Co. “Insurgent
are putting pressure on global rivals that depend on Chinese brands are more likely to be digital from
the country for much of their growth. While increas- Day One,” he says, while multinationals tend to
ing nationalism has boosted the momentum of favor physical stores. 17
domestic products for the past couple of years, the Perfect Diary, launched in 2017, now stands
Covid-19 pandemic is hastening the shift. With prices just behind several European-owned brands, with
typically lower than foreign brands’, domestic prod- 4% of the crowded market for so-called color cos-
ucts have increasing appeal in times of constrained metics such as lipstick and mascara, Euromonitor
household budgets, and the growth of online sales estimates. Its advertising stresses that its prod-
has weakened the multinationals’ advantages in ucts come from the same manufacturers as Dior,
distribution and marketing. “Chinese shoppers are Lancôme, and Armani but sell for less than
showing stronger confidence in local brands,” says one-third the price. It’s teamed with Mondelez
Helen Wong of Qiming Venture Partners, which has International’s Oreos for a skin foundation cream
backed local startups such as lingerie maker Neiwai (no, it doesn’t contain ground-up cookies; the box ▼ Top-selling brands in
China by percentage-
and cafe chain Coffee Box. “The coronavirus is accel- looks like an Oreo). On Singles Day, the Nov. 11 point change in market
erating the trend as people stay home, watch lives- shopping palooza organized by Alibaba Group share, 2010 to 2019

treaming, and shop.” Holding Ltd., Perfect Diary’s online store included ◼ Domestic brand

Investors have piled into domestic companies livestreams of influencers pitching products such
that are overtaking multinational rivals, doubling as animal-themed eye shadow (co-branded with the Skin care

the combined value of China’s 500 top brands in Discovery Channel) featuring colors and packaging ① L’Oréal Paris -1.2

the past four years to about $3.8 trillion, according inspired by rabbits, deer, and fish. “We’ve proven ② Pechoin

to marketing consultancy World Brand Lab. Clothing we can stand out in a highly competitive market,” ③ Lancôme

and shoe manufacturer Anta Sports Products, which says David Huang, chief executive officer of Yatsen.
in 2018 passed Nike to become China’s No. 2 sports Foreign brands aren’t finished in China, of Baby formula

apparel brand behind Adidas, is up more than 50% course. They dominate categories such as high-end ① Feihe 8.3

this year even as the benchmark Hang Seng index handbags and luxury cars. Estée Lauder Cos. sold ② Aptamil

has fallen 6%. Shares of China’s biggest bottled more than 2 billion yuan ($300 million) of products ③ Illuma

water brand, Nongfu Spring, have more than dou- on Singles Day with a livestreaming campaign, two-
bled since its September Hong Kong trading debut. for-one discounts, and installment payment plans. Sports apparel

Yatsen Holding, owner of cosmetics house Perfect And KFC—still the biggest fast-food chain in China—is ① Adidas 12.9

Diary, a growing threat to the likes of L’Oréal and supplementing its fried chicken with products such ② Anta

Estée Lauder, has jumped 75% since its U.S. initial as fast-cooking stinky sour snail noodles to cater ③ Nike

public offering in November. to diners stuck at home in the pandemic. “The

 ◼ BUSINESS

attitude of big international brands is changing

significantly,” says Wu Wenmi, founder of Wenzihui
MCN, an agency in Hangzhou that partners with
Alibaba. “They are more humble now and willing
to hear our opinions of how to play the game.”
One way Chinese companies are playing the
game is with marketing that resonates for locals.
While foreigners’ ads stress the nutritional value of
their infant formula, Feihe nurtures relationships
with consumers via loyalty programs, new-parent
support groups, and collections of bedtime sto-
ries. And Chinese brands are increasingly tailor-
ing their wares to domestic tastes. China Mengniu
Dairy Co., for instance, is stepping up sales of inno-
vations such as pineapple-flavored cheese and
squid-infused snacks in addition to its lineup of
basic milk and fruit yogurts. “Foreign brands were
so innovative three decades ago when they first
came to China,” Mengniu CEO Lu Minfang said at a
November media briefing. “But now they’re devel- we scale it up,” says Thorsten Braun, who leads ▲ A refrigerated
shipping container
oping slower than local brands.” �Bruce Einhorn Lufthansa’s part in the global effort. in Lufthansa’s Cargo
and Daniela Wei Airlines will be the workhorses of the attempt to Cool Center at
Frankfurt Airport
end the pandemic, hauling billions of vials to every
THE BOTTOM LINE Chinese brands account for seven of the
country’s top 10 cosmetics lines, up from three in 2017, while the
corner of the globe. It’s an unprecedented task,
share of L’Oréal’s Maybelline makeup has plunged by half since 2010. made more difficult by the carriers’ diminished state
18 after culling jobs, routes, and aircraft to survive a cri-
sis that’s reduced air traffic globally by an estimated
61% this year. “This will be the largest and most
complex logistical exercise ever,” says Alexandre de
Finding Flights to Juniac, chief executive officer of the International

VACCINE: ALEX KRAUS/BLOOMBERG. GOLDSMITH: COURTESY COMPASS PATHWAYS. *FOR A SIX-MONTH SHELF LIFE. DATA: COMPANY STATEMENTS
Air Transport Association, the industry’s chief lobby.
Deliver Vaccines “The world is counting on us.”
IATA estimates that the equivalent of 8,000 loads ▼ Vaccine storage
temperature*
in a 110-ton-capacity Boeing 747 freighter will be
● The pandemic has vastly reduced airlines’ needed for the airlift, which will take two years AstraZeneca
capacity to haul freight to supply some 14 billion doses, or almost two for 2C to 8C 0C
every man, woman, and child on Earth. It’s a tall
order, given about one-third of the global passenger
The coronavirus has left Deutsche Lufthansa AG’s fleet is still in storage, based on data from travel
passenger fleet flying at just 25% capacity. But analytics provider Cirium. Moderna
in a set of cooled warehouses on the fringes of One of the biggest challenges will be finding -20C

Frankfurt’s airport, a 20-member task force is hard enough planes. There are some 2,000 dedicated
at work figuring out how the carrier can manage freighters in use, carrying about half of all goods
the coming boom in a different part of its business: moved by air. The remainder of the freight typically
airlifting millions of doses of the vaccines meant to goes in the bellies of the world’s 22,000 passenger
end the global pandemic. jetliners. Air cargo volume has tumbled this year,
Lufthansa, one of the world’s biggest cargo not for lack of demand, but because so many pas-
carriers, began planning in April in anticipation of senger planes are sitting idle. Airlines have drafted
the shots that AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer, and about 2,500 passenger planes into cargo-only roles,
others are developing in record time. Now that the but distributing the vaccine would be easier if fleets Pfizer
drugmakers are starting to apply for authorization, were flying their usual schedules. -70C

Lufthansa’s task force is rushing to devise ways to At the start, space will be limited because of
fit more of the crucial payload onto the airline’s 15 competing demand from merchants seeking to
Boeing 777 and MD-11 freighters, along with hold deliver goods bought online during the Christmas
space in its passenger jets. “The question is how season. Then the sheer volume of vials from
 BUSINESS

BW Talks George Goldsmith

drugmakers will further clog the system. Pfizer Inc.
plans to ship 1.3 billion doses of its vaccine by the Compass Pathways developed a synthetic
end of 2021. Moderna Inc. is ramping up to a pro- form of psilocybin, the psychoactive
duction level of 500 million injections per year.
AstraZeneca Plc has the capacity to make 2 billion ingredient found in “magic mushrooms,” for
doses. “What we have to do is very quickly help the use in treating depression. CEO Goldsmith
world get up on its feet,” says Dennis Lister, vice says the key is using the hallucinogenic as
president for cargo at Emirates, the largest long-
distance airline. “Part of that is making sure we get part of a broader therapy. —Carol Massar
vaccines on planes to people that need it so we get
people flying again.” ○ Goldsmith and his physician wife were drawn to research on
The vaccine developed by Pfizer and hallucinogenic mushrooms while seeking a treatment for their son’s
BioNTech SE must be transported at –70C (–94F), mental health issues. ○ The Food and Drug Administration designated
colder than winter in Antarctica. The choreogra- their work a “breakthrough therapy” in 2018 ○ It’s now in Phase II trials
phy will be delicate, because virtually no aircraft
are capable of keeping items so cold on their own.
Carriers will instead rely on Pfizer’s special thermal Millions suffer from depression. Does this process. Afterwards,
that make this a good market from a
shipping containers, which can be used as tempo- business sense? many patients experience
rary storage units for as long as 15 days if refilled an immediate reduction in
with dry ice. There’s no room for error: Once There’s a tremendous depression that actually
thawed, the vials can’t be refrozen. amount of suffering. And lasts for quite a while.
United Airlines Holdings Inc. has already begun I think we’ve been pretty
flights to position Pfizer’s vaccine in areas where it good at developing tools
More research is being conducted?
will be needed if it receives regulatory approval, to ameliorate 70% of that.
says a person familiar with the matter. Pfizer and But [helping] the other We’re operating now in 10
the airline declined to comment on the flights. 30% is quite difficult. So we countries doing clinical 19
Delta Air Lines Inc., American Airlines Group have the opportunity to do research at 21 sites. We’re
Inc., and other carriers say they’re prepared to something unique here. looking at how do we do
handle shipments of supercold vaccines. Delta nor- the real, deep research to
mally considers dry ice to be a “dangerous good” Is this potentially a billion-dollar drug? generate the information
that can’t account for more than 50% of hold space, and insight we need to go to
but it’s increasing the amount it will allow to be Well, I think it has the Phase III trials.
used with vaccines carried on its planes. potential to be a therapy. It’s
“If all vaccine producers ship within a narrow really important that it’s not
Despite getting the FDA designation,
time frame, the situation would require all cargo just a drug. It’s a drug that’s you’ve got to do more rigorous testing,
carriers to be involved,” says Vittal Shetty, who given in combination with especially with some concerns about
hallucinogenics?
helps oversee cargo operations at American. psychological support, and
United Parcel Service Inc. has built facilities in that’s the critical bit. Absolutely, because
Louisville and in the Netherlands with a total of obviously there’s a history
600 deep freezers that can each hold 48,000 vials here. So the first port of call
How does your therapy work?
of vaccine at temperatures as low as –80C. FedEx for us was to speak with
Corp. has added freezers and refrigerated trucks We provide a very high dose regulators and payers, and
to its already extensive cold-chain network, and of psilocybin in a carefully they saw this is promising.
Richard Smith, who’s heading its vaccine effort, has controlled setting under There’s almost a third
pledged to free as much air and ground capacity as supervision by specially of [depression] patients
needed. “We’re just waiting until they tell us they trained therapists—so this who aren’t helped by
have a vaccine ready, and we will be ready to go out isn’t anything to do at home. [conventional] medicines.
there and deliver it to every ZIP code in the U.S.,” Patients listen to a special I think there’s a huge
he says. “We’ll be ready to deliver it around the soundtrack, and they’re opportunity to develop a
world as well.” —Christopher Jasper and William really supported through new model of care for them.
Wilkes, with Layan Odeh, Mary Schlangenstein, and
Thomas Black
○ Interviews are edited for clarity and length. Listen to Bloomberg Businessweek With
THE BOTTOM LINE It would take the equivalent of 8,000 loads in Carol Massar, weekdays from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET on Bloomberg Radio.
a Boeing 747 freighter to carry all the vaccines needed to inoculate
the global population, making airlines key to ending Covid-19.
 Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

T Did Airbnb Win

E The Pandemic?
C ● The company’s ability to adapt
to Covid puts it ahead of rivals
The company fired 1,800 workers, about a quar-
ter of its total; canceled marketing efforts; and cur-
tailed plans to expand into new lines of business.

H and may have saved its IPO But its relative resilience in an historically bad year
for the travel industry is also a result of a flexible
business model that allowed the company to meet
Jeff Iloulian braced for his business to crash when customers in the places they wanted to go.

N the Covid-19 pandemic set in this spring. Iloulian Airbnb filed to go public on Nov. 16 and is seek-
runs HostGPO, a company that helps owners who ing to raise $2.6 billion in an offering that could
rent property through Airbnb and similar platforms value the company at almost $35 billion. That’s
negotiate discounts on household products and fur- up from a 2017 funding deal that valued Airbnb

O nishings. His clients suddenly had so few guests in

lucrative urban markets that some hired movers
to haul furniture from downtown apartments to
nearby warehouses.
at $31 billion—and a significant recovery from the
$18 billion valuation it drew in April when it raised
debt to help ride out the pandemic.
Investors will be evaluating a business that looks

L
20
This would have been a disaster for HostGPO, much different than it did a year ago. Gross book-
except that those same property managers were ings in Airbnb’s top 20 cities fell by half in September
doing big business in rural markets, and they compared with the year before, while bookings out-
began hunting for real estate in places not known side those major markets was down 19%, the com-

O as vacation hotbeds: Lake Arrowhead in addition

to Lake Tahoe, eastern Pennsylvania as well as the
Hamptons. “People are buying expensive furni-
ture in the Poconos right now,” says Iloulian. “The
pany said in its S-1 filing. International stays declined

G
demand moved around, it didn’t vanish.”
The shifting geography of Iloulian’s business
helped save his year. It also saved Airbnb, the
short-term rental platform that most of his cli-

Y ents rely on for many of their customers. Heading

into 2020, Airbnb was poised for one of the most
anticipated initial public offerings of the year—and
a validation for one of the buzziest tech startups
of the last decade. The coronavirus changed that.
While the pandemic has been terrible for Airbnb
in many respects, the company has done well com-
pared with airlines, hotel brands, cruise lines, and
most other parts of the global travel industry. Its
revenue fell 18% during the third quarter com-
pared with 2019. That was far better than Marriott
International Inc., which reported a 57% drop in
sales, and online travel agency Expedia Group Inc.,
whose revenue declined 58%.
In fact, the third quarter was Airbnb’s most
Edited by
successful to date by some financial measures. To
Joshua Brustein some extent that’s a result of drastic spending cuts.
 ◼ TECHNOLOGY Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

by roughly two-thirds, and travelers taking lodgings Airbnb Nights and Experiences Booked
less than 50 miles from their homes constituted the By travel distance, in miles By trip length
fastest-growing part of the business. Fewer than 50 50 to 500 1 to 27 nights 28 nights or more
Airbnb has never fit into existing categories. More than 500
Silicon Valley claims it as a tech startup, one of the
shining stars of a sector once referred to as the shar-
ing economy. Hotel chains see it as a threat while 24m

dismissing it as an online travel agency, or OTA, akin

to Expedia Group Inc. or Booking Holdings Inc.,
which connect vacationers on one side of the plat-
form with lodging owners on the other. While that 12

comparison is apt in some ways, Airbnb exists in

its current form because it has created a whole new
travel category, transforming the activity of crashing
in other people’s homes into a millennial-friendly 0

alternative to hotels that either seemed too boring 10/2019 9/2020 10/2019 9/2020
or were too expensive. For customers, it’s an alter-
PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMON CASAREZ FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK. DATA: AIRBNB

DATA: AIRBNB
native to Marriott, not Priceline.com.
The company is outshining OTAs and hotel com- resembles right now may be budget hotels. Choice
panies during the pandemic, both of which it listed Hotels International Inc., which franchises brands
as competitors in its IPO filing. Unlike other OTAs, such as Comfort Inn and Econo Lodge, has also ben-
Airbnb doesn’t book flights, and it doesn’t need busi- efited as families canceled flights and took road trips
ness travel or big conventions as much as traditional instead. Many motels let guests enter rooms from
hotels do. All this left it less exposed to the specific the parking lot, bypassing common areas. Choice’s
shape of pandemic-era weakness in travel. When revenue fell 31% for the first nine months of the
Covid-19 turned hotel (and apartment building) lob- year, right in line with Airbnb over the same period. 21
bies and elevators into worrisome zones of potential The company also shares one of the primary
infection, the company played up its ability to offer problems cheap hotels face: crime. Roadside motels
isolated destinations and prodded hosts to offer dis- have persistent issues with drug dealing and pros-
counts to customers booking longer-term stays. titution; Airbnb’s “party house” problem has led to
The part of the travel industry Airbnb most lawsuits blaming it for its role in shootings, other
◀ Iloulian says that “The
crimes, and the spread of Covid-19. The company demand moved around,
declined to comment but has recently highlighted it didn’t vanish”

measures it’s taking to make its platform safer.

Airbnb’s strength may be that it can morph into
a kind of artisanal Econo Lodge, offering value lodg-
ing for car vacations when that’s where the demand
is. When it comes time to return to cities, it may find
the competitive landscape changed. Many markets
it relied on pre-pandemic, including Amsterdam,
Barcelona, and New York, have sought to increase
regulation on short-term rentals, and property own-
ers may convert some units to permanent housing.
“I’m typically super-optimistic about Airbnb
because they’re so agile,” says Scott Shatford, chief
executive officer of AirDNA, a company that col-
lects data on the short-term rental market. “But
the urban recovery isn’t going to be the sling-
shot, V-shaped recovery that it was in rural mar-
kets. There’s going to be so much competition from
hotels, and they’re going to have to battle for guests
on rates.” �Patrick Clark

THE BOTTOM LINE Airbnb’s business has shrunk during the

pandemic, but thanks to a flexible business model it’s in far better
shape than many competitors.
  TECHNOLOGY Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

Amazon’s European Adventure

Could Be Different From Google’s
○ There are signs that the company and the European Union are working to avoid an antitrust showdown

Amazon faced the prospect of an escalating con- Jay Modrall, a Brussels-based lawyer for Norton
flict with the European Union in November when Rose Fulbright, because the EU is considering
Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, proposals that could set clear guidelines for how
laid out evidence that the company may have large tech companies operate. The new rules, set
unfairly used sales data from smaller retailers on its to be published in December, could weaken the
platform. The specter of Amazon using such data desire to pursue enforcement actions; the EU
to identify emerging trends has been a major con- has closed a number of antitrust probes based on
cern for regulators worldwide, and interest from pledges to change behavior with no fines, includ-
Vestager—perhaps the world’s most feared anti- ing two this year.
trust enforcer—was an ominous sign. The EU also The shadow of the fight with Google also hangs
recently started a second probe into how the com- over any future EU enforcement action against
pany picks products for a highlighted “buy box.” U.S. tech companies. For the EU, the Google probe
But while Vestager laid the groundwork for served as a test of strength, showing the regulator ○ Vestager

what could be a repeat of the bruising fight the EU could finalize a complex case under intense pres-
22 has waged against Alphabet Inc.’s Google, result- sure. Vestager’s predecessor, Joaquín Almunia,
ing in fines of about $9 billion, she has also struck was forced to pull back on his planned settlement
a surprisingly conciliatory note, hinting that
Amazon.com Inc. might not have to head down
the same track.
The difference may be Amazon’s willingness to
address enforcers’ concerns before the legal pro-
cess goes too far. Amazon settled a 2017 EU probe
into e-books, says Vestager, and has worked with
other regulators, such as Germany’s Federal Cartel
Office. “Amazon has been very forthcoming to solve
the issues at stake” in other cases, Vestager told
reporters on Nov. 10. While Google did try to set-
tle three investigations the EU waged over the past
decade, its offers either came too late to be taken
seriously or didn’t go far enough to soothe angry
rivals and their political supporters.
Both Amazon and Vestager’s office declined to
comment. Amazon said in November that it dis-
agrees with the antitrust charges, and that it sup-
ports small businesses while facing significant with Google after publishers and politicians said  An Amazon
sorting facility in
competition from them. it didn’t go far enough. Schoenefeld, Germany
Amazon may have scored some points with Vestager pursued three separate actions against
Vestager by remaining “open throughout to making Google and ended up imposing record fines on
changes in its business practices, rather than start- the company related to its advertising contracts,
ing out by saying its conduct is unassailable and shopping, and Android. Still, critics slam the EU
it has nothing to concede,” says William Kovacic, for taking too long and not imposing behavioral
a law professor at George Washington University changes on Google that would make it easier for
and a former Federal Trade Commission chairman. smaller companies to compete. EU officials say
Timing might be on Amazon’s side, says their job was merely to stop the bad behavior—and
 ◼ TECHNOLOGY Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

not necessarily to give small companies a boost. Salesforce will inherit the rivalry, potentially compli-
Vestager has said she wishes she’d been bolder. cating its own turbulent relationship with Microsoft.
But her campaign against Google has changed the Both Salesforce and Slack have tried to get regu-
atmosphere around antitrust enforcement enough lators to scrutinize Microsoft in recent years, with
to open up other avenues to force change. She no Salesforce unsuccessfully urging European nations
longer needs to score a win against Silicon Valley. to block Microsoft’s 2016 acquisition of LinkedIn,
Amazon also isn’t facing one key factor that the professional networking service. Microsoft
kept the pressure on Google. While dozens of considered buying Slack before deciding in 2017 to
companies filed complaints against the search build Teams instead. In July, Slack asked European
giant, Amazon sellers—the purported victims of Union antitrust regulators to investigate Microsoft,
its anticompetitive behavior—have been relatively claiming it unfairly foists Teams software on mil-
quiet. Agustin Reyna, legal director of consumer lions of users by distributing it for free with its
advocacy group BEUC, says he would support an Office cloud product suite.
Amazon offer to make sure consumers get the best Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 already competes with
choice of sellers and the lowest prices. One thing Salesforce in the market for software that salespeo-
he says wouldn’t be good either for sellers or cus- ple use to manage their deal pipelines. The two
tomers: “Endless litigation.” �Aoife White also vie for clients trying to improve productivity
with Microsoft’s Office 365 and Salesforce’s Quip,
THE BOTTOM LINE Amazon appears to be taking a cooperative
approach with European antitrust enforcers, who have their own
an acquired product that is a market laggard. But
reasons to play nice. Microsoft may see Slack as a bigger threat than the
company that purchased it, says Gregg Johnson, a
former Salesforce executive. “Slack’s use case hits
at the heart of Microsoft’s information worker’s
productivity suite,” he says. “That’s like the jewels
Salesforce Aims in the crown of Microsoft.” ▼ Slack revenue
Salesforce’s largest deal before this, buying
At Microsoft Tableau for about $15 billion last year, was an $800m
23

attempt to go toe-to-toe with Microsoft in analytics

AMAZON: FLORIAN GAERTNER/PHOTOTHEK/GETTY IMAGES. VESTAGER: THOMAS TRUTSCHEL/PHOTOTHEK/GETTY IMAGES; DATA: COMPILED BY BLOOMBERG

software and business intelligence. In effect, the

● Marc Benioff buys Slack to challenge the company’s strategy has been to replicate the busi-
world’s largest software company ness lines of its larger foe. So far, it seems to be work- 400

ing. Salesforce projected that its revenue could reach

as much as $25.6 billion in the next fiscal year, almost
By spending $27.7 billion to buy Slack Technologies double the company’s performance in the fiscal year
Inc., Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s co-founder and that ended about two years ago. 0

chief executive officer, is making his most aggres- But Benioff still seemed far off from his long- FY ’17 FY ’21
sive move yet to take on Microsoft. running goal for Salesforce to play a big role in
ESTIMATE

