European Union regulators and Silicon Valley’s major tech firms don’t always see eye to eye. But when it comes to privacy, Apple just made a French connection.

On Wednesday, France’s competition regulator tossed out a request made by advertisers and publishers to block Apple's plan to restrict tracking of individual's mobile app usage.

Not Out of Les Bois Yet
A quick background — last year Apple said it would begin to require apps on its smartphones and tablets to get permission before collecting someone’s so-called "advertising identifiers."

That announcement drew ire from both small developers and Facebook (which took out full-page attack ads in major papers). The anti-Apple coalition said the move would make it harder to make money from personalized ads, hurting retailers in the process:

Yesterday, France’s regulator rejected their plea outright:

• “We can’t intervene just because there might be a negative impact for companies in the ecosystem,” said Isabelle de Silva, who heads the Autorité de la Concurrence.
• “At this stage, we haven’t found flagrant examples of discrimination,” she added.

But Apple isn’t off the hook entirely. France said it will investigate whether Apple’s switch could be considered “self-preferencing” by imposing stricter rules on third-party apps than it does on itself.

What have you done for me lately? Apple has taken other steps so as not to appear the big meanie: Last year it gave a break to smaller developers, reducing the App Store cut it takes from developers with less than $1 million in revenue to 15% from 30%. That pushed Google to follow suit this week, when it made the same change to its Android Play Store.

The Takeaway: Expect more jockeying to come in the arena of big tech.

Italy’s billionaire Agnelli family has a taste for the finer things in life.

Much of the family fortune comes from ancestor Giovanni Agnelli, who founded Fiat in the late 19th century. The family has since upgraded to a large stake in Ferrari.

Yesterday the family’s holding company, Exor, announced an expansion in the luxury space with a deal to acquire a stake in shoemaker Christian Louboutin.

In The Red
The family will invest €541 million for a 24% stake in the French brand, whose signature product is a stiletto with red-lacquered bottoms worn by royals and celebrities.

The deal values the 30-year-old Parisian brand, named after its eponymous designer and co-founder, at a total of €2.3 billion.

The Industrial Logic: The family has flagged luxury goods and technology as two key areas of growth. Last December Exor acquired a stake in Chinese luxury lifestyle label Shang Xia, which is co-owned by France’s Hermès.

And the deal marks a significant transition for Christian Louboutin:

• The company has rebuffed many buyout offers in the past, including from LVMH, the largest luxury group by revenue.
• Referring to a sale, Louboutin once said, “You can never say forever, but it’s been 27 years and for me it’s an important thing to be free.”

€541 million apparently did the trick, and Louboutin said yesterday he found “the partner with whom we would associate should respect our values, be open-minded and should have an ambitious, young dynamism.”

Luxury Recap
Louboutin has reportedly fared relatively well during the pandemic because of its strong e-commerce platform.

Still