Benioff sees the deal as a chance for Salesforce, a office communications. The company introduced a
maker of cloud-based apps for managing customer Slack-like tool called Chatter at its annual user con-
relationships, to elevate itself to the very top of the ference in 2009, the same year Slack was founded.
software industry. Marketers and account represen- Salesforce included Chatter with its other products
tatives already log on to Salesforce’s programs every and even bought a 2011 Super Bowl ad featuring
day, but buying Slack, an existing partner with less a cartoon version of recording artist Will.i.am to
than $1 billion in annual revenue, gets it onto the promote it, but it didn’t spark much conversation.
desktops and smartphones of a broad new swath Slack gives Salesforce another chance, and it’s
of corporate employees. “We’re going to help them starting from a position of strength. The two com-
to just redefine the entire industry,” Benioff said of panies said their vision is to “create the operating
Slack during a conference call with analysts. “When system for the new way to work.” It was hard to
the moment and the opportunity arises, you have miss how much that sounded like a veiled reference
to look and ask yourself, are you strong? Can you to Microsoft, maker of the most popular operat-
do something like this? Or are you weak? Or is it a ing system for personal computers. �Nico Grant,
moment where you just don’t have the swagger?” with Dina Bass
Microsoft Corp.’s Teams product, which hosts
THE BOTTOM LINE Salesforce has been cultivating a rivalry with
videoconferences, offers a workplace chatroom, and Microsoft for years, and its purchase of Slack is a major escalation
provides automation tools, is a top rival to Slack. that will expand its reach to corporate employees.
from equities margin?
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on-demand education, futures specialists ready to talk day and night, and an intuitive trading platform.
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 Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

3
of Vail Resorts Inc. “There’s a lot of pent-up
demand for leisure travel.”

The This type of thinking has been dominating Wall

Street in recent weeks. The economy isn’t really
back, but the market is ready to assume it will
be. And promising vaccine developments have
F
B Team’s investors betting on the companies they think will
benefit the most from a return to normal. Shares
of Vail Resorts—a longtime holding of the Baron
fund—rose almost 19% in November, compared
I
Time with about 11% for the S&P 500. Before November,
the stock had been lagging the S&P in 2020.
Investment pros are calling this a long-awaited
rotation: away from the technology-driven
N
A
mega-companies, such as Amazon.com,
Facebook, and Alphabet, that have been the
undisputed stars of this bull market and toward
the B team of … well, almost everything else.
Besides cyclical sectors of the market that rise
Investors shift to stocks that and fall with the economy, such as travel, leisure,
depend on economic recovery energy, financial, and industrial companies, the
r tation has also meant better performance from
ro
smaller companies and non-U.S. stocks.
The Covid-19 pandemic has done Value stocks—those that typically
tremendous damage to the U.S. trade at low prices relative to their
economy—especially the parts earnings—are particularly hot. The 25
that can thrive only when people Russell 1000 Value Index just fin-
are willing to leave their homes and ished its best month ever with a
spend some money. But the way 13% gain. Its counterpart index of
Michael Baron sees things, “it high-priced growth stocks gained
can’t flatten Vail Mountain.” The 10%. Meanwhile, the Russell 2000
famous ski destination “is still Index of small-cap companies rallied
there, and people are itching to go 18% in November. Exchange-traded
away,” says the co-manager of funds that invest in financial
the Baron Partners companies saw their
F u n d , wh i c h biggest
gg month of
owns shares infll ows sincce
ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Edite
ed by
egnier
Pat Re
 ◼ FINANCE Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

2016, while those tracking industrials received doesn’t come up with additional economic stimulus
the most since January 2018, and energy ETFs took and aid for laid-off workers.
in the most new cash since March as oil rebounded So how long might this shift actually last?
to a more than eight-month high on Nov. 25. “Everyone has been trying to time the growth-to-
At its heart, the rotation is based on the idea that value trade for years now,” says Dave Wagner, port-
there’s a lot of money in the economy waiting to be folio manager and analyst at Aptus Capital Advisors.
spent on things besides video streaming and online This time, he thinks the turnaround brought about
shopping. The U.S. personal savings rate was 7.2% at by a vaccine could be enough to make a rotation
the end of 2019. By April it had surged to 33.7%, and stick. “Unlike the past few times we’ve seen, there’s
it was still 13.6% in October—almost double where it a better backdrop for value,” he says. “You have a
started the year. Deposits at U.S. commercial banks longer runway that can continue to drive value for-
swelled to almost $16 trillion in November, up from ward in the future, more so than growth.”
$13.2 trillion at the end of last year. If consumers Rob Arnott, the founder of investment adviser
revert to their pre-pandemic ways, that could set Research Affiliates, has for years been a steadfast
off what Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist for advocate for stocks with low valuations and a skep-
the Leuthold Group, has called “a growth bomb,” tic of the growth-stock boom. “I’ve been called a
as companies gear up to replace lean inventories. perma-bear,” he says. “But I love stocks when
Fund managers with a value bias say there are they’re cheap.” Until pretty recently, that’s been
still opportunities to take advantage of the change in a tough stance to hold: Over the past decade, the
investors’ tastes. Chris Davis of Davis Funds points Russell index of value stocks has lagged growth
to the banks Wells Fargo & Co. and Capital One stocks by an annualized 6.7 percentage points. But
Financial Corp., whose prices were hammered when Arnott says when value is in style, it can dominate ▼ Change since Oct. 1
in Russell 1000 indexes
the lockdowns began in March and still haven’t fully for a long time. After the tech bubble burst 20 years
Value
recovered. Davis thinks investors have overlooked ago, the Russell 1000 Value Index did better than
Growth
how banking regulations enacted after the global the Russell 1000 Growth Index from March 2000
26 financial crisis have made these lenders better able until August 2006. “The original tech bubble in
to handle recessions. “When you look at their valu- 2000—how many of the 10 largest market-cap tech 15%

ations, the amount of cash they produce, the capital stocks beat the market over the next 10 years?” he
ratios that they have, the reserves they’ve been able asks. “Zero. Not one.”
to put up—they really have this characteristic of resil- One big difference from 2000: Growth and tech
ience and durability and yet are priced at this sort of stocks aren’t exactly on the ropes—they just haven’t

YUNUS: J. COUNTESS/GETTY IMAGES. ACCRA: PHOTOGRAPH BY NICHOLAS SENU ADATSI FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK. DATA: BLOOMBERG
shockingly low level,” he says. been the fastest risers in recent weeks. Still, Arnott
The star money managers of the growth-stock says that, much as in 2000, investors may finally 0

world, who rode the outperformance of tech to be starting to see growth stocks as overpriced and
dazzling returns, have also taken notice of the value stocks as the better deal. “I do think we’re -5

shifting mood. Cathie Wood, whose firm, ARK going to see somewhere between impressive and 10/1/20 12/1/20
Investment Management, runs three of the top 10 stupendous outperformance for value over the
best-performing ETFs this year, said in a recent next three to five years,” he says.
webinar that an economic recovery “may bene- The technology bulls remain unflustered. Vance
fit many value sectors in the short term.” But she Howard of Howard Capital Management, which has
argues that even without a pandemic, many tradi- bet big on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index, says
tional industries are still vulnerable to being dis- tech stocks are still doing well enough in compari-
placed by new technology. “The value world will son to value to suggest that market sentiment hasn’t
be a little bit of a minefield,” she said. switched yet. He thinks some of the hype around
Wall Street has heard the rotation song before. the rotation is a result of value fund managers who
What looked for a moment like some durable rota- missed out on most of this year’s rally and need a
tions from growth to value in recent years ended up story to tell clients. “A lot of managers want to start
fizzling out. And rotations don’t typically occur in preaching their book because they’ve got to make up
a perfectly orderly way—on some days the changes a reason why they’re down,” he says. But for now, at
in market leadership make it appear that investors least, investors who’ve taken the road less traveled
are once again more worried about the virus than have some good numbers to brag about. �Michael
they are optimistic about vaccines. There’s still a P. Regan, Vildana Hajric, and Claire Ballentine
difficult winter and a U.S. presidential transition
THE BOTTOM LINE With a vaccine on the horizon, investors are
ahead, and the economy could sustain more dam- betting there’s a lot of pent-up demand that will start to flow to
age than investors are counting on if Washington companies beyond the usual tech winners.
 FINANCE Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

Covid ○ The world’s poorest borrowers are

Microcredit struggling to keep up with the loans that

fund their livelihoods

Peter Manu was a microlending success story. For tend to be for-profit firms, which often borrow from
a dozen years, by borrowing a few hundred dollars bigger institutions to make loans. “Covid-19 has
at a time, he’d been able to buy children’s shoes to really created a problem in many countries, because
sell in the central bus terminal in Accra, Ghana’s obviously people can’t afford to repay their loans,”
capital. With the proceeds, he paid his debts and Bateman says. “That means the microfinance insti-
had enough left over to provide for his two chil- tutions can’t afford to repay the banks.”
dren. Then Accra’s schools closed in response to Some governments have tried to intervene. India
the coronavirus pandemic. Foot traffic in the bus put a moratorium on collections for six months
terminal dried up, and so did Manu’s sales. He’s through the end of August. In Nigeria, where 4 mil-
switched to handbags, but things are still difficult. lion people owe on average $110, the central bank
“I can’t even take care of my kids,” he says. Nor can gave microlenders approval to extend repayment or
he make payments on his 2,000 cedis ($343) loan. suspend interest or principal payments. But getting ○ Yunus

The microlending movement, which envisions customers to respond and agree to the new terms
small loans as a lever to raise millions of people out isn’t easy. “We deal with very low-income earners,
of poverty, has drawn broad support from govern- those at the bottom of the pyramid. Their businesses
ments and sizable investments from foreign finan- are very fragile,” says Shikir Caleb, executive secre-
cial institutions. The small loans can help the poor tary of the National Association of Microfinance
buy what they need to make a living, and they come Banks. “If we send a message to them to come and 27
from an array of lenders including specialized banks, discuss, they think we’re inviting them to come and
local credit unions, and partnerships between banks pay the loans, so they don’t come.”
and nongovernmental organizations. In the 15 years In Ghana, where about 22% of people carry small
since Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize loans, tailors’ business has slowed down because
for his work on the concept, the number of micro- of restrictions on public gatherings, and taxi driv-
loan borrowers has ballooned to 140 million, with ers aren’t earning commissions. “We’re talking
$124 billion in loans outstanding. about a class of people who only make income by
But the economic fallout from the pandemic has going out on a day-to-day basis,” says Tweneboah
decimated small borrowers’ ability to pay. The cur- Kodua Boakye, executive secretary of the Ghana
rent crisis compounds reports of abuse and aggres- Association of Savings and Loans Cos. Some borrow-
sive collection tactics in some countries, including ers who lenders believed were safe are defaulting.  A salesman at Accra’s
Cambodia, India, and Nigeria. “When a microloan That doesn’t bode well for inclusion of the poor Tema bus station
client misses a payment, they are almost always
contacted by a credit officer within a couple of
days,” says Naly Pilorge, a human-rights advocate
in Cambodia, where 2 million borrowers owe micro-
lenders about $4,000 on average. “The pressure var-
ies, ranging from reminders to repay, to abusive or
threatening language, to direct threats of involving
local authorities or police, to threats of selling the cli-
ent’s land without their consent,” Pilorge says. Kea
Borann, chairman of the Cambodia Microfinance
Association, says such accusations are “obviously
overstated” though there are “isolated cases.”
Part of the problem is that the promise of micro-
credit relied on local, purpose-driven lenders who’d
be forgiving of delinquent borrowers, says Milford
Bateman, a visiting professor of economics at Juraj
Dobrila University of Pula, in Croatia. Today, lenders
 ◼ FINANCE Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

28

into formal financial institutions, another goal of defined then as those who lived on less than $1.90 ▲ Manu sells his wares
microlending. In Asia about 90% of the 180 million per day, “even small debts—most frequently used
poor households lack access to banks, while most to meet immediate consumption needs—can eas-
formal financial institutions deny the poor their ily become a significant burden that push a family
services because of perceived risk, according to the deeper into poverty,” the report said.
Asian Development Bank. About a third of microfinance companies say they
In an interview, Yunus defends microlending anticipate “a solvency issue” by early 2021, accord-
as practiced by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. ing to a report from Washington-based Consultative “We have to
There, borrowers don’t put up collateral. The bank Group to Assist the Poor. If the deterioration con- distinguish
also has rules to protect borrowers during disasters, tinues, the group warns, the sector “could get into between
such as issuing fresh loans to compensate for lost global crisis territory soon,” leaving strapped gov- the right
capital, suspending repayment, or extending a loan ernments to bail out lenders. microcredit
period. Many other lenders, he says, are not guided In India, which instituted microlending reforms and the wrong
PHOTOGRAPH BY NICHOLAS SENU ADATSI FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK

by social principles, and may ask for collateral or almost a decade ago following allegations of aggres- microcredit”
push loans for consumer goods. “We have to distin- sive collection practices, the central bank projects
guish between the right microcredit and the wrong that the share of loans in default will jump from 8.5%
microcredit,” Yunus says. “Microcredit lenders who to 12.5% by March. Lenders are now focused on col-
follow the social business principle of zero personal lections and reluctant to renew loans. That’s a big
profit—and the others who want to make profit for problem for Anil Kumar Gupta, a carpenter in Uttar
the owners, supported by big investors, and banks, Pradesh who’s subsisted on microloans to feed his
saying, ‘We’re doing microcredit.’” family of nine. “No bank wants to lend money with-
Signs of trouble for the microcredit indus- out security,” he says. �Philip Heijmans, Emele Onu,
try were there long before Covid. After years sup- Moses Mozart Dzawu, and Suvashree Ghosh
porting microfinance institutions, the U.S. Agency
THE BOTTOM LINE Microfinance can provide low-income people
for International Development in a 2018 report to with the money they need to run a small busines, but the pandemic
Congress cast doubt on the loans. For the very poor, is making the loans riskier for them—and their lenders.
 Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

E Lost on
C
O Main Street
N The Fed’s program to save midsize businesses
isn’t working, and it isn’t clear there’s an easy fix

O
M
I
30

C
S
ILLUSTRATION BY KLAUS KREMMERZ. *AS OF NOV. 25, 2020. DATA: FEDERAL RESERVE, U.S. SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Edited by
Cristina Lindblad
◼ ECONOMICS Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

It sounded like a great idea back in April. With The central bank’s purchases amounted to tiny
the economy getting hammered by Covid-19, the slivers of these vast markets, but its reassuring
Federal Reserve hatched a bold plan to rescue presence caused private investors to flood back
thousands of midsize companies that were fall- in, knowing they wouldn’t get trapped with illiq-
ing into a gap between government aid programs. uid holdings if panic returned.
Using its magic printing press, the U.S. cen- While the Fed was tending to the needs of
tral bank would take $75 billion appropriated by larger companies, the Treasury Department was
Congress and turn it into as much as $600 billion teeing up a rescue for small businesses. Despite a
in loans to companies damaged by the pandemic. messy launch, the Paycheck Protection Program
The effort now appears to have been doomed ended up ladling out about $525 billion in loans,
from the start, squeezed between legal restric- most of which morphed into grants when borrow-
tions on the Fed’s emergency powers and the risk ers used the funds to keep workers on their pay-
aversion of the banks that the program relied on roll and to pay bills. ▼ Value of loans issued
to make loans. Eight months in, the Main Street Slipping between these safety nets was a whole
Paycheck Protection
Lending Program has pushed less than $6 billion layer of businesses—estimated to encompass 40% of Program
out the door. the U.S. economy—that were too big for PPP and too
“There’s been bipartisan acknowledgment small to access the bond market. So on April 9 the
that Main Street isn’t working,” says Bharat Fed unveiled a plan that looked like a win for every-
Ramamurti, who sits on the congressional com- one: Midsize companies would be thrown a lifeline, $525.0b

mission charged with supervising the spending preserving jobs and helping to sustain the economy,
authorized by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and and the Fed would show it cared about Main Street.
Economic Security Act. “I don’t think anybody Vincent Reinhart, a former senior economist
is under the illusion this program is solving the at the Fed, says the central bank took a lot of Main Street Lending
problems that exist.” heat in the last financial crisis for going all-out to Program*

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced help big banks while appearing not to lift a finger
$5.8b
on Nov. 19 that he wouldn’t approve an extension for the average American. “It was Wall Street vs. 31
of the program, along with four other emergency Main Street, and going into this it was evident Jay
lending facilities, past Dec. 31, but Democrats Powell wasn’t going to make that mistake again,”
might be able to revive it. Some, including Virginia says Reinhart, referring to the Fed chair. “I’m not
Senator Mark Warner, clearly want to. “As we’re saying it was insincere, but I am saying it was stra-
looking at the virus actually accelerating at this tegic, as well.”
point, and the potential for businesses even Despite the good intentions, the Main Street
going into more duress, the idea that we’d end Lending Program’s effectiveness has been ham-
the program arbitrarily on Dec. 31—I just think pered by crucial design flaws. Unlike with its
makes no sense,” Warner says. “We think we other emergency programs, the Fed must rely on
need to make adjustments on both program eligi- banks to process the loans, as it lacks the capa-
bility, loans terms, and weight, so this works for bility to do its own underwriting. To come up
more firms.” with a set of terms that would entice lenders—as
It’s difficult to see how a few tweaks would well as borrowers—to participate, Fed staff con-
suddenly resolve the real issues that afflict the sulted extensively with banks and companies.
program. Those start with the limits on the Fed’s The upshot: Funds didn’t begin trickling out until
emergency powers. The central bank can lend July, almost three months after the first of the
almost infinite amounts of money, but it can’t PPP money.
give it away. That means the Fed must reasonably Since then, the Fed has continued to fiddle with
expect repayment on loans and must charge rates the Main Street rules, and it’s lowered the mini-
that won’t end up undercutting private lenders. mum loan size, but the changes haven’t worked:
The institution hasn’t run into those issues As of Nov. 25, the program had purchased just
in the other programs it unfurled this spring to $5.8 billion in loans from banks.
prevent capital markets from seizing as they did In a survey released in September, loan offi-
during the 2008 financial crisis. The Fed used cers told the Fed that “overly restrictive” terms
two facilities to buy ultrashort-term securities for borrowers and “unattractive” terms for lend-
from money-market funds and from banks that ers were preventing the program from taking off.
act as market makers for all investors. It also lubri- When a company was deemed worthy of credit,
cated longer-term credit markets by announcing it banks preferred to make loans without the Fed’s
would buy corporate and municipal bonds. participation, the respondents said. And when
  ECONOMICS Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

it wasn’t, the program’s terms didn’t do enough

to make the loans palatable.
Under the terms of the program, the Fed buys
Corralling the Vatican’s
95% of each loan. That’s meant to reduce the risk Golden Calf
for banks, but it doesn’t change the risk-to-reward
calculus on each dollar lent. It merely turns a
shaky $10 million loan into a shaky $500,000 loan. ○ Pope Francis’ quest to bring transparency to church
And if things go wrong, the $75 billion provided by finances is running into stiff opposition from an entitled Curia
Congress protects only the Fed. It won’t absorb
losses suffered by the banks.
Some in Congress have urged the central bank When Pope Francis’ advisers report back on the
to take on more risk. Indeed, the Fed could buy battle to overhaul the Vatican’s sprawling finances,
out 100% of every loan, leaving the banks to make they regularly bring poor tidings. As they huddle
their fees and move on. But it wants lenders to with the pontiff, the aides voice their frustration at
have a stake in the process to make sure their the resistance of the Roman Curia, the bureaucracy
underwriting is reliable. Otherwise, the Fed might that runs the Catholic Church and which Francis
get saddled with too many bad loans, overwhelm- has called “the last court that remains in Europe,”
ing its backstop. saying it’s filled with careerists and gossips. The
Alternatively, the Fed could ramp up the fees it bureaucrats are pushing back against Francis’ drive
pays lenders, or tweak the risk-to-reward weight- for transparency and accountability, refusing to give
ing. It could agree to take 95% of any losses while up the privileges that control of money grants them,
leaving more than 5% of the potential profit. But according to officials who asked not to be named as
that might prove politically perilous if it’s seen as these discussions are confidential.
being too generous to the banks. The Roman Catholic leader hears them out, then
“There is a wide range of possible things you urges them to forge ahead. “I don’t understand any
32 can do. They all may have some effective costs to of this stuff. Talk to each other, and don’t lose your
○ Nunzio Galantino
taxpayers down the road,” said Eric Rosengren, sense of humor,” he says. “But we have to keep
president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, going. I won’t stop.”
in an Oct. 8 interview. “There are some serious Cleaning up Vatican finances has been a priority
trade-offs if people wanted to make it a more for the 83-year-old Argentine pontiff from the start,
attractive facility.” The Boston Fed is in charge of say his advisers. Just months after his inauguration
administering the program. in March 2013, Francis set up a task force to scruti-
The incoming Biden administration might nize the Institute for Religious Works. The entity, fre-
seek to revive the Main Street Lending Program, quently referred to as the Vatican bank, is so opaque
though Republicans in Congress would probably it’s been called “the most secret bank in the world.”
block an attempt to reauthorize the $75 billion The following year, Francis created a Secretariat for
backstop. But Ramamurti, who was appointed to the Economy, vesting it with authority over all eco-
○ Juan Antonio
the oversight board by Senate Minority Leader nomic activity for the Holy See and Vatican City. Guerrero Alves
Chuck Schumer, is convinced that a whole new The pope has recruited executives from the
approach is needed, especially with the pandemic worlds of business and finance to fill top jobs in
raging and a widely available vaccine still many the Curia as part of a drive to bring the Vatican’s
months away. accounting and budgeting procedures up to inter-
FROM LEFT: MASSIMIGLIANO MIGLIORATO/CPP/POLARIS (2); VATICAN MEDIA

“For businesses in this category that are strug- national standards. Momentum on reforms has
gling right now, a loan is not going to be the right accelerated this year, with several papal edicts,
solution for most of them,” he says. “We need to including one establishing a new code for public
provide direct support.” tenders to ward against corruption and conflicts
Asked if Congress could have done more good of interest.
by simply giving away $75 billion to midsize com- Francis, who once called money “the devil’s
panies in March, Warner agreed. “With the bene- dung” and whose latest papal encyclical contains
fit of hindsight? A smaller amount, straight grant a fiery criticism of neoliberalism as a system that
program? Yeah.” —Christopher Condon and resorts to “magic theories of ‘spillover’ or ‘trickle’ ”
Catarina Saraiva to solve societal problems, wants the Vatican
to lead by example. “We have to walk the talk,”
THE BOTTOM LINE The Fed’s Main Street Lending Program
doesn’t provide sufficient incentives for banks, which have pushed
says Father Augusto Zampini, a papal compatriot
out less than $6 billion in loans so far. who is adjunct secretary at the Vatican’s human
◼ ECONOMICS

development department. Zampini worked at

Argentina’s central bank and the law firm Baker &
McKenzie before becoming a priest and now rep-
resents the Vatican at forums such as Davos. “The
Vatican’s financial assets are small, but they have
great symbolic power,” he says.
That power has frequently been dimmed by scan-
dal. The latest involves a questionable 2014 invest-
ment by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State—equivalent
to the prime minister’s office—in a former Harrods
warehouse in London’s affluent Chelsea neighbor- Then, in September, Francis forced the ▲ The pope met
with delegates from
hood that was slated to become luxury apartments. resignation of Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, Moneyval in October
Francis has dismissed five Vatican employees over a close aide and former No. 2 at the Secretariat
the deal, which went south, and an investigation has of State, over allegations he had channeled some
been launched to determine whether the bureau- €100,000 in Holy See funds to his brother’s charity.
crats were scammed or if they themselves profited. Becciu denied any wrongdoing, telling reporters he
“A thief can enter my home because he was ‘skilled’ had the power to use its funds to support charities.
in deactivating the alarm system, or because some- That remark exasperated Francis, whose
one gave him the key or opened the door for him attempts at reform have been obstructed by senior
from the inside,” said Archbishop Nunzio Galantino, or middle-ranking members of the administration
who heads the Administration of the Patrimony of who have become accustomed to operating in their
the Holy See, in an interview with the Catholic news- own fiefs and have felt untouchable, say the pon-
paper Avvenire. He estimated the Vatican’s losses in tiff ’s advisers. On the evening of Nov. 4, Francis
the deal at £66 million ($88 million) to £150 million. hosted a meeting with department heads including
To diminish the scope for bad behavior, the Parolin, Galantino, and Guerrero at which he con-
pontiff has been pressing the church’s money- vened a task force “to start work immediately” to 33
men to open their accounts to public scrutiny. A execute the orders he had set out in his August let-
few have complied. Pledging that “the faithful have ter within “the next three months,” according to a
the right to know how we use resources,” Father Vatican statement.
Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves, the Vatican’s econ- If the pope is willing to publicize his battles
omy minister, published the Curia’s consolidated to get recalcitrant administrators to toe the line,
budget for 2019 on Oct. 1—the first since 2016. The it’s because he believes the world’s 1.3 billion
report showed a shortfall of €11 million ($13 million), Catholics, whose donations are the church’s life-
compared with one of €75 million the prior year. blood, want to be reassured that their hard-earned
Yet the task of assessing the health of the church’s money is not being pilfered or wasted. “That’s a
finances isn’t helped by their being split into four risk because publicity about scandals may create
separate budgets—the Curia, the Vatican city-state, disaffection, but he doesn’t want to hide anything,”
Catholic foundations, and hospitals and charities— says Smerilli.
or by the fact that surpluses in one area are used to If, as the saying goes, sunshine is really the best
plug deficits in others. disinfectant, the latest controversies may be evi-
“Some people—inside and outside the church— dence that Francis’ reforms are starting to bear
used to be skeptical about the pope’s reforms, but fruit. Or perhaps it’s the opposite. Moneyval, the
now they realize that he is serious about them,” says European Union’s anti-money-laundering body,
Sister Alessandra Smerilli, a professor at Rome’s has been scrutinizing money matters in the city-
Pontifical Auxilium faculty who briefs the pope on state and is expected to issue a report sometime
global economic issues. “Francis wants a system that in the spring that should provide an independent
ensures no one is alone to take decisions, because reality check.
that can lead to mistakes.” Meanwhile, in his meetings with his inner cir-
To that end, the pope ordered the Secretariat cle, Francis continues to rally the troops. “Have
of State be stripped of its funds in the wake of the patience,” he tells his entourage. “Step by step.
London scandal. Under his instructions, spelled To change things, you need to bring people in.”
out in a letter to Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro �John Follain, with Alessandro Speciale
Parolin dated Aug. 25, the assets—which are worth
THE BOTTOM LINE Pope Francis is on a mission to overhaul
€350 million, according to a senior official—will be Vatican finances, but scandals that have erupted under his watch
managed by Galantino’s department. raise doubts about how much progress has been made.
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 Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

P
O
L
I
T
I
C
35

The Pot Lobby Seeks

A New Prize
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY 731; PHOTOS: ALAMY (1); BLOOMBERG (1)

Hopes are high for federal drug reform under Biden,

even if Republicans keep the Senate

Edited by
Amanda Kolson Hurley
and Paula Dwyer
  POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

Marijuana isn’t technically on the ballot in Senate side is Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
Georgia’s Jan. 5 Senate runoff elections. But it might But it will go nowhere if the Republicans win
as well be: Cannabis advocates and trade groups the Senate seats in Georgia and McConnell remains
are zeroing in on the state in hopes of ousting—or majority leader. Even if the Democrats prevail,
converting to their cause—its two Republican sen- the bill—known as the Marijuana Opportunity
ators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who’ll face Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act—
Democratic opponents Raphael Warnock and Jon would still face a 60-vote hurdle to passage. But
Ossoff, respectively. How the races go will deter- Democratic control of the Senate would mean it
mine which party controls the U.S. Senate, and that could come to the floor, and serious negotiations
○ Kuipers Blake
could be pivotal for the future of the $17 billion U.S. on decriminalization and regulation could begin.
cannabis industry. The MORE Act is not the only pot reform with
Sam D’Arcangelo, the project manager for the prospects. Senator Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania
Cannabis Voter Project, has immersed himself Republican, is set to take over the banking commit-
in voter registration data in Georgia and says he tee and has said he’s receptive to a measure called
hopes his group’s corporate partners will convey to the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking
customers and suppliers how critical the contests Act, which would allow banks to serve the industry
there are. The national Drug Policy Alliance is look- even if marijuana remains illegal federally.
ing to support Warnock and Ossoff with donations The American Bankers Association “has made
from its political action committee. this a priority,” says Melissa Kuipers Blake, who
Just a month ago the industry got a boost when co-chairs the cannabis practice at Brownstein Hyatt
five states passed ballot measures approving can- Farber Schreck and who lobbies for the Cannabis
nabis use. Arizona and New Jersey joined deep-red Trade Federation. An ABA spokesperson says the
Montana and South Dakota in allowing the sale of group is “optimistic that this Congress or the next
recreational pot; Mississippi approved it for medi- will give this commonsense measure final approval.”
cal use. Altogether, 15 states—making up more than “We’re going to get SAFE Banking,” Boris Jordan,
36 one-third of the U.S. population—now have legal rec- executive chairman of cannabis giant Curaleaf, told
reational weed, and 35 allow it for medical purposes. investors in a recent call, adding that it was the first
At the federal level, it’s a different story. In time he’s been this optimistic.
the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of However, Jodi Avergun, a former Drug  Members of
Congress by the legal
Kentucky and other Republicans don’t favor legal- Enforcement Administration chief of staff and status of cannabis in
ization. As long as the chamber remains in their grip, federal prosecutor who now leads Cadwalader, their state

they can block measures the Democratic-led House Wickersham & Taft’s white-collar defense and  Recreational use

of Representatives has approved to ease restrictions investigations group, is less sanguine. A lot of con-  Medical use only

on pot. But if Georgia elects two Democrats, that servative senators “don’t want to deal with a can-  Illicit

would flip Senate control, making possible the end nabis issue at all,” she says. “It would have to be
Senate
(or at least a significant de-escalation) of the almost significantly narrowed to get passed.”
50-year war on cannabis. The industry says it’s about The House in May and October added the bank-
time, with 68% of Americans registering support in ing measure to coronavirus relief packages, but
opinion polls for making it legal nationally. they languished in the Senate. Other liberaliza-
The federal prohibition on weed is handicap- tion measures have been offered in both cham- House
ping the young industry, which research group bers. “Any of these passing becomes the Berlin
Euromonitor International estimates will reach Wall moment, where everything starts to tumble,”
$53 billion in sales by 2025. Growers and sellers says Erik Huey, president of Platinum Advisors, a
can’t legally ship products or raw materials across lobbying firm that counts Canopy Growth Corp., a
state lines. Companies are mostly shut off from the Canadian industry heavyweight, as a client.
capital markets. Banks risk prosecution and the loss The incoming Biden administration could use
of charters if they accept cash, process credit card its executive authority to help the industry. The
payments, clear checks, make loans, or underwrite president-elect, who had a long career as a tough-
stocks and bonds for marijuana businesses. on-crime legislator, has embraced moderate steps,
The House was set to approve a measure in early including expunging federal records of those con-
December that would remove pot from the 1970 victed of marijuana offenses and removing pot
Controlled Substances Act. Doing so would end from Schedule I—the category used for the most
criminal prosecutions for possession, permit banks dangerous substances. But he hasn’t indicated how
to do business with the industry, and establish a 5% or how fast he’d move. “We just don’t know which
federal excise tax on sales. The bill’s sponsor on the way Biden will go,” says Curaleaf’s Jordan.
 ◼ POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Americans. Black people face arrest for possession
Institution, says Biden is likely to make good on his at almost four times the rate as White people,
campaign’s commitment to criminal justice reform. despite similar levels of use.
This could include moving Justice Department pri- Amber Littlejohn, executive director of the
orities away from enforcing federal laws that con- Minority Cannabis Business Association, says civil
flict with state marijuana laws, which would be a rights groups already are urging Biden to address
return to the Obama administration’s position. the inequitable legacy of the war on drugs. “We
“I don’t think we’re going to see Joe Biden six are hoping that an administration that owes its
months from now come out for full national legaliza- existence at this point to many of the communi-
tion, but I do think you’re going to see him thinking ties” that were hurt the most by federal marijuana
more critically and more carefully” about the inter- policies will listen to their concerns, she says.
section of race and law enforcement, Hudak says. �Tiffany Kary and Ben Brody
The Black Lives Matter movement has pro-
THE BOTTOM LINE The Biden administration will have several
moted the idea of decriminalizing cannabis as a options to liberalize federal pot policy, which would boost an
way to reduce the number of incarcerated Black industry that has one hand tied behind its back.

Chicago’s Hard Choices

● Mayor Lori Lightfoot pushed through an austerity budget, alienating some progressives
37

After more than two weeks of sometimes that’s generally frowned upon by fiscal watchdogs.
contentious hearings, on Nov. 24 the Chicago City Lightfoot secured the votes she needed for her
Council narrowly passed a 2021 “pandemic budget” budget by nixing her original plan to lay off 350 city
to close a $1.2 billion deficit. It’s a victory for first- workers and, instead of cutting the funding of the
KUIPERS BLAKE: PHOTOGRAPH BY MATT NAGER FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK; LIGHTFOOT: PAT NABONG/CHICAGO SUN-TIMES/AP PHOTO.

term Mayor Lori Lightfoot. But the turbulent pro- Chicago Police Department as some aldermen
cess revealed the difficulty of reconciling a liberal demanded, added funds for violence prevention
policy agenda with the economic fallout of Covid-19, and a pilot program that pairs police and mental-
even in a deep-blue city. And it’s mostly a short-term health workers on responding to 911 calls.
fix for the long-standing fiscal problems of Chicago,
America’s third-largest city.
“This was a really hard year,” says Lightfoot, a
Democrat. “Unlike anything in our city’s history.”
About 65% of the budget gap resulted from losses
connected to the coronavirus, as business in the
tourism, convention, hotel, restaurant, and other ◀ Lightfoot
sectors plummeted.
Lightfoot, the city’s first Black female mayor
and first openly gay mayor, ran as an outsider in
2019, promising a commitment to social justice
and equity as well as vowing to reform Chicago’s
notorious political machine. Her $12.8 billion bud- Critics on the council say the budget relies
get includes a $94 million property tax hike, a on regressive taxes and fees that hurt the disad-
3¢-per-gallon increase to the gas tax, a $30 million vantaged. Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, a self-
draw from reserves, and more funds raised from described democratic socialist, voted against it.
DATA: NEW FRONTIER DATA

speed cameras, parking meters, and other fines “I’ve heard from so many people in my commu-
and fees. The city is also refinancing and restruc- nity that are just so angry that at a moment when
turing $1.7 billion in debt for a half-billion dollars families have less, they are being asked to pay
in savings, a tactic referred to as “scoop and toss” more,” Ramirez-Rosa says. In a recent survey
 ◼ POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

in his ward, 55% of respondents said they’d City of Chicago

lost income during the pandemic, and close to a Population Contributions to pension plans
third said they struggled to pay their rent or mort-
gage. “Don’t give me crumbs and tell me it’s cake,” 2.75m $1.4b

Alderman Jeanette Taylor, a progressive, said on

the day of the vote, adding that food and medicine
are at stake for families in her ward. “Why can’t we
tax the rich?” 2.70 0.7

The enormity of the pandemic’s impact means

“our options are extremely limited,” says Alderman
Scott Waguespack, a Lightfoot ally who’s chairman
of the city council’s finance committee. “It’s the 2.65 0

best we could do right now.” 2010 2019 2010 2019

Covid-19 has exacerbated racial, economic,
DATA: U.S. CENSUS BUREAU; CITY OF CHICAGO
and health gaps that had long been widening in
Chicago. As of Dec. 2, the city counted more than while the property tax hike won 28 to 22. It was
161,000 Covid-19 cases and almost 3,500 deaths, the tightest budget vote in Chicago since the
a disproportionate number of them in Black and mid-1980s, when a bloc of old-guard aldermen
Latino communities. As the virus snaked through faced off against Mayor Harold Washington, says
neighborhoods this summer, unrest added to Dick Simpson, a political science professor at
the financial and emotional toll. Small corner the University of Illinois at Chicago and a former
shops along with high-end stores on the iconic city alderman. The recession caused by the pan-
Magnificent Mile were looted. The city’s costs for demic left Lightfoot with “no magic way to solve
services—including aid to the homeless, police over- the entire gap,” Simpson says. A poll conducted in
time, and small-business assistance—have risen. late September and early October, before the bud-
38 Lightfoot says constructing the budget required get hearings, put Lightfoot’s approval among regis-
putting the good of the whole city ahead of indi- tered voters in Chicago at 61%. If she can continue
vidual wards: “For the foreseeable future, we are to work with the council and deliver on some pro-
in a period of reckoning with our past.” Leaders in gressive goals, Simpson says, lingering hard feelings
Chicago not making tough choices and acting for from the budget process won’t necessarily dent her
short-term gain has been “long-term fiscally a disas- political appeal. �Shruti Singh
ter for our city,” Lightfoot says.
Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the city’s THE BOTTOM LINE Chicago will raise taxes and fees and
restructure its debt to close its huge deficit, a win for the mayor
debt to junk in 2015 partly because of its strained that’s earned her criticism from various quarters.
pension system, which is underfunded by $31 bil-
lion. The city’s total retirement obligations for fiscal
2021 are projected to rise. (Meanwhile, its popula-
tion has fallen for several years in a row, so it has
fewer residents to foot its bills.) S&P, which rates
Chicago three levels above junk at BBB+, lowered
Scotland Makes
its outlook to negative in April because of Covid-19. Periods Less Painful
“Voters elected me because I represented
change,” Lightfoot says. “I don’t think voters
elected me to just kick the can down the road.” The ● The country is the first in the world to offer
large debt refinancing has drawn criticism as an free, universal access to sanitary products
example of just that, however, from the watchdog
Civic Federation, which said it will increase debt
costs in future years. City of Chicago Chief Financial On Nov. 24, Scotland became the first country
Officer Jennie Huang Bennett says that the step is in the world to establish through legislation
appropriate given the city’s challenges and that that access to period products is a right, a move
JEFF J. MITCHELL/GETTY IMAGES

additional federal stimulus may erase the neces- that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described as
sity for scoop and toss. groundbreaking. It caps a four-year campaign
The mayor needed a simple majority of the led by Monica Lennon, a member of the Scottish
council’s 50 aldermen to pass budget measures. Parliament, that was backed by a wide coalition of
Her budget ordinance got 29 yeas and 21 nays, trade unions, women’s groups, and charities.
◼ POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

The aim, Lennon says, is to eradicate “period 2020 tax rate on sanitary products was 27% in
poverty”—the cost of the products can be prohibi- Hungary, 25% in Sweden, and 16% in Mexico. In the
tive—and end the stigma around menstruation. U.S., 30 states levy a sales tax on tampons and pads,
Under the Period Products (Free Provision) according to the advocacy group Period Equity, and
(Scotland) Act, approved unanimously in the they can’t be purchased with food stamps.
Scottish Parliament, local governments will be A handful of countries have scrapped the tax.
required to make free supplies available in pub- The first was Kenya in 2004, and others that followed
lic buildings to anyone who wants them. (Schools, include Australia, Canada, Ireland, and, beginning in
colleges, and universities in Scotland have offered January, the U.K., where “the tampon tax” became
free products since 2018, and the legislation so controversial that major supermarkets started
compels them to keep doing so.) The Scottish covering the cost of it themselves in 2017.

39

government estimates that about 13% of people The women surveyed in the Scottish report ▲ Activists rallying
outside the Scottish
who have periods will take part in the program said they felt isolated and ashamed by their inabil- Parliament in Edinburgh
in its first year. That would put costs, which it will ity to afford sanitary products, and some said
cover, at about £8.7 million ($11.7 million) for 2022- they missed work, school, or social events as a
23. Full implementation of the program will take result. The country’s new legislation comes after
two years. 20 years of efforts by activists across the globe to
Limited access to sanitary products is a problem chip away at the taboo that’s surrounded menstru-
often associated with poorer countries, but women ation for centuries.
in wealthier nations also struggle to buy them. A “Scotland has provided a blueprint and shown
survey of more than 1,000 women in Scotland, how it can be done,” Lennon says. “With determi-
which helped galvanize support for the bill, found nation from lawmakers and activists in other coun-
that a fifth had experienced period poverty at some tries, there’s no reason why other countries can’t
point in their lives. One in 10 said they had priori- follow.” �Caroline Alexander
tized buying food over period supplies.
THE BOTTOM LINE A new law requires public facilities to provide
Globally, menstrual products are also often free tampons and pads in an aim to reduce “period poverty” among
taxed at higher rates than other essentials. The low-income women and to destigmatize menstruation.
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 CELESTE BARBER COLIN KAEPERNICK

BUSINESS
BAIJU BHATT & LINDA KIRKPATRICK
VLADIMIR TENEV
AYA KYOGOKU &
MOHAMMED BIN HISAHI NOGAMI
ZAYED AL NAHYAN
LUIS LACALLE POU
THE BLACK LIVES MATTER
CO-FOUNDERS DONNA LANGLEY

BONG JOON-HO FORREST LI

ENTERTAINMENT
There was a joke on Twitter TIM BRAY STRIVE MASIYIWA
this fall: Decades from now,
Ph.D. candidates in history will MADISON CAWTHORN RENEE MONTGOMERY
specialize in a particular day
from 2020. Which is to say
SARAH COOPER MARCUS RASHFORD
this year was, uh, big. Covid, a
reckoning on race, and a U.S.
election made compiling the
THE COVID BYJU RAVEENDRAN
fourth annual Bloomberg 50 TRACKING PROJECT
easier in ways (many people MARIA RESSA
are doing notable things) and BILLIE EILISH
harder in others (many people KELLER RINAUDO
are doing notable things). ODUNAYO EWENIYI &
DAMILOLA ODUFUWA JOHN ROBERTS

FINANCE
Here are a few rising
above 2020’s high bar in
our look at the people in ANTHONY FAUCI GWYNNE SHOTWELL
business, entertainment,
finance, politics, and science
GUY FIERI SUMIT SINGH
and technology whose
accomplishments merit
recognition: Aurora James
JOHN FOLEY SPECIAL PURPOSE
(page 44) got retailers to ACQUISITION
pledge 15% of their shelf JANE FRASER COMPANIES
space to Black-owned brands
in the wake of George Floyd’s THE FRONT-LINE WORKERS SWIZZ BEATZ &
death, and Tim Bray (page 63) TIMBALAND

POLITICS
quit his executive job at KRISTALINA GEORGIEVA
Amazon.com to protest the TSAI ING-WEN
firing of workers who’d raised JAMES GORMAN
concerns about Covid. The SVIATLANA
president of Taiwan (page 74)
ABDALLA HAMDOK TSIKHANOUSKAYA
kept the pandemic under
control, and when Australian
wildfires raged, comedian
REED HASTINGS THE VACCINE CHASERS
Celeste Barber (page 50)
raised millions in relief. JASON HEHIR VIYA
Check out page 75 for
TECHNOLOGY

alums of our list whose 2020 ALAN HOWARD WANG XING

SCIENCE &

efforts also deserved a nod.

To see who might appear on AURORA JAMES DARRIN WILLIAMS
next year’s Bloomberg 50,
turn to page 76—though we’d LETITIA JAMES ZENG YUQUN
be lying if we said we could
predict the next few days, let
JEONG EUN KYEONG CHANGPENG ZHAO
alone 2021.
 IS
Bloomberg Bu ing December 7, 2020
hh
as
aS
hih
Tzu
named D

DANIA BEACH, FLA. ○ As the retailer They continue to see gains from
came to dominate the online pet consumers who like Chewy’s pets-
supply business, its stock price only focus and easy returns policy.
more than doubled, driving up its Singh, who joined Chewy from
market value by almost $15 billion, Amazon.com Inc. in 2017, has been
to $26 billion. CEO since 2018 and led the com-
pany to a successful initial pub-
Chewy, which sells everything from lic offering last year. Prior to joining
dog toys to equine joint supple- Amazon, he spent a decade at Dell
ments, added millions of customers Technologies Inc. His next test at
in the wake of lockdowns and a spike Chewy will be retaining custom-
in pet adoptions. At times, surging ers and winning over new ones who
orders stripped its virtual shelves shop at supermarkets, warehouse
bare of popular dog and cat foods. clubs, and neighborhood pet stores.
Now that inventories are under con- Wall Street is also waiting for the
trol, Singh and his team are touting a company to expand internationally.
recession-resistant business model: —Bailey Lipschultz

SUMIT
42

SINGH
CEO, CHEWY
BILLIE
INC.
EILISH
○ Eilish won the “big four”
SINGER-SONGWRITER
Grammys in January—best record,
best song, best album, best new
artist—which nobody had done in
a single year since Christopher deliberate outrageousness, Eilish is Grammy-winning song, Bad Guy,
Cross in 1981. a fairly normal 18-year-old. She lives is a pulsating track on which she
with her parents, who dutifully ride razzes people who act tough, and in
She sings in a smoky soprano along with their daughter on tours. August, she performed a new track
about suicide fantasies and heart- Her older brother, Finneas, is her called My Future at the Democratic
ache (“Take me to the rooftop / I musical collaborator, and they work National Convention: “You don’t need
wanna see the world when I stop out of a recording studio in the fam- me to tell you things are a mess,”
breathing, turnin’ blue,” she begins ily’s Los Angeles home. she said by way of introduction.
on Listen Before I Go). And with Eilish has been embraced by Eilish also co-wrote and sang the
green-streaked hair and oversize an industry that’s often celebrated theme for the James Bond film that’s
outfits, she looks straight out of a young female stars for their confor- scheduled to be released next year.
Nickelodeon cartoon. Yet for all her mity, not their rebelliousness. Her —Devin Leonard
 JANE PRESIDENT AND CEO,
GLOBAL CONSUMER BANKING,
FRASER CITIGROUP INC.

NEW YORK ○ In September, checking accounts on their mobile phones;

in the third quarter, average North American
Fraser was named Citigroup’s deposits climbed 19% from a year ago, to
next CEO, and when she more than $182 billion. Fraser has also been
in charge of Citigroup’s domestic response
assumes the role in early 2021, to the coronavirus pandemic.
she’ll be the first woman in the One of her most immediate tasks as
CEO will be fixing the bank’s data and risk
top job at a major U.S. bank. management systems, which it’s failed to
update for some time. Regulators includ-
A 16-year veteran of Citigroup, Fraser has ing the Federal Reserve and the U.S.
done stints as global head of strategy and Department of the Treasury’s Office of the
head of Latin American operations. Last Comptroller of the Currency are requiring
year she took over the consumer unit, the the improvements. Fraser has started by
world’s largest credit card issuer. One thing analyzing what part of Citigroup’s techno-
she’s been focused on in 2020 is increas- logical infrastructure needs the most atten-
ing deposits from U.S. customers, with an tion. The process is expected to take years.
emphasis on getting people to sign up for —Jenny Surane

JOHN ROBERTS 43

U.S. CHIEF JUSTICE,

SUPREME COURT

EILISH: JEAN-BAPTISTE LACROIX /AFP/GETTY IMAGES. FRASER: RODRIGO CAPOTE/BLOOMBERG. ROBERTS: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
○ He was in the majority 97% of the
time in the term ended in July, his
highest percentage in 15 years.
For the first time, Roberts stood firmly at the court’s
ideological center, casting the pivotal vote in almost
every divisive case. He sided with the conservative
wing to bolster religious rights in cases involving tax-
payer subsidies for private schools and contraceptive
insurance coverage. But the appointee of President
George W. Bush joined the liberals to deliver narrow
victories for abortion rights and the Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals program. He did the same in a big
win for LGBTQ workers fighting to sue for job discrimi-
nation. And when right-leaning critics of the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau sought to topple the reg-
ulator by arguing that its director had an unconstitu-
tional level of independence, Roberts wrote an opinion
allowing a president to fire the director while leaving
the agency intact.
Things are about to change. Associate Justice Amy
Coney Barrett’s arrival shifts the court further to the right
and decreases the chance that Roberts’s vote will decide
rulings. Whether his influence endures depends less on
his vote than on his ability to persuade what could be the
most conservative court in generations. —Greg Stohr
 Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

AURORA
B Photograph by
Lelanie Foster

JAMES
● Nine retailers in the U.S. and Canada, including
Macy’s Inc., Sephora USA Inc., and West Elm, have
signed on to her pledge, which
asks that they dedicate 15% of
shelf space to products made
by Black-owned businesses.
FOUNDER, neighborhood in 2018.
After the police killing of George
Floyd in late May, James
FIFTEEN PERCENT The retailers that joined her
pledge aren’t tied to a timeline.
watched her inbox fill with emails PLEDGE But James works with them to
and her Instagram feed flood find smaller, Black-owned com-
with posts from brands decry- panies that fit their needs. None
ing racism. She wanted more has hit the 15% threshold, but
than platitudes. “I needed to reconcile the hurt I was feel- Black entrepreneurs have told her that Sephora and West
ing as a Black woman and also the fact that I’m a business Elm touched base directly about orders, she says.
44 owner,” says James, creative director and founder of shoe Sephora and MedMen are the only original targets that
and handbag line Brother Vellies in Brooklyn, N.Y. “These two signed on. In addition to West Elm, the others are Indigo
sides of me needed to converge.” Books & Music in Toronto, Rent the Runway, Yelp, the U.S. edi-
Days later she’d made it happen. She used Instagram to tion of Condé Nast’s Vogue—and as of late November, InStyle
spread the idea of the pledge—15% because it’s roughly the US and Macy’s, the largest retailer to sign on. Yelp will try to
share of Black people among the U.S. population—and tagged have 15% of its lists focus on or include Black-owned busi-
nine companies in her post to get their attention. Her targets nesses. On Instagram, James said of Vogue’s pledge, “Thank
were Barnes & Noble, Home Depot, marijuana dispensary you to Vogue for committing to hiring more Black freelance
MedMen, Net-a-Porter, Saks Fifth Avenue, Sephora, Target, photographers, writers, stylists, beauty teams, and models.”
Walmart, and Whole Foods, businesses she said were “built She says one day she’d like to see a Black-owned business
on Black spending power.” that benefited from the pledge reach a $100 million valuation.
For most companies, only 2% of merchandise on store Analysts say it could appeal to shoppers who say they’re
shelves is from Black-owned businesses, according to more likely to spend with companies that share their values
research from the Fifteen Percent Pledge Foundation, the on racial justice. “That potentially could be the catalyst to
nonprofit James founded shortly after announcing her cam- help that retailer recover faster” from pandemic losses, says
paign. Many of them have had a disproportionately diffi- Chadwick Roberson, vice president for investment manage-
cult time during the coronavirus pandemic, because such ment and research at retail and consumer analyst Momentum
businesses didn’t get loans from the Paycheck Protection Advisors LLC.
Program—a $350 billion government effort to keep workers James’s idea isn’t without critics. Some of the companies
on payrolls—at the same rate as White-owned ones. Goldman that have signed on aren’t brick-and-mortar retailers with
Sachs Group Inc. says 58% of Black business owners have shelf space to give. And some have noted that Black-owned
dipped into personal savings to stay operational, compared small businesses need financial resources to scale up before
with 33% of business owners overall. they can fulfill orders for major retailers. James says the foun-
James was raised in Jamaica and Guelph, an hour’s dation is working with its partners on a solution.
drive from Toronto, and worked in mall retail, at a modeling In the future, James wants venture capital firms to agree
agency, and for Fashion Television. She studied journalism to have pledge-compliant portfolios. But for now she’ll con-
at Ryerson University, then moved to the U.S. right before tinue to run her business while hopping on Zoom calls with
Barack Obama’s first term began. Since 2013, James CEOs who are interested in joining her cause. “In a year that’s
has run Brother Vellies, which she started with $3,500 in been so tough for so many people, having that opportunity
savings. She opened her store in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint to have positivity is so worth it,” she says. �Jordyn Holman
Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

James in Brooklyn
 December 7, 2020

After a decade atop the place, Gorman

has made his own big mark, with two of the
largest deals by a top Wall Street bank in
years. They came along with record profits
and a soaring stock price. “How could you
not be happy?” Gorman asks. “We just hit
a $100 billion market cap, we’ve done two
signature transactions in two areas of the
business where we needed to do some-
thing, and we’ve navigated Covid without
the organization falling apart.”
Ever since the recovery from the 2008
financial meltdown, major banks have
been looking for opportunities to expand.
But the Melbourne-born Gorman was
more willing than his peers to pounce on
acquisitions. “I think we’ve been the only
bank in the last 10 years to do deals,” he
says. “I don’t see myself as a dealmaker or
not a dealmaker. I think of myself as hope-
fully strategic and that if you find good
deals, you shouldn’t be shy about it.”
Gorman has long believed Morgan
Stanley needed to pivot from its reliance
on the rarefied business of high finance,
which involves things like playing match-
maker for blue-chip corporations and
B Photograph helping hedge funds trade. These activ-
by Justin J. Wee ities are profitable but subject to the
whims of markets. The ETrade and Eaton
Gorman in New York
Vance deals give Morgan Stanley more
ways to earn steady fee revenue help-
ing to manage individuals’ nest eggs. Its
money management businesses now

JAMES GORMAN make up about 60% of revenue. It will

soon be the steward of $4.5 trillion worth
of other people’s investment assets.
“Finance has become less swashbuck-
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, ling, less sexy, and a little more boring,”
MORGAN STANLEY says Tom Glocer, a Morgan Stanley board
member and former CEO of Thomson
Reuters Corp. “People like James stand
out in a time like this. He will be known as
one of the great CEOs, not just in bank-
NEW YORK ○ Morgan Stanley unveiled a $13 billion ing but one of the great CEOs, period.”
takeover of retail brokerage ETrade Financial Corp. in Gorman’s landmark year also brought a less welcome
February, then sprang another surprise in October with the distinction: He was the only senior executive at a top
$7 billion purchase of the fund company Eaton Vance Corp. Wall Street bank to disclose that he’d gotten Covid-19. He
self-isolated and has recovered. Currently less than 20%
Inside Morgan Stanley’s Times Square skyscraper, Gorman of the staff in Morgan Stanley’s New York headquarters is
is mostly alone. The faces he sees are those of stern-looking back in the office. “We did a lot of Zoom calls,” Gorman says,
bankers in oil paintings lined along the wood-paneled wall reflecting on the challenges of lockdown. “I did them from
outside his office. They’re reminders of the people who came my home—people seeing you in casual clothes, sitting in
before him at a company that traces its roots to the Gilded your home office—and I think it gives them comfort to know
Age tycoon John Pierpont Morgan. that you’re not freaking out.” —Sridhar Natarajan
 c to r
t dire
r bes
rs fo
STRIVE MASIYIWA

Os c a
t the
CHAIRMAN AND FOUNDER,

out a
ECONET WIRELESS

beat
INTERNATIONAL LTD.

B ong
whom Scorsese,

I One of Bong’s favorite films is Raging Bull, directed by Martin

JOHANNESBURG ○ $124) to health-care workers to stay on
the job. When Covid-19 hit, he offered
His foundation paid an additional ZW$500 a day for any-
$10 million in cash and one hospitalized by the virus and

BONG
$ZW50,000 for permanent disability
other assistance to more or death. His program ran through July,
than 1,700 health-care and since its expiration some workers
have gone back on strike.
workers in Zimbabwe to Masiyiwa, whose telecommuni-

JOON- urge them not to strike

over eroding wages.
cations company operates in Africa,
Asia, Europe, and South America,
has had his run-ins with Zimbabwe’s
government, which he sees as pur-

HO
Runaway inflation in Zimbabwe has suing policies detrimental to his wire-
rendered its currency almost worth- less business. More than 90% of the
less. With $8 billion in unpaid debt, the country’s commerce is conducted via
country can barely afford services for mobile-money transactions because
its citizens, and the deterioration is of cash shortages. The government
epitomized by the woeful state of the accuses Econet, which dominates
FILMMAKER health-care system. Medicine short-
ages and recurring strikes over pay
the industry, of fueling black-market
currency trading and money launder-
and working conditions were com- ing, accusations the company denies.
mon even before the coronavirus pan- Masiyiwa sees his donations as giv-
demic. Masiyiwa, a billionaire who’s ing back to his home country, even
originally from outside of Zimbabwe’s though he lives in self-imposed exile,
capital, Harare, paid monthly stipends mostly in Johannesburg and London.
○ At the Oscars in February, from ZW$5,000 to ZW$10,000 ($62 to —Godfrey Marawanyika
his movie Parasite, a dark
comedy exploring class
differences in Seoul, became
the first non-English film to
win best picture, and Bong
became the first South Korean
to win best director.
BONG: JEAN-BAPTISTE LACROIX/AFP/GETTY IMAGES. GEORGIEVA: CHESNOT/GETTY IMAGES. MASIYIWA: JUSTIN CHIN/BLOOMBERG

Parasite smashed commercial expectations,

taking in almost $260 million in global ticket
KRISTALINA
sales against an $11 million budget, and Bong
used the movie’s success to remind myopic
American audiences that other countries
GEORGIEVA
produce great cinema, too. In October 2019,
he told New York magazine that the Oscars
were “not a big deal” and “very local,” and MANAGING DIRECTOR,
in his acceptance speech for best foreign-
language film at the Golden Globes on Jan. 5, INTERNATIONAL
he said, “Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall
barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced MONETARY FUND
to so many more amazing films.” Bong’s
2003 crime movie, Memories of Murder, was
rereleased in the U.S. and U.K. this fall, and
he’s adapting the 2014 film Sea Fog, which
he co-wrote and produced, into a new movie
project. —Kelly Gilblom ○ Since the coronavirus pandemic began, the IMF
has increased lending to member nations by 50%,
to $270 billion.
Georgieva, a Bulgarian economist with a doctorate from the country’s
Karl Marx Higher Institute of Economics (now the University of National
and World Economy), is the first IMF chief from an emerging market. Through grants, the fund has helped 29 of the poor-
est member nations cover their IMF loan payments, and Georgieva is raising money from rich nations for more relief. In
March she scored a victory when the U.S. Congress agreed to an expansion of the IMF’s lending capacity (though in
April, Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin blocked her plan to bolster members’ access to currency reserves).
This year, Georgieva has hired two female department heads to replace men, raising the women’s share to 40%—
eight of 20. The IMF has also started a YouTube channel with videos on topics such as how to compile macroeconomic
statistics, improve central bank law, and use fintech to contribute to financial inclusion. —Peter Coy
 Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

● More than 20 million people have

SWIZZ
watched Verzuz performances on
Instagram Live since they started
in March.

Music producer Timbaland was at

BEATZ
home drinking wine when he decided
to entice (perhaps taunt) his producer
friend Swizz Beatz. He posted three
videos of himself making music—or
B Photograph playing it while talking about how great
by Tracy Nguyen it made him feel—to his Instagram
feed and tagged his buddy.
Before the coronavirus pandemic,
the two had discussed going on tour,
playing hits from their catalogs and
bringing on collaborators at each stop.
Now that Covid-19 had stranded them
at home, Timbaland wanted to revive
the idea as a virtual concert: “I said, ‘I
think we should just do it now.’ ”
An hour later, the two were live on
Instagram, taking turns playing clips
of songs they’d produced for big-
name artists such as Jay-Z, Beyoncé,
48 and Missy Elliott. At the peak of their
performance, about 20,000 people
watched Timbaland prance around his
studio while Swizz played tunes on his
car stereo. “No promo, no nothing. We
just popped up on Live and went for
about five hours,” Swizz says.
Within days, the stream had
morphed into something they called
Verzuz—part performance, part com-
petition, part history lesson, with each
one- to three-hour-long episode fea-
turing two legends playing their hits
and telling stories. (There’s no offi-
cial winner, but Instagram Live lets
viewers comment in real time.) At
first, Swizz and Timbaland recruited
fellow producers before expand-
ing to recording artists such as neo-
soul singer-songwriters Erykah Badu
and Jill Scott. There have been hic-
cups: R&B producers Teddy Riley and
Babyface had some technical issues,
so the stream was cut short and
delayed a day. “The numbers tripled”
when people tuned in for the second
try, Swizz says. “People seeing us fight
Swizz Beatz and keep it moving and not fold under
in Los Angeles
pressure—that was a very important
Verzuz for us.”
Bloomberg Businessweek

B Photograph by
The audience grew this summer Andy Ryan Flores
when the duo signed up pairs includ-
ing rappers Snoop Dogg and DMX and
soul singers Gladys Knight and Patti
LaBelle. An Aug. 31 stream featuring
Brandy and Monica, rival R&B singers
in the late 1990s, peaked at 1.2 million
viewers—a number on par with what
some of the most-watched U.S. cable
networks attract in prime time.
The show’s popularity has been a
boon for Instagram Live, a feature of
the social network that hadn’t gener-
ated much enthusiasm in the music
world before the pandemic. Prior to
quarantine, musicians generally used
it to offer up a behind-the-scenes
look at a tour or recording session.
The first one to harness Live’s power
was D-Nice, a DJ in Los Angeles who
hosted marathon sets early on in the
lockdown that lured Michelle Obama,
Rihanna, and Mark Zuckerberg to
his feed. Verzuz took the idea to the
next level, giving music fans some-
thing closer to a concert experience. 49

& TIMBALAND
CO-
“They’ve changed the way stream-
ing happens,” says Fadia Kader,
CREATORS,
who works on music partnerships
for Instagram.
VERZUZ Timbaland in Miami
Swizz and Timbaland say
they’ve had offers to give Verzuz
a new home on TV or on streaming services, but services including Spotify and Apple Music—what Swizz
they decided to stay with Instagram and its 1 bil- calls the “Verzuz effect.”
lion users. (Fans who want to watch on TV can do so The second season started on Nov. 19, with rappers
through Apple Music; Instagram can only be used on Gucci Mane and Jeezy. “We’re still hands on,” Swizz says.
a phone, computer, or tablet.) Liquor brand Cîroc has “We don’t have a big, huge staff. It’s very rare we speak
sponsored the show in a multimillion-dollar deal. Artists to managers. We speak to the artists, and then manage-
who endorse sponsors with a shoutout during the broad- ment comes in.” And sometimes even two of the most
cast get a cut of the proceeds, and though Instagram successful producers of this century get a no, such as
doesn’t allow ads during streams, that could change, when 50 Cent declined to perform. “Some people will say,
Kader says. Almost every musician who’s appeared on ‘I ain’t doing it,’ ” Timbaland says. “We don’t force nobody.”
Verzuz has seen a major spike in plays on streaming �Lucas Shaw
 Bloomberg Businessweek

REED
HASTINGS
CO-CEO, NETFLIX INC.

Guard), and foreign-language programs (Dark),

LOS GATOS, CALIF. ○ Netflix making it seem as if current events hadn’t
saw the fastest growth in its affected the company at all. Although record
unemployment has forced people to rethink
23-year history when it added their spending, they’ve been more inclined to
28 million subscribers in the first cut the cord than to stop paying for Netflix,

ABDALLA nine months of 2020.

which will surpass 200 million customers by
yearend. —Lucas Shaw

This was supposed to be a tough year for

HAMDOK Netflix. Apple, Comcast, Disney, and HBO all
started services to compete with the $212 bil-
lion company. The streaming wars, the think-
PRIME MINISTER, ing went, would distract or siphon off Netflix
customers. But by the time the coronavirus
pandemic hit, Netflix had stockpiled a moun-
SUDAN tain of binge-worthy content for people stuck
at home with no theaters to go to and little
new programming from traditional networks.
And because part of Hastings’s strategy is to
release new TV seasons all at once—not to
○ The former United Nations mention that Netflix spends more than $17 bil-
50 lion annually on programming—it overwhelmed
economist implemented a its competitors with variety and volume.
half-dozen major new policies At a time when challengers couldn’t pro-
duce new entertainment, the streaming ser-
this summer, maybe the vice released popular docuseries (Tiger King),
boldest reforms in the Muslim reality shows (Love Is Blind), movies (The Old

world in a century.
HAMDOCK: ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES. HASTINGS: ERNESTO S. RUSCIO/GETTY IMAGES. BARBER: DANIEL POCKETT/GETTY IMAGES.

Sudan’s government, an alliance of civilian

and military leaders formed after a popu-
lar uprising toppled dictator Omar al-Bashir,
is meant to be a stopgap. But even with
elections expected in 2022, Hamdok has
embarked on an audacious sociopolitical
reform program—perhaps surprising since
CELESTE BARBER
he was a relatively obscure technocrat
before his elevation to the premiership, COMEDIAN
JAMES: JOSHUA RASHAAD MCFADDEN/GETTY IMAGES. HOWARD: RINGO CHIU/ZUMAPRESS.COM/ALAMY

recently serving in a senior UN post.

In July, Hamdok abolished laws against
apostasy, ended punishment by flog-
ging, criminalized female genital mutila-
tion, scrapped rules requiring women to
get a permit from a male family member ○ The Facebook fundraiser own awkwardness: Kendall Jenner calmly and
to travel with their children, and loosened coolly navigating her way down a rocky hill
prohibitions on the sale and consumption
she started in early January vs. Barber’s eye-popping, panicked plummet;
of alcohol. Perhaps most remarkable of brought in more than A$51 million singer Dua Lipa posing in a one-piece bath-
all, his government has pledged to sepa- ing suit on an exercise bike vs. Barber plopped
rate religion from the state, effectively end-
($37 million) for Australian down on a road bike that’s missing a back
ing 30 years of Islamic rule. The last global wildfire relief, the largest charity wheel.
Muslim leader to attempt such a transfor- Barber’s fame helped buoy donations to
mation was Kemal Ataturk, who turned
drive in the platform’s history. support fire services in the southeastern state
Turkey into a secular republic in the 1920s. of New South Wales, where much of the dev-
Still, Sudan remains desperately poor, As Australia’s federal and state governments astation occurred, as monthslong fires razed
its moribund economy made even more so cobbled together a relief package follow- thousands of homes and killed dozens of
by the coronavirus pandemic. Donors and ing blazes that destroyed an area the size of people as well as an estimated 1 billion animals.
investors could grow less wary, though, now New York state, Barber promoted her fund- On Jan. 14, as donations were rolling in, Barber
that the Trump administration has removed raising appeal on social media. On Instagram, commented on an Instagram post that she was
the country from the U.S. Department of where she has more than 7 million follow- “feeling the love.” To properly capture her joy,
State’s list of sponsors of terrorism, an ers, she’s best known for reenacting posts she and her husband re-created a viral video of
anachronous legacy of the al-Bashir era. in a split-screen style that contrasts the ele- a supermodel dancing poolside with an Italian
—Bobby Ghosh gance of celebrities and influencers with her millionaire. —Rebecca Jones
 December 7, 2020

I James’s favorite book is Simple Justice by Richard Kluger

LETITIA JAMES
NEW YORK STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL

○ James has filed more than

35 lawsuits against the Trump
administration this year, leading
the charge against its attempts to
disenfranchise minorities and other
voters.

The Brooklyn-bred lawyer, who in

2018 became the first Black American
and the first woman elected to the
role for the state, had a busy sum-
mer. In September, James led a group
of local governments that wanted to
stop the 2020 census from ending 51
early after the administration sought
to move up the deadline for collect-
ing results. (The U.S. Supreme Court
ruled against the coalition, which
civil rights advocates say will lead to
an undercounting of urban minori-
ties.) Earlier, in August, she alleged
fraud and corruption at the National
ALAN HOWARD
Rifle Association—chartered in New
York in 1871—claiming that members CO-FOUNDER, BREVAN HOWARD
used funds for private jets and family ASSET MANAGEMENT
trips; the NRA countersued, saying
James had misused her office for
political purposes. Howard AH Master Fund—other than that
That same month she fought LONDON ○ As the the “AH” are Howard’s initials. It’s not clear
back against attempts to hobble the coronavirus pandemic sent precisely what moves he made to double
investor cash in the first four months of
U.S. Postal Service before a rush of global markets into a tailspin, 2020, when peers returned a little less than
pandemic-induced mail-in ballots, the hedge fund manager 3% on average, according to Bloomberg’s
index of macro hedge funds, of which the
heading a suit against Trump and traded his way to a 100% gain AH Master Fund is not part. It’s also unclear
his postmaster general that aimed, in investor cash, by far the how his fund has performed since April.
(One clue: Brevan Howard’s main fund,
in part, to stop the dismantling of best among peers. which invests in the AH Master Fund, was
up almost 23% through October.) But this
mail-sorting machines. In October Traders like Howard place bets on macro
fall he began raising $500 million based on
trends, reading which way economies will
a federal judge ordered the Postal turn and then wagering on everything from
his success earlier this year.
The moneymaking spree has marked
Service to restore the machines interest rates to stocks to currencies. His
one of the most profitable phases of
specialty is rates trading using borrowed
at any facilities that couldn’t pro- money, which allows him to take bigger
Howard’s career since he co-founded his
company almost two decades ago, a dra-
cess first-class election mail quickly risks to achieve outsize returns.
matic change in fortunes after years of
That’s about all that’s known about
enough. —Cristin Flanagan the highly secretive dealings of the Brevan
mediocre returns. —Nishant Kumar
 December 7, 2020

S ● She’s spent four months in

exile since her unlikely campaign
turned into the biggest challenge
60,000 people—spooking authorities into barring her from
holding any further mass campaign events.
Tsikhanouskaya’s platform was simple: She prom-

V
ever to longtime dictator ised to release political prisoners and to step down within
Alexander Lukashenko. six months after overseeing free elections. Although her
message clearly resonated, when the results of the Aug. 9
Until last spring, Tsikhanouskaya election were tallied, Lukashenko claimed to have received
led the life of a typical Belorussian 80% of the votes in a contest the U.S. and the European

I
homemaker, focused largely on car- Union say was neither free nor fair.
ing for her two children and coping Lukashenko’s response triggered unprecedented
with the inevitable challenges of demonstrations, with crowds swelling to more than
getting by in a post-Soviet republic 100,000 but remaining mostly peaceful in the face of bru-
where the average monthly salary tal police crackdowns, mass arrests, and allegations that

A
is about $500. But for the past six detained activists were being tortured. When Tsikhanouskaya
months, she’s spent her days speak- filed a fraud complaint with the election commission on the
ing at international conferences, day after the vote, she was detained for seven hours in the
chatting with the likes of Angela capital, Minsk. That night she fled to neighboring Lithuania,
Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, and where her children had been living with friends since June.

T
spearheading the biggest demo- Becoming a public figure wasn’t easy. Tsikhanouskaya
cratic movement in the history of recalls fearing she would forget what she intended to say
the troubled country sandwiched during early interviews and speeches. But with time she
between Poland and Russia. became energized by the crowds. “I just started to talk
Tsikhanouskaya became the face from my heart,” she says. She rejects the notion that she

L
of democracy in Belarus almost by heads the opposition in Belarus, saying the movement is
accident. In May police detained her self-organizing. More important, she insists that the people
52 husband, Siarhei, a political blog- who speak out against Lukashenko’s tactics aren’t the
ger, as he prepared to challenge opposition at all: “We are the majority.”
Lukashenko for the presidency. Key to Tsikhanouskaya’s appeal, says Artyom Shraibman,
After the arrest ,

A
Tsikhanouskaya, 38,

TSIKHANO
decided to run in
Siarhei’s place and
began gathering the
signatures needed

N
to register her can-
didacy. The former
English teacher soon
received telephone
threats, prompting her to send founder of political consulting firm Sense Analytics in Minsk,

A
her children abroad—but steeling is that she’s a “reluctant politician.” Other than achieving
her resolve to run. “People began her goal of new elections, “she doesn’t want any power,”
calling me, telling me, ‘So many says Shraibman, who runs a popular Belarus politics blog
people were collecting these sig- on the Telegram messaging service, which is difficult for
natures, standing up for you,’ ” authorities to block. “She’s demonstrated a level of cour-
Tsikhanouskaya says via Zoom in age no male politician has shown.”
lightly accented English. “I realized Tsikhanouskaya’s days in exile are filled by strategy meet-
that I can’t betray those hopes.” ings with groups back in Belarus—where she yearns to
Lukashenko, who has routinely jailed political oppo- return, though she says she can’t while Lukashenko remains
nents and deployed security forces to maintain his grip on in power. She says she has few regrets about her current
power for 26 years, barred most opposition figures from position, beyond the toll it’s taken on her family; with Siarhei
running. But in July the authorities accepted the applica- in a Minsk jail, the couple’s daughter “cries every evening,
tions of Tsikhanouskaya and three nominally independent ‘I want my dad’ ”—which keeps Tsikhanouskaya focused on
candidates with no prospect of winning. As the opposition doing the work that will let her reunite the family back home.
united behind Tsikhanouskaya, she began drawing huge “I don’t have a right to cry, to panic,” she says. “I just main-
crowds, culminating in a rally on July 30 attended by some tain a cold mind and do what I have to do.” �Tony Halpin
Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

B Photograph by
Andrew Miksys

53

OUSKAYA
OPPOSITION LEADER

Tsikhanouskaya in Lithuania
Kirkpatrick in
December 7, 2020
Westchester
County in
New York

years laying the groundwork for tap-to-pay

use in the U.S. The card network says the
technology is clearly better for all parties
concerned. For consumers, tapping is about
10 times faster than dipping. For Mastercard—
as well as its rivals, plus bank issuers and
merchants—faster and more convenient
means more revenue. And research has
shown consumers are increasingly using
tap-to-pay even for smaller transactions,
where cash remains king.
But again, it’s hard to break habits.
Kirkpatrick’s first task was persuading retail-
ers big and small to upgrade their point-of-
sale systems. Then she had to cajole the
biggest banks to speed the rollout of the tap-
ready cards. Finally she had to get consumers
on board. All three tasks took on new urgency
this year.
Early in the pandemic, when stores
were selling out of disinfectant wipes and
hand sanitizer, Kirkpatrick helped shift
Mastercard’s massive marketing budget (per-
haps you’ve seen a “Priceless” ad or two) to
make sure consumers understood how they
B Photograph by could pay quickly without touching anything.
Brad Ogbonna Mastercard also sent out signage that mer-
chants could put up at checkout to let con-
sumers know they accepted the tap-ready
cards. Kirkpatrick has also been working
with the world’s largest banks and other card

LINDA issuers, sharing the data the company is see-

ing and helping them speed up their rollout of
contactless cards.

KIRKPATRICK From February to March, according to

Mastercard, contactless transactions at
supermarkets and drugstores grew three
PRESIDENT, U.S. ISSUERS, times as fast in the U.S. as noncontactless
transactions. More than half of U.S. consum-
MASTERCARD INC. ers have now used some form of contactless
payments part of the time. “Totally mind-
blowing,” Kirkpatrick says. The growth hasn’t
been only in the U.S.: In June global contact-
PURCHASE, N.Y. ○ Consumers are now using tap-to-pay less in-person transactions increased from the previous
40% of the time in-store, up from only 30% a year year in every retail category.
ago, according to Mastercard, an increase of billions For Kirkpatrick, the strongest sign that tap-to-pay tech-
of transactions. nology was here to stay came when she was scrolling
through social media and happened upon a video posted
It’s not easy to change the daily habits of consumers. But it by a popular fast-food chain telling consumers how to
happened recently with credit cards—twice. After years of do it even while ordering at the drive-thru. “That was a
swiping, American shoppers got used to dipping their cards place—the drive-thru—where some merchants were strug-
at checkout. And then this spring, with the pandemic raging gling to invest in the technology, because sometimes you
and the thought of touching anything suddenly scary, they have to replace that entire unit that you talk into,” she
changed again and started tapping. says. “When I saw that, I knew we had hit a tipping point.”
Much of the credit goes to Kirkpatrick, who’s spent —Jenny Surane
 December 7, 2020

JEONG I Jeong likes writing short stories, some of which have been

published in Korean literary journals

EUN ○ South Korea’s turnaround saw it go from
having the world’s second-worst Covid-19
outbreak in February to a per capita case
KYEONG count that’s about 1/60th of the number in
the U.S.
COMMISSIONER, South Korea is raucously democratic and relatively large,
with a population not much smaller than Italy’s and a capital
KOREA DISEASE that’s bigger and denser than New York City. So its handling
of the coronavirus may hold some lessons for the Western
CONTROL democracies that have thus far failed to control it.
Without Jeong, South Korea might not be where it is
AND PREVENTION now. In late February an outbreak was discovered among
followers of Shincheonji, a religious group that had just held
AGENCY packed services in the city of Daegu. Its adherents subse-
quently spread all over, and the church refused to hand over
their names. But Jeong persuaded Shincheonji to disclose
its members’ identities, allowing her agency to begin testing
more than 200,000 of them. She then rolled out one of the
most effective contact-tracing regimes in the world. By late
March the number of new infections in South Korea was at
100 per day, compared with more than 900 in late February.
Daily life has been normal for most of the year, all without a
single day of lockdown. —Peter Pae

LUIS
55
LACALLE
SARAH POU
PRESIDENT,
COOPER URUGUAY

COMEDIAN
○ Uruguay has the lowest Covid-19
infection and mortality rates in South
America despite sharing borders with
○ Her TikTok video with a tremendous—whether it’s ultraviolet pandemic hot spots Argentina and Brazil.
or just very powerful light—and I think you
How to Medical, which said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re
gonna test it,” she began. Then she Lacalle Pou, the son of a former president and heir to one
spoofed President Trump’s of Uruguay’s oldest political dynasties, might have assumed
shared the video on Instagram, Twitter,
suggestion that ultraviolet and YouTube. Soon Cooper—eyes wide, he’d get a honeymoon period after taking office on March 1.
brow furrowed, hair unkempt—was add- But within two weeks of starting, his government detected
light and disinfectant the first Covid-19 cases in the country of 3.5 million people,
ing more under-a-minute lip syncs with
JEONG: AHN YOUNG-JOON/AP PHOTO. COOPER: MINDY TUCKER.

injections could cure titles such as How to Mask and How to and he declared a national emergency. His decision to
LACALLE POU: FOCOUY/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

Immigration Policy, creating a new kind quickly close borders and institute widespread testing and
Covid-19, drew 25 million contact tracing is credited with preventing a major outbreak.
of political commentary by highlight-
views on social media. ing Trump’s logorrhea through her facial Rather than impose a lockdown, Lacalle Pou appealed to
expressions. The videos force audiences Uruguayans’ “responsible exercise of liberty,” as he calls
to confront whether they would tolerate his promotion of voluntary social distancing and hygiene.
Before this year, Cooper was known
anyone else saying what he says, and Economists expect Uruguay will suffer its deepest
for her office humor. She wrote cartoon
they double as cultural commentary, with recession in two decades, with gross domestic product
books titled 100 Tricks to Appear Smart
Cooper making the subtle point that a contracting 4% in 2020. But Latin America’s economy
in Meetings and How to Be Successful
Black woman could never get away with could shrink 7%. Investors have taken note, with Uruguay’s
Without Hurting Men’s Feelings. In April,
Trumpian rhetoric. Now Cooper is try- bonds returning more than 14% year-to-date through mid-
wearing a blue blazer, she lip-synced
ing to prove that she has range. Her first November compared with -0.93% for the region. Even so,
Trump addressing medical professionals
comedy sketch show, Everything’s Fine, Lacalle Pou faces the challenge of containing Covid-19 and
at a news conference: “We hit the body
hit Netflix in late October. —Sarah Frier reviving an economy that’s had slow growth. —Ken Parks
 Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

THE FRONT-LINE WORKERS

PAPA GIOVANNI XXIII HOSPITAL

MARCO RIZZI, MARIA BEATRICE

56 INFECTIOUS DISEASE STASI,
DIRECTOR GENERAL DIRECTOR

LUCA LORINI, TATIANA FERRARI,

EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT HEAD OF PREVENTION A
DIRECTOR PROTECTION
 B Photograph by Giulio Ghirardi
BERGAMO, ITALY ● Workers at the hospital risked
their lives to treat patients during a pandemic that’s
seen more than 60,000 medical workers in Italy
contract Covid-19, part of a global onslaught that’s
killed over 7,000 health-care providers worldwide.

When the coronavirus hit the West, the hospital

workers of Northern Italy waged the beachhead
battles. Among the hardest-hit hospitals was
Papa Giovanni. On Feb. 21, the day it recorded
its first Covid-19 case, it had 48 beds for infec-
tious disease patients and an intensive-care unit
with only eight. Within weeks, Papa Giovanni
was housing about 550 Covid patients, including
100 in an expanded ICU. As sickened Italians over-
whelmed the emergency room, the virus spread
among staff. About 400 out of 4,500 workers at
the hospital and nearby satellite facilities fell ill.
Italy’s national doctors’ guild has tallied more
than 200 dead; countless nurses, cleaners, and
food-service workers have also lost their lives.
Globally, during the first wave, about 14% of
Covid-19 cases were among medical workers,
according to the World Health Organization.
At Papa Giovanni, the numbers of Covid
patients had ticked up from near zero in the
STEFANO FAGIUOLI, summer to the mid-double-digits in late October,
DEPARTMENT OF MEDICINE when Bloomberg Businessweek interviewed staff. 57
R DIRECTOR Here are edited excerpts, translated from Italian,
of the stories they told about those desperate
first days. �Giulio Ghirardi and Vernon Silver

RIZZI: It was tiring. It was sad, 100 ICU beds of patients all
because many people were intubated at the same time
dead. But we had our mecha- and 500 patients in the rest of
nisms. One was to take a walk the hospital.
through the emergency room. I’m sure we’ll have a vac-
When you saw the explosive cine and return to a world
situation in the emergency that’s pretty normal—until the
room, the motivation came. next pandemic.

STASI: It was terrible days, FERRARI: There was enor-

with really strong emotions— mous difficulty getting pro-
firstly, because I lived part of tective equipment, and this
the experience at home having hospital needed a lot. For me
contracted Covid. and my team, it was a big test
No management school to procure it to deal with the
can teach how to confront daily need. Nationally, given
what we went through. You find the numbers, we weren’t pre-
energy you didn’t know you had. pared to manage a pandemic.

FAGIUOLI: In the middle of my CASATI: We feared that the

duties organizing the response, equipment wouldn’t meet the
I also became sick. For a week, needs of the patients and med-
I was worried, because I didn’t ical staff. We had to manage
know how it would go. When the situation continually, min-
I understood I was fortunate, ute to minute, and because
that it would all go well, I got there were moments when we
increasingly angry about not exceeded the limits of the sys-
being able to return quickly tem, we had to be careful that
to the hospital to help my col- it could all still work.
leagues, who were swamped. I tried not to reflect on
what was happening in my
ALBERICO CASATI, LORINI: We constructed city, the continual wailing of
AND TECHNICAL AND ASSET this marvelous “cathedral”: ambulances.

DIRECTOR
 COLIN
KAEPERNICK
ACTIVIST

○ Kaepernick announced two campaign Kaepernick started

major projects this summer, a in 2016 to raise awareness in
six-part Netflix series about Black and Latino communities
his high school years and about higher education, self-
a first-look deal with Walt empowerment, and interacting
Disney Co., which includes an with law enforcement pledged
ESPN docuseries chronicling more than $1.75 million to
the past five years. fight the virus and provide
legal support to Black Lives

KAEPERNICK: CARMEN MANDATO/GETTY IMAGES. YUQUN: QILAI SHEN/BLOOMBERG. SHOTWELL: ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG. EWENIYI: COURTESY EWENIYI. ODUFUWA: COURTESY ODUFUWA
The decision in 2016 to kneel Matter protesters.
during the national anthem The Netflix series, Colin in
at the start of NFL games—a Black & White, a collaboration
58 protest against police brutality with Emmy award-winning
and racial inequality—cost director Ava DuVernay, will
I In fo Kaepernick his job as a focus on how Kaepernick’s
urth
gra
de quarterback. In the years since, adolescence shaped his
, Ka
ep he’s become a civil rights icon, activism. (A release date
advocating for causes that hasn’t been announced.) The
er
nic

came to the forefront in 2020 partnership with Disney will

kw
rot

after the police killing of George feature stories that explore

ea

Floyd and the disproportionate race and showcase the work

lett
er to

death rate from Covid- of minority directors and

19 among Black people. A producers. —Karen Toulon
his fut
self ure

correctly predicting that his height would be 6'4" and that he would play for the San Francisco 49ers

NINGDE, CHINA ○ than any other company, Covid-19, and Musk’s main
makes one car there: the interest: cheaper batteries
A February deal to
ZENG supply batteries to
Tesla Inc. helped
Model 3. And unlike in other
countries, more and more of
the cars in China are running
and cars. “He’s a fun guy,”
Zeng said. Batteries are
Zeng’s obsession, too. His
on CATL’s lithium-ion phos- glass and steel headquar-
YUQUN cut the price of
the automaker’s
phate batteries, which are
cheap enough to let Tesla
trim 10% off the price, a
ters in southeastern China is
even built to resemble one,
and batteries have made
CHAIRMAN AND CEO, Model 3 to about big step toward solidifying him an estimated $21 bil-
a hold on the mass market. lion fortune. They could
$37,000 in China, Zeng, who has a doc- make him more money yet.
CONTEMPORARY cheaper than torate in physics, has known Both companies are open-
Tesla CEO and co-founder ing plants in Germany,
AMPEREX anywhere else. Elon Musk for some time; in though neither side is say-
an interview with Bloomberg ing that they’re working
TECHNOLOGY CO. Tesla, which sells more News this year, Zeng said together. —John Liu and
electric vehicles in China they text about technology, Chunying Zhang
 ecember 7, 2020
RELAX! WE DIDN’T EMMANUEL
FORGET ABOUT ... MACRON
President of France
THE USUAL
SUSPECTS MITCH
MCCONNELL
Yes, we’re aware of Tesla, and Majority leader of
no, we didn’t overlook Trump.
(How could we?) We just
figured that putting certain
the U.S. Senate
GWYNNE SHOTWELL
names on the Bloomberg 50 ANGELA MERKEL
wouldn’t surprise anyone, so
we gave the most predictably Chancellor of PRESIDENT AND COO,
notable people their own list. Germany
SPACEX
WILLIAM BARR NARENDRA MODI
U.S. attorney general Prime minister of
India
AMY CONEY HAWTHORNE, CALIF. ○ In May, SpaceX became
BARRETT RUPERT MURDOCH the first private company to send American astronauts
Associate justice of Co-chairman, Fox into space.
the U.S. Supreme Corp.
Elon Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp. in 2002 with the goal
Court of revolutionizing space travel and making life multiplanetary; Shotwell, who
ELON MUSK oversees day-to-day operations and growth, was one of his earliest employees.
Before being introduced to Musk, she spent a decade at Aerospace Corp., a
JEFF BEZOS CEO, Tesla Inc. large defense contractor, then a few years at Microcosm Inc., a private space
CEO, Amazon.com and SpaceX startup that designs and builds low-cost rockets and rocket parts.
In 2012, SpaceX became the first private company to deliver cargo to and
Inc. from the International Space Station. Then, this May 30, after years of working
ALEXANDRIA with NASA and learning from cargo runs and countless safety tests, SpaceX
made history: Its Falcon 9 rocket carrying its Crew Dragon capsule with Bob
JOE BIDEN OCASIO-CORTEZ Behnken and Doug Hurley aboard blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center
President-elect of the Member of the U.S. in Florida at 3:22 p.m., bound for the space station. The astronauts returned
on Aug. 2, splashing down safely in the Gulf of Mexico. “This is really just the
U.S. House of beginning,” Shotwell said at a news conference afterward. “We’re starting
the journey of bringing people regularly to and from low Earth orbit and on
59
Representatives
to the moon and then ultimately on to Mars.” —Dana Hull
JAIR BOLSONARO
President of Brazil LARRY PAGE
Co-director, Alphabet
SERGEY BRIN
Co-director, Alphabet NANCY PELOSI
Inc. Speaker of the U.S. ODUNAYO
House of
WARREN BUFFETT Representatives EWENIYI &
Chairman and CEO,
Berkshire Hathaway VLADIMIR PUTIN DAMILOLA
Inc. President of Russia
ODUFUWA Eweniyi and Odufuwa are
friends who work in finan-
cial tech. After starting
TIM COOK MASAYOSHI SON an organization in 2018
CEO, Apple Inc. CEO, SoftBank CO-FOUNDERS, to bring women together
to socialize, they formed
Group Corp. THE FEMINIST the Feminist Coalition in
July to champion equal-
POPE FRANCIS
DONALD TRUMP
COALITION ity in Nigeria. By October
the 13-member group,
which includes journalists,
LEBRON JAMES President of the U.S. activists, lawyers, and cre-
Forward, atives, had thrown its sup-
port behind a long-running
Los Angeles Lakers XI JINPING call to disband a national police unit,
President of the LAGOS, NIGERIA ○ the Special Anti-Robbery Squad,
BORIS JOHNSON People’s Republic of The tech-savvy Nigerians with a history of abuse. SARS was
disbanded, but peaceful protests
Prime minister of the China raised almost 148 million demanding reforms were met with
U.K. naira ($388,000) in two government crackdowns that left
more than 50 dead. As the protests
MARK weeks to support protests gained steam, the coalition used
KIM JONG UN ZUCKERBERG against police brutality social media to mobilize 600 law-
yers to give legal aid to the hundreds
Supreme leader Chairman and CEO, and corruption. arrested. —Yinka Ibukun
of North Korea Facebook Inc.
 ● As many as 26 million people participated in Black Lives Floyd’s killing had the impact it did?
Matter protests in the weeks after the police killing of Tometi: The fact that a Black man could be quite liter-
George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May, making it one of ally choked to death in broad daylight without any mean-
the largest movements in U.S. history. ingful intervention was traumatic. People were confronted
with the reality that anti-Black racism is deadly—and that
Cullors, Garza, and Tometi started BLM in 2013 after it continued to persist despite all that was going on [with
George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin, Covid-19]. They didn’t have a job to go to or other respon-
an unarmed Black teenager visiting family in Florida. For sibilities that would normally have kept them preoccupied.
seven years, BLM has helped organize protests against They could not look away.
police brutality, culminat- How involved was BLM in
ing on June 6 when more organizing protests?

BLACK
than a half-million people Cullors: We supported
gathered in 500-plus loca- protests that happened
tions around the world. In across the country.
the months that followed, In Minneapolis, I worked
the U.S. has had its big- directly with the Black
gest collective reckoning Visions Collective, which
on racism since the civil was a former BLM chapter.
rights era. Companies have Garza: I wasn’t on the
pledged to hire more Black people to positions of power; ground. Protests are the most difficult part of our move-
grocery staples and Washington, D.C.’s football team nixed ment but not what encompasses all the work that we do.
their racist branding; and police budgets have been reviewed We were also gearing up for a massive election cycle. The
for cuts. A majority of Americans now say they support organizations that I started, the Black Futures Lab and the
BLM, up from 43% in 2016, according to the Pew Research Black to the Future Action Fund, were busy trying to get
Center. Edited excerpts from the co-founders’ conversation people to take their protests to
on Nov. 17 with Bloomberg’s Rebecca Greenfield: the polls. We spent our time reg-

LIV
istering voters and have partner-
Bloomberg Businessweek: Why do you think George ships with 15 Black-led grassroots
60

Tometi (left)
and Cullors in
Los Angeles

B Photograph by
Djeneba Aduayom
 Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

B Photograph by
Bethany Mollenkof

Garza in Oakland, Calif.

VES organizations in nine states.

Support for BLM has waned
in part because of violence at
some rallies.
the conversation about how we invest in Black communities.
Alicia, why did you step back from BLM to focus on
electoral politics?
Garza: Movements on the left have largely been ambivalent
61

Cullors: My view is White supremacists were showing up to about electoral politics and electoral organizing. Everything
protest and committing acts of violence and damaging prop- we leave on the table, we leave for someone else to eat. Too
erty. So why blame it on Black Lives Matter? Unless you’re often our communities are engaged symbolically, but when
using it as a tool to try to win elections. Unfortunately we had it comes to the substance of what it means to change rules
to spend a lot of and move money,
our time talking to all of a sudden

MATTER
the media about people ghost.
rioting and loot- Patrisse, you
ing instead of hav- sent a letter to
ing a conversation the president-
around what really elect and vice
is happening. president-
How did BLM elect. What do
come to push PATRISSE CULLORS, ALICIA GARZA & you hope to
for defunding discuss?
the police? OPAL TOMETI, CO-FOUNDERS Cullors: I’m hope-
Cullors: ful that we’ll be
Everybody’s able to sit down
obsessed with the defund slogan. They’re not actually paying with them to talk about every single issue that Black folks
attention to the heart of the ask. We’re calling for a reinvest- are dealing with but specifically about police violence and
ment into our communities or a reimagining of public safety. mass incarceration. Our organizations talked to over a
Black people need more resources. You can simply walk into million Black voters in this election cycle. It’s time for this
a Black neighborhood and see that with your own eyes. We administration to be accountable to the forces that helped
need to lessen our obsession with a slogan and show up for push them over the finish line.
 Bloomberg Businessweek

DONNA LANGLEY
WANG CHAIRMAN, UNIVERSAL FILMED
ENTERTAINMENT GROUP

XING NEW YORK ○ When Covid-19 struck, Langley

released Trolls World Tour online, a move that earned

CHAIRMAN Universal the ire of theater owners—and $100 million in

streaming revenue.
AND CEO, Langley has helped oversee some of Hollywood’s most successful franchises:

MEITUAN INC.
Bourne, Minions, and The Fast and the Furious. This year she created a new
category of film, “premium video on demand,” when she put the Trolls movie
and The King of Staten Island, starring Saturday Night Live’s Pete Davidson,
online for a $20 streaming fee when almost all U.S. theaters were closed. The
chains wanted Universal to delay the releases; they didn’t like the precedent
of new films with potentially big box offices going straight to video. Industry
leader AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. even said it would boycott future
releases from the studio. Langley eventually struck a deal with AMC that
reduces how long Universal has to wait to make films available to at-home
BEIJING ○ The delivery company, audiences after they’re in theaters. (Other studios are seeking similar
arrangements.) Langley intends to make premium video on demand Universal’s
which became a lifeline when lockdown new release model. —Kelly Gilblom
restrictions were imposed across China, has
seen its share price surge more than 180%
62
since the beginning of the year, swelling
Wang’s fortune to over $20 billion.

China’s coronavirus-fighting measures

were among the strictest in the world, with
many residents forbidden from leaving their
apartment complexes. That left Meituan as
one of the only ways for millions of people
to get basic supplies—not to mention delivery
favorites such as dumplings and spicy
WANG: VCG/GETTY IMAGES. LANGLEY: ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ/GETTY IMAGES. BRAY: ALANA PETERSON/REDUX.

noodles. Led by Wang, an engineer who

dropped out of a U.S. doctoral program to
found a series of social media apps before
starting Meituan in 2010, the company
handled about 15 million food deliveries a day
during the lockdown. In many places its riders,
who wear distinctive yellow outfits bearing its
kangaroo logo, seemed to make up most of
ZEYED: SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES. WILLIAMS: KAREN E. SEGRAVE

the street traffic.

Although life in China is mostly back to
normal, consumers are still sticking with
delivery. Meituan delivered 24.5 million orders
a day in the second quarter, a 7% uptick from
a year ago. Wang is nonetheless hedging
his bets by expanding into services for MOHAMMED BIN ZAY
consumers who do go out, offering restaurant
reservations, hotel rooms, and movie tickets. CROWN PRINCE, EMIRAT
—Venus Feng
 TIM BRAY
FORMER VICE
PRESIDENT,
AMAZON.COM INC.

SEATTLE ○ In May, Bray along with two activists at headquarters who’d

already been campaigning to get Amazon to
resigned from his job as a address its impact on climate change and were
protest against the firing now highlighting the workers’ plight. (Amazon
said that it changed more than 150 procedures
of workers and employee in its facilities to accommodate social distanc-
popular with celebrities

activists who’d criticized ing and that dismissed workers violated policy
lub

or endangered colleagues.)
tc

warehouse conditions as
gh

ni On May 1, Bray quit, and the explanatory

a
u ry, Covid-19 cases mounted, blog post he published made international
xb headlines. His decision was unprecedented:
e Ro a move he estimates cost People close to Amazon’s brain trust typically
at th
A . was him $1 million in salary and haven’t been publicly receptive to address-
I Langley ’s first job in L . ing worker unrest, and the company ramped
unvested shares. up a public-relations campaign to stress that
its warehouses are safe. In the post, Bray,
Bray was the highest-profile person to speak who’s now advising startups and podcasting,
up during a wave of activism at the tech talked about curtailing Amazon’s influence: A
giant. In March, Amazon fired two warehouse “combination of antitrust and living-wage and
○ He upended Middle Eastern workers in what they said was retaliation for worker-empowerment legislation, rigorously
speaking up about safety conditions. Two enforced, offers a clear path forward.”
geopolitics in September more warehouse workers were fired in April, —Matt Day
when he normalized relations
63
with Israel, the first time that’s
happened in the region since
Jordan did it 26 years ago.

The decision by the United Arab Emirates’

de facto leader could prove to be the most
consequential diplomatic breakthrough in the
DARRIN
Middle East in a generation. MBZ, as he’s widely
known, has pursued an aggressive foreign
policy, deploying military power (participating
in wars in Yemen and Libya) and engaging in
WILLIAMS
economic activity (investing in ports along the
Red Sea and the Horn of Africa) to allow his tiny CEO, SOUTHERN
country to play an outsize role in regional and
international affairs. Although the agreement BANCORP INC.
with Israel has no timeline, it swiftly made MBZ
a pioneer: Bahrain and Sudan followed the UAE’s
example, and other Muslim states are said to
be contemplating it, eager to get their hands
on Israeli technology and military supplies and ARKADELPHIA, ARK. ○ The banker was part of a successful
add partners to an alliance against Iran—not to
mention scoring points with Washington. Their effort to add $10 billion for community development finance
enthusiasm could grow as the economic fruits institutions in the second round of Paycheck Protection
of diplomacy become evident; the agreement
between the UAE and Israel is expected to lead Program loans.
to bilateral trade of $2 billion a year, eventually
rising to $6.5 billion, according to Israel’s finance Williams, a former lawyer, rose from relative obscurity when he was tapped to be a member
ministry. —Bobby Ghosh of President Trump’s Great American Economic Revival initiative, which also included Jamie
Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., and David Solomon, chairman and CEO
of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Their conversations with Trump and Secretary of the Treasury
Steven Mnuchin ultimately led the Small Business Administration, which administered the
$350 billion program, to earmark the money for so-called CDFIs.
Southern Bancorp is one of the largest of about 1,100 such institutions, which the Clinton
administration chartered to invest in the poorest U.S. communities. This summer, Williams’s
YED AL NAHYAN bank wrote $111 million in PPP loans and gave away $125,000 to small businesses in the most
Covid-devastated places in the Mississippi Delta. In October, Bank of America Corp. Chairman
and CEO Brian Moynihan took a 5% stake in Southern Bancorp. Williams plans to use the
T E OF ABU DHABI financial injection and the publicity surrounding the deal—as well as Big Business’s promise
to do more about racial inequality—to double the bank’s $1.6 billion in assets over the next
decade and whittle away at the region’s wealth gap. —Jeff Green
 December 7, 2020

distinguishes it, though, is that the screen can

also pipe in a prerecorded simulacrum of a pro-
fessional spin class or, for $39 a month, let
cyclers check out a wider range of recordings
and join live remote classes, with the instructors
barking motivation. More than 1.3 million Peloton
owners pay the subscription fee, roughly dou-
ble the number from a year ago, the company
says. There’s also a growing base of subscribers
who pay $13 a month to stream classes to their
phone, tablet, or TV in lieu of laying out $1,895 for
Peloton’s go-to bike or significantly more for one
of its treadmills. “Word has gotten out about what
Peloton is and why it’s special,” says Foley, whose
company is now valued at roughly $30 billion.
For much of 2020, the unprecedented demand
for Peloton’s products has collided with the lim-
its of pandemic supply chains, often leaving cus-
tomers griping about weekslong waits for their
bikes. “I think that for a long time we’re going to
be scrambling to increase our capacity,” Foley
says, adding that he hopes to resolve some out-
standing supply issues by April. For now, he says,
the company has slashed its ad spending to avoid
inflating expectations.
Foley shrugs off questions about Peloton’s
stamina and post-pandemic potential, noting that
B Photograph by the company has at least doubled its revenue each
Laurel Golio Foley in New York year since its 2012 founding. At the center of his
bullish case is the degree to which Peloton’s pricey
hardware and gamified software can lock custom-
ers into the classes. Why go back to the gym in
2021, the thinking goes, now that you’ve already

JOHN FOLEY got the bike and a digital spin instructor at home?
Indeed, Covid has made converts of tons
of people who swore they’d never spring for a
CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, Peloton, leaving the company’s widely mocked ad
campaign from the 2019 holiday shopping season
PELOTON INTERACTIVE INC. a distant memory. Peloton expects to reach close
to $4 billion in annual revenue by the end of the
fiscal year in June. As for whether this is the peak,
he says, “I could see us with 20 or 30 million sub-
NEW YORK ○ Revenue from Peloton’s exercise bikes, scribers in the not-too-distant future.”
treadmills, and services grew to $757.9 million through Fitness brands like NordicTrack and Echelon have added
September, an increase of 232% from the same period a guided video instruction to their hardware and are eager to
year earlier. carve off some of Peloton’s success. So is Apple Inc., which h
has said it will introduce an app with remote fitness classe es
Foley would like to stress that he’s rooting for an end to the by yearend and charge $3 a month less than Peloton. Apple e’s
coronavirus pandemic, just like everyone else. That said, most relevant hardware, though, is its health-monitoring
his business has more than tripled in a year, so he’s trying smartwatch. And Peloton’s early branding lead is formidable.
to figure out how to keep its hot streak going once gyms The more Peloton customers use their bikes, the more likely
are a thing again. it is that they’ll buy one of the company’s treadmills and con n-
For the uninitiated, a Peloton stationary exercise bike vert friends, says Laura Martin, an analyst for Needham & Co o.,
comes with a high-resolution touchscreen monitor that an investment bank and financial adviser. “Thanks to Covid d,”
can simulate city streets or mountain paths. What really she says, “Peloton has an eight-month lead.” —Mark Gurma an
 Bloomber

BYJU RAVEENDRAN
FOUNDER AND CEO,
THINK & LEARN PVT LTD.

sports stadiums and doing exam prep for

BENGALURU, INDIA ○ Byju’s, prospective engineers and businesspeople
his online education app, had in large auditoriums. The Chan Zuckerberg
Initiative, Bond Capital Associates LLC
73 million users in October, (co-founded by Mary Meeker), and
up from more than 40 million BlackRock Inc. are backing his vision, driv-
ing Byju’s valuation from $8 billion in January
in January. to $12 billion in October. —Saritha Rai

GUY Coronavirus lockdowns sent India’s

economy into its first contraction in decades,
but for a few entrepreneurs the crisis has
also meant opportunity: Revenue for Byju’s

FIERI is expected to double, to more than $1 bil-

lion, in the fiscal year ending next March.
The app’s lessons include everything
from drawing for kindergartners to quantum

CELEBRITY CHEF
physics for high school seniors. Raveendran
introduced it in 2015 to connect teachers in
India with students just as affordable smart-
phones and cheap wireless data gave many
of the country’s 250 million school-age chil-
dren access to technology.
The son of schoolteachers, Raveendran
○ He raised more than $21.5 million got his start as a star tutor who jetted
around India, teaching high school math at
in seven weeks to assist unemployed
restaurant workers.
65
On March 27, as businesses across the U.S. were
starting to feel the devastating effects of pandemic-
related closures, Fieri started the Restaurant Employee
Relief Fund. The vast majority of the money he raised
came after personal pleas to the likes of Moët
Hennessy USA, PepsiCo, and Uber Eats, whose spon-
THE VACCINE

FIERI: FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES. RAVEENDRAN: PAUL YEUNG/BLOOMBERG. VACCINE CHASERS: COURTESY BETH ISRAEL DEACONESS
sorship has collectively helped roughly 43,000 people
receive $500 grants.
CHASERS

MEDICAL CENTER, FELIX SCHMITT/CONTACT PRESS IMAGES, JOHN CAIRNS, XIE HUANCHI/ZUMA PRESS, TIMOTHY NWACHUKWU/REDUX
The host of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives has also
produced a documentary, Restaurant Hustle 2020,
spotlighting the challenges the industry continues to
face. It airs on the Food Network in December, which DAN BAROUCH CHEN WEI KIZZMEKIA Institute of Allergy Institute at the
is also when the self-appointed mayor of Flavortown Director, Center Major general, CORBETT and Infectious Nuffield Department
for Virology & People’s Liberation Research fellow and Diseases, of Medicine,
opens his delivery-only chain, Guy Fieri’s Flavortown Vaccine Research, Army, and team lead Bethesda, Md. University of Oxford
Kitchen, in almost 200 locations, including Los Angeles Beth Israel researcher, for coronavirus
and Minneapolis. Dishes include the Real Cheezy Deaconess Academy of Military research, SARAH GILBERT UGUR SAHIN
Medical Center, Medical Sciences, Vaccine Research Professor of CEO, BioNTech SE,
burger, which comes with Fieri’s signature donkey Boston Beijing Center, National vaccinology, Jenner Mainz, Germany
sauce. —Kate Krader

○ Researchers from designing new technologies, and starting

late-stage clinical trials with tens of thou-
GILBERT countries around the globe sands of healthy participants.
are developing more than Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech—and,
separately, Moderna Inc.—were the first to
200 experimental coronavirus see their candidates show signs of success
vaccines, according to the after they prevented more than 90% of symp-
BAROUCH tomatic infections in trials. AstraZeneca Plc
World Health Organization, and the University of Oxford followed, dis-
which have entered playing lower levels of efficacy in an interim
analysis. Within weeks other front-runners will
an trials. also report on whether their versions are safe
and effective, opening a door to emergency
SAHIN scientists are the vanguard of the authorizations from regulators. The Pfizer-
to develop a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2. BioNTech shot was authorized in the U.K. on
ot has been developed and approved Dec. 2. As more get a green light, the world
than four years, so what they, fellow could soon have a way to protect against a
CHEN ists, and the drug companies they’re virus that’s taken 267,000 lives in the U.S. and
g with have accomplished is signifi- 1.5 million globally—and a glimmer of hope for
entifying the virus’s genetic sequence, a return to normalcy. —Riley Griffin
CORBETT
 ○ Promoters have raised over listing. The company it invests in instantly
becomes a public one, without many of the
$60 billion this year—more
SPECIAL than in the previous 10 years
combined—for companies that
hassles that go along with a traditional IPO.
Another reason SPACs were big this year:
The market volatility that followed the Covid-
19 lockdowns made the spring and summer

PURPOSE don’t have a business yet. a scary time to try to sell new stock. SPACs
offer businesses a surer deal—just take
this money we’ve already raised. But why
They came out of nowhere to dominate the would someone buy shares in a company

ACQUISITION market for initial public offerings in 2020.

Special purpose acquisition companies, also
known as blank checks, are empty corporate
that doesn’t even have a business yet? In a
world of low interest rates and high valuations
on other stocks, some see SPACs as a
shells whose sponsors raise money from reasonable place to park money for a while.
COMPANIES investors and then look to buy into another
business, usually a private one. A SPAC’s
most valuable asset, besides all that cash
A SPAC is typically structured so you can get
money out if you don’t like the deal it makes,
and there’s a chance you’ll be getting in early
from investors, is arguably its stock market on the next hot company. —Crystal Tse

MADISON CAWTHORN
REPRESENTATIVE-ELECT, NORTH CAROLINA

○ The 25-year-old is the youngest Republican ever elected

to the House of Representatives and will be the first U.S.
lawmaker born in the 1990s.

HEHIR: ILYA S. SAVENOK/GETTY IMAGES. CAWTHORN: COURTESY OF THE COMMITTEE ON ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE 2020 REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE. VIYA: IMAGINECHINA.
Donald Trump lost the election, but his message resonated with more than 73 million
66 people, and Republicans gained seats in the House. The telegenic Cawthorn, who
won North Carolina’s 11th District, supported the president and appears game to carry
on his spirit under the Biden administration. During the election, Cawthorn dealt with
controversies around sexual misconduct and racism (he denied the accusations),
as well as an Instagram post that seemed to glorify Hitler. (Cawthorn said that a
trip to Hitler’s vacation house in Germany had been on his “bucket list” and “did not
disappoint.”) After his race was called, he continued channeling Trump’s bombastic

JASON style, tweeting, “Cry more, lib.” Cawthorn has been using a wheelchair since a 2014

COVID TRACKING PROJECT: KENT HERNANDEZ, COURTESY ROBINSON MEYER, COURTESY ERIN KISSANE, COURTESY JEFF HAMMERBACHER
car accident and says he wants to make health care his signature issue.
The election of someone his age was one of many political firsts in the U.S. in
November. Notable others include the first Korean-American women to serve in the
House: Republican Michelle Steel of California and Democrat Marilyn Strickland

HEHIR
of Washington state. Democrat Cori Bush is the first Black woman to represent
Missouri, and Cynthia Lummis is the first female senator from Wyoming. In New
York, Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones will be sworn in as the first openly gay
Black representatives. And in Delaware, new state Senator Sarah McBride becomes
the highest-ranking transgender lawmaker in the country. —Erik Wasson

DOCUMENTARIAN
I Hehir played baseball at Williams College

○ Hehir’s The Last Dance, a 10-part The first episode of The Last Dance Jordan appeared a little overweight
docuseries about Michael Jordan’s aired when most of the U.S. had been and glassy-eyed for interviews; he sat
final season with the Chicago Bulls in lockdown for a month and live alone, a cigar and drink sometimes
in 1998, drew 6.3 million viewers sports were almost totally on hiatus. at hand. Hehir, who made the ESPN
the night it premiered on ESPN ESPN moved up the release by two docs Andre the Giant and The Fab
and ESPN2 in April, a record for months to give sports-starved fans Five, about the University of Michigan
a documentary on the network, something to get excited about—and basketball team of the early ’90s,
and an average of 5.6 million something to justify the $8 a month used the access to Jordan and the
over the following month, making cable subscribers were spending. previously unseen footage to tap
it the most-watched doc in the Hehir wove decades-old, behind- into nostalgia, distract viewers, and
network’s history. the-scenes video with modern-day complicate the picture of one of the
interviews and commentary into most famous athletes of all time.
a rumination on the price of glory. —Ira Boudway
Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

○ One of China’s most popular heightening the sense of urgency.

media personalities, she hit Products are known to sell out.
record numbers this year with Already popular before the
her shopping broadcasts, coronavirus pandemic, Viya—
averaging 20 million views in the name is a play on “slightly
April—double the figure in late hoarse,” in reference to her husky
2019—as consumers opted voice—and streamers like her are
to transact from the safety of increasingly essential to global
their sofas. brands trying to extend their
reach in China. Multinationals
Viya dominates China’s $60 billion such as Procter & Gamble Co.
livestream shopping industry. On and Tesla Inc. have turned to
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s her to get their goods in front of
e-commerce platform, she plays consumers. So, too, has Wuhan-
the enthusiastic saleswoman based Casic Rocket Technology
and master of ceremonies, push-
ing instant noodles, cosmetics,
and more during broadcasts that
are part infomercial and part vari-
ety show. Links to buy the items
Co., which enlisted Viya to offer
her most unusual item to date: the
right to send a small payload into
space. That went for about 40 mil-
lion yuan ($6.1 million) on a show
VIYA
she endorses aren’t released in April. —Jinshan Hong and LIVESTREAMER
until five seconds after her pitch, Allen K. Wan

67
○ Since early March the compiling a spreadsheet
that became the backbone
Covid Tracking Project
THE COVID has cataloged more than
170 million tests, becoming
of something more compre-
hensive: a full-scale public-health
reporting initiative that’s now run by
300 volunteers and a core group of paid

TRACKING the authoritative source for

virus statistics in the U.S.
staff supported by grants.
In addition to keeping tabs on state-
by-state numbers for cases, tests, hos-
pitalizations, and outcomes, the Covid
Madrigal and Meyer, staff writers at the

PROJECT Atlantic, started the project after they

broke news in early March that the U.S. was
vastly overrepresenting the number of peo-
Tracking Project also started monitor-
ing racial disparities and nursing homes.
Johns Hopkins University uses CTP stats
for its Testing Insights Initiative, and the
ple who had been tested for Covid-19. They cable networks often source project
put out a call for volunteers, and Kissane, data in their tallies of cases and deaths.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL, now the CTP’s managing editor, was the —Drew Armstrong
first to sign on. Hammerbacher, a venture
ROBINSON MEYER, capitalist and data scientist, was Madrigal’s The Testing Insights Initiative is a collab-
college roommate. oration among groups at Johns Hopkins
ERIN KISSANE & The question they wanted to answer: that include the Bloomberg School of
How many Americans were getting Public Health, and it’s supported in part
JEFF HAMMERBACHER, tested for Covid-19? As the coronavirus by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Michael
spread, that seemed like one for the fed- Bloomberg, the founder of Bloomberg
CO-FOUNDERS eral government, but it didn’t have the Philanthropies, is also the founder and
infrastructure in place to produce a reli- majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which
able answer. So the co-founders began owns Bloomberg Businessweek.

MADRIGAL MEYER KISSANE HAMMERBACHER

 Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

● She gave a boost to Morris Brown College’s of about $100,000. But her move helped set off a wave of
$5 million fundraising campaign, which helped it apply activism in the league. Two more WNBA players, including
for reaccreditation. the Dream’s leading scorer, Tiffany Hayes, subsequently
opted out to join BLM protests instead of playing.
When the WNBA announced it was restarting its season, Then in August, after police in Kenosha, Wis., shot Jacob
Montgomery had a choice to make. She could report to the Blake, players for the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks refused to
league’s “wubble”—its Covid-free bubble—or she could skip take the court for their playoff game, leading to cancella-
the season and devote herself to Atlanta’s reeling Black tions across all the major leagues. “When Jacob Blake got
community. On June 18 she tweeted that she’d sit it out. shot, the whole NBA stopped, the WNBA stopped, MLB,”
The next day, Juneteenth, she threw a party to feed Black Montgomery says. “While, yes, it was disappointing and,
Lives Matter protesters and homeless people in the city’s yes, we still have a long way to go, that’s progress. A whole
Centennial Olympic Park. “My mom was telling me when league stopping because of police brutality? That’s never
people don’t feel that their voices are heard, they have to happened before.”
make it felt,” she says. “I started to think about what ‘make During the bubble season, the NBA and WNBA both
it felt’ meant to me. It doesn’t mean just raising your voice had Black Lives Matter painted on their courts and allowed
but having action behind it.” players to swap social justice messages in place of their
Montgomery used her season off to work on a voter names on jerseys. Next season, though, the NBA will be
registration campaign in Georgia and to give speeches back to normal because, as
about activism to student-athletes at her Commissioner Adam Silver

E
alma mater, the University of has said, people just “want

E
Connecticut, as well as to watch a basketball game.”

N
Morehouse College A WNBA spokesperson says

E
and Georgia Tech. the league hasn’t made a

R
And she focused decision about on-court dis-
hard on saving a plays yet.
68 lesser-known Montgomery, who plans to
school, Morris return next season, says that
Brown. Founded in whatever happens, her activism
1881, it was the first will continue. She notes that 13 owners of
college in Georgia major U.S. sports teams contributed to the
established by mem-
bers of the Black community. But in 2002

MONTGO
prosecutors charged its then-president with
defrauding the government and students,
and the school lost accreditation. The pres-
ident pleaded guilty to embezzlement in
2006 and got probation.
Morris Brown survived, but only barely.
Its enrollment plummeted from a high of
2,700 students to fewer than 50. At one
point the water was turned off because of an unpaid bill. Trump campaign, making rules against athlete protests
Montgomery brought attention to the school’s plight and seem hypocritical. Earlier this year she criticized Dream
encouraged her fans to donate to its fundraising drive. co-owner (and U.S. Senator) Kelly Loeffler for saying that
She’s now planning to raise funds for tuition assistance Black Lives Matter protesters wanted to “destroy American
and a gaming center for a new e-sports program. “She’s principles.” “There are a lot of people that just want to
put out the word that Morris Brown is still open,” says Kevin turn on the TV, and they want sports to entertain them,”
James, the school’s current president. Montgomery says. “A lot of athletes are saying we can’t just
Originally from St. Albans, W.Va., Montgomery was an do that. I’m still a part of the Black community, and I am still
All-American at UConn and won a national championship going to be that when I leave the court.”
in 2009. She’s been more of a role player than a super- She’s also going to keep working on behalf of Morris
star since, though she was an All-Star in 2011 and won Brown and other historically Black colleges. “It’s our
championships with the Minnesota Lynx in 2015 and 2017. history,” she says. “Every time a school is underfunded
She’d been the Dream’s starting point guard for the past and loses its accreditation or has to shut down, a lit-
two seasons. tle part of our history dies with it.” �Dina Bass and
By sitting out, Montgomery had to give up her salary Brandon Kochkodin
 Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

B Photograph by
Braylen Dion

69

OMERY GUARD,
ATLANTA
DREAM

Montgomery in Atlanta
 Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

MARIA RESSA
CEO, RAPPLER INC.
FORREST LI
FOUNDER, CHAIRMAN,
AND GROUP CEO,
PASIG CITY, PHILIPPINES ○ critics of President Rodrigo Duterte say SEA LTD.
is an example of political persecution.
She faces up to six years in He’s denied any role in the case, with his
prison after being found guilty spokesman calling it the result of “bad
journalism” and “bad lawyering.”
of “cyber libel” in a landmark Ressa has won wide international
SINGAPORE ○ Sea, now worth
case for press freedom. praise for investigations of alleged about $83 billion, is the most valuable
police abuses in the president’s anti-
drug efforts. She’s carried on despite
company in Southeast Asia.
In June a judge ruled on the charge,
which can be initiated when a party who what journalism advocates say is a
believes he’s been defamed requests campaign of official intimidation, includ- Born in China, Li adopted the English name “Forrest”
a prosecution. The ask had come from ing a tax evasion case and a claim by after watching Forrest Gump; the warmth, persistence,
businessman Wilfredo Keng, who said regulators that financial support Rappler and courage of the title character appealed to him. In
Rappler defamed him when the online received violated a ban on foreign owner- June 2005, while he was getting his master’s degree at
news site cited a report about his alleged ship of media. Free on bail, she’s fighting Stanford, he attended his girlfriend’s graduation ceremony
links to drug smuggling in a story. all those allegations—and still publishing. at the school—the famous one at which Steve Jobs told
Ressa is appealing the verdict, which —Matthew Campbell graduates that life’s dots can be connected only by look-
ing backward, not forward. Inspired, Li, who’d spent his
undergraduate days in Shanghai playing video games until
dawn, founded his online gaming company in Singapore in
2009. He took it public in New York in 2017, by which point
70 it had added an e-commerce platform, Shopee.
Sea’s initial stock rally was fueled by the success of
the mobile game Free Fire, a battle-royal-style title that

KELLER
had more than 100 million peak daily active users in the
second quarter. That success, combined with Shopee’s
emergence as a top online shopping site in Southeast
Asia, has swelled investor optimism that the unprofitable
company could one day become a mashup of gaming

RINAUDO giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. and e-commerce powerhouse

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Shares of Sea are up more
than 300% this year, boosting Li’s net worth to more than
$9 billion. —Yoolim Lee
BHATT: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG. TENEV: TAYLOR HILL/GETTY IMAGES. KYOGOKU AND NOGAMI: COURTESY NINTENDO

CO-FOUNDER
AND CEO, ZIPLINE
RESSA: AARON FAVILA/AP PHOTO. RINAUDO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG. LI: WEI LENG TAY/BLOOMBERG.

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, would be using Zipline to deliver health

and wellness products directly to cus-
CALIF. ○ Zipline drones tomers in northwest Arkansas. Novant
have delivered more than and Walmart chose Zipline based on its
record in Africa, where it’s logged millions
15,000 bundles of personal of miles delivering blood, medicine, and
protective equipment to other supplies to hospitals and clinics in
Ghana and Rwanda. Rinaudo started the
Novant Health facilities in company in 2014 after learning that emer-
North Carolina. gency requests from clinics there often
went unanswered.
Drone deliveries are well-suited to a Zipline’s autonomous, battery-
pandemic: They can be deployed on powered drones are launched from cata-
demand, and they don’t involve contact pults and carry parachute boxes weighing
between people. Zipline is making them as much as 4 pounds; they cruise at
a reality in the U.S. In May the company 60 mph and can fly as far as 100 miles,
completed its first American delivery, round trip. A single distribution hub can
parachuting a box of face masks from manage a fleet of about 30 and supply
50 feet above to Novant’s Huntersville an area of 8,000 square miles, delivering
Medical Center in suburban Charlotte. And as much as 2 tons of freight in a week.
in September, Walmart Inc. announced it —Ira Boudway
 I Kyogoku once designed an Animal Crossing-themed haramaki,

a belly warmer that’s popular in Japan

AYA KYOGOKU
DIRECTOR

& HISASHI
NOGAMI
PRODUCER,
BAIJU ENTERTAINMENT
PLANNING
BHATT & & DEVELOPMENT,
VLADIMIR NINTENDO CO.

TENEV
KYOTO, JAPAN ○ Animal Crossing: New
CO-FOUNDERS, Horizons has sold more than 26 million
ROBINHOOD copies since its March release, making
it the most popular version of the
series in its almost 20-year history.
MENLO PARK, CALIF. ○ The
brokerage added 3 million Imagine inhabiting an idyllic island where
accounts in the first four you can garden, fish, decorate your
months of 2020 as millennials home, go to a concert or museum, or
and Zoomers stuck at home try your hand at a stock market where
flocked to the stock market. trades are conducted in turnips. Want to
see what your friends are up to? Just hop
Since the Stanford pals founded it in 2013, over to their islands. If this sounds to you
Robinhood has been about lowering barri-
ers to investing. It offered free trades before
like a lovely respite from the hellscape
that was industry standard, along with no min- that was 2020, you’re not alone: The
imum balances and an app-focused approach
that made buying shares as easy as order-
virtual-life simulation was so popular it
ing a burger on Seamless. So it was perhaps caused a run on Nintendo’s Switch con-
no surprise that as equity markets collapsed
and then recovered, millions of newly minted
soles, leading to a global supply shortage
traders—many with $1,200 stimulus checks— that wasn’t resolved until the fall.
logged on. Their Jim Cramer was Dave
Portnoy, founder of the irreverent Barstool
Kyogoku, one of the only female game
Sports Inc., who livestreamed his profani- directors in Japan, has long credited
ty-laced trading sessions and rooted that
“stocks only go up!” (Portnoy has no formal
the success of the series to the diverse
relationship with Robinhood.) team behind it; they’ve broadened
A September funding round lifted
Robinhood’s valuation to $11.7 billion. It had
the game’s appeal beyond the typical
more than 13 million accounts as of then and teenage-male demographic. Part of the
expanded from about 600 employees in late
2019 to more than 1,000 this fall. Although
draw is making fun aesthetic choices,
the trading frenzy was good for business, whether they’re the statues decorat-
Robinhood ran into trouble, too. Consumer
protection agencies got roughly four times
ing your house or your clothing. That’s
the number of complaints about the broker- thanks to Nogami, who’s earned cred-
age as some of its peers in the first half of
the year. The company also drew regulatory
its on other major titles including 2006’s
scrutiny for its handling of an outage in March Wii Sports. The massive hit Nogami and
and over whether it properly informed clients
about how it completed customer orders. “We
Kyogoku created has helped Nintendo
strive to maintain constructive relationships shares climb about 35% this year.
with our regulators and to cooperate fully with
them,” a Robinhood spokesperson said in a
—Takashi Mochizuki
statement in September. —Annie Massa
 Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

● Sixty-four percent of Americans have said his handling of that essentially threatens everyone on the planet. We’ve
the coronavirus outbreak is “good” or “excellent,” according seen it literally shut down everything, causing economic
to an October Morning Consult/Politico poll; politicians on destruction and devastation. It’s the worst outbreak of a
both sides of the aisle have failed to break 50%. respiratory-borne illness in 102 years. Great strides of sci-
ence have already given us two safe and highly effective
Fauci, the top infectious disease doctor in the U.S. since vaccines. Ultimately we will get control of this virus.
1984, has practically reached rock-star status for his role in Early in the HIV outbreak, you took heavy criticism. Did
educating the country on Covid-19; he’s spoken bluntly, or you ever imagine you would be beloved?
as bluntly as possible, even in the face of President Trump’s That’s just part of society’s thirsting for clarity, for facts, for
criticism. Edited excerpts from Fauci’s conversation on information that’s based on sound science and evidence.
Nov. 17 with Bloomberg’s Michelle Fay Cortez: I’ve become a symbol of that.
What’s your advice to Americans about end-of-the-year
Bloomberg Businessweek: When did you know this year holidays?
was going to be one for the record books? Is it worth the risk of bringing a lot of people together, or
Fauci: When should you say,

N H N
New York got hit “We’re going to

A T O Y
as badly as it got pull back a little
hit in the spring, bit on the holi-
then I knew it day season until
was going to be we get it under
a really, really better control”?
bad year. When It could be

FAUC I
you have a virus worse at the
that is that highly transmissible— end of the year. We already
that makes enough people hear that planes are fully
72 sick that you almost overrun booked, airports are going to
the system in a city as sophisti- be crowded. That’s going to
cated as New York—then I knew lead to an upsurge in cases.
we were in for a hard time. Did you have to pull
What’s gone well? any punches because of
Things certainly went well politics?
with regard to the science. We
would not even be close to this
DIRECTOR, I haven’t pulled back. That’s
the reason I’ve been threat-
10 years ago without the tech- NATIONAL INSTITUTE ened, both my life and my
nology of the new vaccine plat-
forms [the first to use a genetic OF ALLERGY safety. My family has been
harassed because I have not
blueprint of the virus to prompt
an immune response], which
AND INFECTIOUS pulled back. That is a ridicu-
lous situation, where some-
are the result of basic and DISEASES one who is trying to give a
applied clinical research, plus public-health message actu-
the network of clinical trial ally has their life threatened.
sites that I originally set up to I’ve chosen this life. I am not
test for prevention and treatment of HIV. This is the fruit worried about myself, but I am angry that my family is also
of investment that long antedated Covid-19. being harassed. That is the sign of cowards, who harass
Do you see HIV/AIDS and Covid-19 as bookends to somebody’s family because the person is trying to give a
your career? public-health message.
I still want to attack malaria and tuberculosis, so I’m not Has the politically charged environment, particularly
through yet. But, yes, let’s say it is. HIV was an outbreak with stemming from the Trump administration, damaged our
devastating consequences for society. We’re now almost country’s response?
40 years into the HIV epidemic, and it’s still a lingering, smol- Parts of the country have paid no attention to public-health
dering global outbreak. We’ve had spectacular success with measures and pushed back on them. That’s really a prob-
HIV in the realm of therapy, not so much in the realm of vac- lem. I’m not going to comment on the Trump administration.
cines. The situation is similar with Covid to the extent that What about the Biden administration?
it’s a brand-new infection that has thrust itself on society. I’ve served six administrations. I look forward to serving
But it ends there, because this is an explosive outbreak a seventh.
Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

B Photograph by
Jeremy Liebman

73

Fauci in Bethesda, Md.

 ○ His Twitter keep funding. In an open letter to
Parliament that Rashford posted on
campaign helped
MARCUS RASHFORD shame the U.K.
Twitter, he wrote, “I encourage you
to hear their pleas and find your
humanity.” The tweet got more than
government into 300,000 likes.
FORWARD, MANCHESTER UNITED providing free The government’s about-face
was humbling for Prime Minister Boris
school meals
FOOTBALL CLUB to more than
Johnson, who saluted Rashford’s per-
tinacity in announcing the extension.
Since then, Rashford’s doggedness
1.5 million children has seen Johnson’s government
from low-wage backtrack for a second time and
pledge more than £400 million in fur-
families. ther support through 2021.
Rashford is driven by his own
The 23-year-old, one of the Premier hardships. Born and raised in
League’s brightest young stars, Manchester by a single mother who
spent much of the summer work- relied on food vouchers to feed her
ing to ensure that kids from a poor five children, he was spurred to activ-
upbringing have access to free school ism during the coronavirus pandemic
meals during scheduled and unsched- when he saw the pressure it heaped
uled closures. In June a groundswell on already struggling families. His
of public support for his cause got efforts earned royal recognition in

TSAI the government to spend £120 mil-

lion ($159 million) to extend a voucher
scheme that it hadn’t intended to
October, when Queen Elizabeth II
included him in her annual birthday
honors list. —Fareed Sahloul

ING- basic sign language to judge a poetry competition for deaf children
I Rashford once learned

WEN
PRESIDENT, CHANGPENG
TAIWAN
74
ZHAO
○ Taiwan went more than 200 days CO-FOUNDER, BINANCE
without a locally transmitted Covid-19 HOLDINGS LTD.
case after Tsai’s administration instituted
one of the world’s most effective
pandemic-response protocols.
○ Zhao says he expects his private

RASHFORD: DANIEL LEAL OLIVAS/GETTY IMAGES. TSAI: TYRONE SIU/REUTERS. ZHAO: ANTHONY KWAN/BLOOMBERG
Tsai, a former law professor and Taiwan’s first female
president, started the year by securing a second term in
cryptocurrency exchange to have profits
an overwhelming victory on Jan. 11. But even in the runup to of $800 million to $1 billion this year, up
the election, her government was busy preparing to close
borders, impose travel restrictions, and set up rigorous
from about $570 million last year, as market
contact-tracing and quarantine protocols. (Those who vio- uncertainty pushes traders into digital coins.
late lockdown measures face fines of as much as NT$1 mil-
lion, or $35,000.) Taiwan, with a population of 23 million Zhao, who goes by CZ, started his business in 2017. By that point,
people, has had just over 600 coronavirus cases the world was littered with failed exchanges—see Mt. Gox, 2014.
and seven deaths, numbers kept low by wide- But Zhao had experience engineering high-frequency trading
spread adoption of face masks after the systems and working for other crypto startups. (From 2002 to
island’s deadly experience with SARS. 2005, he worked at Bloomberg LP.) Binance offered lower trad-
Taiwan will likely be among the few ing fees and rolled out a coin, BNB, that doubles as a loyalty pro-
economies to experience growth gram: If you hold it in your digital wallet, you pay lower fees, no
this year, with officials in August matter what coins you trade.
forecasting gross domestic The company has come to dominate the market for crypto
product to expand 1.56%. derivatives—Bitcoin futures, for example—thanks partly to
Still, Tsai will have to issues at competitors. In April it acquired CoinMarketCap, the
remain vigilant: This fall No. 1 place for crypto investors to check thousands of coin
the government recorded prices and see which exchanges have the highest trading vol-
more than 20 imported ume. (The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.) To prove his
Covid-19 cases in a two- company’s staying power, Zhao must now remain on the right
week period. Other side of regulators. In July the U.S. Securities and Exchange
countries that fought Commission hired the same company Binance uses to glean
the virus well initially, insights from its blockchain, on which BNB runs, to keep its own
such as Singapore and tabs on the blockchain and to deter bad actors. “We’re always
Japan, later saw spikes. working closely with regulators and law enforcement world-
—Samson Ellis wide,” Zhao says. —Olga Kharif
 December 7, 2020

HOW ABOUT
MARY BARRA JEROME
A ROUND OF CHAIRMAN AND CEO,
POWELL
APPLAUSE FOR GENERAL MOTORS CO.,
DETROIT (2017)
CHAIRMAN, U.S. FEDERAL

SOME ALUMS?
RESERVE (2018)
● To fulfill a $490 million
● Powell oversaw two
U.S. government contract,
March cuts that took
Barra directed GM
the Fed’s key interest
engineers to transform
rate to almost zero and
an automotive electronics
Since the first Bloomberg 50 Google, and private equity unveiled a program of
plant in Kokomo, Ind.,
in 2017, we’ve had a rule: funds to inject more bond purchasing and
into an assembly line for
no repeats. But a few past than $20 billion into Jio other measures that
ventilators. By September
honorees could’ve made Platforms, the technology topped an estimated
the company had used
the list this year, so we gave arm of his conglomerate, $3 trillion. It all added up
previously furloughed
them one of their own. making him one of the to the most aggressive
workers to produce and
10 wealthiest people in the stimulus package in Federal
deliver 30,000 machines.
world—and setting the stage Reserve history.
for a clash with Amazon
STACEY .com for dominance of KENNETH
ABRAMS India’s e-commerce market.
CATHIE WOOD
FRAZIER
CEO, ARK INVESTMENT
FOUNDER, FAIR FIGHT,
FAIR FIGHT ACTION, AND
JOSÉ ANDRÉS CEO, MERCK & CO., MANAGEMENT LLC,
KENILWORTH, N.J. (2017) NEW YORK (2018) 75
FAIR COUNT, ATLANTA
FOUNDER, WORLD
(BLOOMBERG 50, 2019)
CENTRAL KITCHEN, ● Frazier is guiding ● Tech companies led
WASHINGTON (2018) scientists as they test the post-March stock
● Her network of
candidates for a one-shot rally, and Wood’s bullish
organizations highlighting
● Throughout the coronavirus vaccine. He bets on the ones shaping
voter suppression and
pandemic, World Central’s also drew attention to the the future—Tesla, Crispr
promoting fair elections
#ChefsForAmerica opportunity gap facing Therapeutics, and Slack,
is credited with helping
initiative has provided minorities. “I don’t think I for example—saw her
inspire about 800,000
people in need with more have a choice” but to act as ARK Innovation exchange-
registrations in Georgia.
than 30 million meals in a role model, Frazier, one traded fund double in
Joe Biden became the first
400-plus cities. of only four Black CEOs at value this year. Her Ark
Democratic presidential
Fortune 500 companies, Genomic Revolution ETF is
candidate to win the state
told Bloomberg TV in July. performing even better.
since 1992. (Donors to JACINDA
Abrams’s organizations
include Michael Bloomberg,
ARDERN TOBIAS LÜTKE ERIC YUAN
owner of Bloomberg LP,
PRIME MINISTER, NEW
Bloomberg Businessweek’s CEO, SHOPIFY INC., CEO, ZOOM VIDEO
ZEALAND (2019)
parent company.) OTTAWA (2019) COMMUNICATIONS INC.,
SAN JOSE (2019)
● Life is back to something
● Shopify became
MUKESH AMBANI like normal for the country’s
Canada’s most valuable ● The videoconferencing
5 million people, which helps
company in 2020, its platform became critical
CHAIRMAN, RELIANCE explain her overwhelming
systems underpinning the infrastructure as offices
INDUSTRIES LTD., reelection on Oct. 17. Ardern
explosive growth of online went remote. Zoom’s stock
MUMBAI (2018) locked down New Zealand
retail for non-Amazon price is up more than
early, keeping infections
transactions as much of 500%, swelling Yuan’s
● Asia’s richest man below 2,000 and deaths to
America sheltered at home. fortune to $20 billion.
persuaded Facebook, just over two dozen.
�Adam Blenford
 Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 2020

Bloomberg Businessweek (USPS 080 900) December 7, 2020 (ISSN 0007-7135) H Issue no. 4680 Published weekly, except one week in January, February, March, May, July, August, September, October, November and December by

address changes to Bloomberg Businessweek, P.O. Box 37528, Boone, IA 50037-0528. Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement Number 41989020. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to DHL Global Mail, 355 Admiral Blvd., Unit 4,
Mississauga, ON L5T 2N1. Email: contactus@bloombergsupport.com. QST#1008327064. Registered for GST as Bloomberg L .P. GST #12829 9898 RT0001. Copyright 2020 Bloomberg L .P. All rights reserved. Title registered in
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FROM TOP TO BOTTOM, LEFT TO RIGHT: COURTESY KIIRA MOTORS. CORBIN CHASE. PRZEMYSLAW STEFANIAK/AP IMAGES. COURTESY INDIGO AG. DEB LINDSEY/GETTY IMAGES. VACHIRA VACHIRA/GETTY IMAGES. COURTESY DEEPMIND. COURTESY SOJIN LEE. VIVIEN KILLILEA/GETTY IMAGES. VACHIRA VACHIRA/GETTY IMAGES.

ONES TO WATCH
Check back in a year, and you may see these people on the previous pages

elect politicians who take

PAUL ISAAC ZIWE BART a tougher stance on the
fossil fuel industry. Her
MUSASIZI FUMUDOH STASZEWSKI recent book, Winning the
TAKAAKI IWABU/BLOOMBERG. AMY SUSAN/GETTY IMAGES (2). BENNETT RAGLIN/WIREIMAGE. JACQUELYN MARTIN-POOL/GETTY IMAGES. YURIKO NAKAO/BLOOMBERG. COURTESY BLACKROCK. JACQUELYN MARTIN-POOL/GETTY IMAGES. DAVID CLIFF/GETTY IMAGES

Green New Deal, argues for radical

CEO, KIIRA MOTORS CORP., COMEDIAN AND WRITER, FILMMAKER AND action to stop global warming.
KAMPALA, UGANDA DESUS & MERO GAY RIGHTS ACTIVIST

○ The engineer is building ○ Her uncomfortable ○ He staged protests PUSHMEET

Africa’s first electric- but funny Instagram Live in Polish towns that had
bus factory and aims to conversations on race with declared themselves free KOHLI
have initial manufacturing celebrities such as Alyssa of “LGBT ideology.” The
capacity of 5,000 vehicles a year. Milano led to a Showtime slot. campaign gained international HEAD OF AI FOR SCIENCE,
Prototypes are already running as attention, with European GOOGLE’S DEEPMIND, LONDON
government shuttle buses. Commission President Ursula von
KWAME der Leyen of Germany using her ○ He’s using neural
first state of the union speech to networks and other
GEOFFREY ONWUACHI denounce anti-gay policies. machine-learning
techniques to predict
VON CHEF AND AUTHOR the structure of proteins; this
ARNON NAMPA has implications for treating rare
MALTZAHN ○ He shuttered his Afro- diseases, breaking down pollutants,
Caribbean restaurant Kith HUMAN-RIGHTS LAWYER and more.
CO-FOUNDER, and Kin in Washington, D.C.,
INDIGO AG INC., BOSTON during the pandemic, but ○ The protest leader
he’ll be a judge on Top Chef, and his was jailed many times SARA
○ Von Maltzahn wants memoir, Notes From a Young Black this year while heading a
companies to reduce their Chef, is being made into a movie. movement calling for more MENKER
carbon footprint. He’s won transparency and accountability
commitments from Shopify, from the monarchy in Thailand, CEO, GRO INTELLIGENCE INC.,
Barclays, and JPMorgan Chase to TIA ADEOLA where criticism of royals is NEW YORK
buy credits that pay farmers for punishable by 15 years in prison.
environmentally friendly practices. FASHION DESIGNER ○ Her data platform
lets food companies
○ The Nigerian-born KATIE PORTER and governments
SOJIN LEE designer made big map supply and
ruffles stylish. Instagram CONGRESSWOMAN demand across commodities.
CEO, TOSHI TECHNOLOGIES LTD., influencers and young When the biggest locust swarm
LONDON musicians such as R&B artist ○ The first-term California in decades threatened crops in
Ebhoni have worn her clothes. And representative has gone East Africa this year, Gro provided
○ Brands including her frilly face masks have been on viral with tough questions free monitoring tools to track the
Chanel, Christian the pages of Teen Vogue, Self, and for business leaders such spread and damage.
Louboutin, and Anna Marie Claire. as former Celgene Corp. CEO Mark
Sui are working with Alles over cancer drug costs.
the former Net-a-Porter exec, ROBERT VIS
whose company hand-delivers NATHAN
clothing—then handles alterations TYLIK FOUNDER, MESSAGEBIRD,
and returns. Toshi also services TANKUS AMSTERDAM
New York and plans to open in MCMILLAN
Los Angeles next year. WRITER, NOTES ON THE CRISES ○ His software lets
NATIONAL DIRECTOR OF YOUTH companies use a single
○ The 29-year-old Tankus, AND COLLEGE AT THE NATIONAL interface to talk to
MAYA ERSKINE who hasn’t finished his ACTION NETWORK, NEW YORK customers by text, email, or social
bachelor’s degree, became media. MessageBird is gearing up for
& ANNA a must-read for Wall ○ The recent college grad an initial public offering next year.
Street economists and government helped organize the March
KONKLE officials thanks to his analysis of the on Washington in August,
Federal Reserve. which drew thousands of RISHI
CO-CREATORS AND STARS, people to protest police brutality
PEN15 against Black people. SUNAK
JENNIFER
○ The duo behind the CHANCELLOR OF THE
Hulu comedy series were O’NEIL EXCHEQUER, U.K.
nominated for a writing VARSHINI
Emmy for their show about MANAGING DIRECTOR, ○ Sunak won high
best friends going through BLACKROCK INC., NEW YORK PRAKASH approval ratings with
the awkward years of generous programs
middle school in the ○ This summer she helped CO-FOUNDER, SUNRISE to help workers and
1990s—from getting their restructure the debt of MOVEMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C. businesses during the pandemic.
first AOL Instant Messenger screen Ecuador and Argentina, Now comes the trickier part:
names to practicing for Spice Girls- the latter of which struck a ○ The Boston-based activist has winding down the support and
themed school projects. $65 billion deal with private creditors. rallied youth voters and worked to paying for it all. —Lynn Thomasson
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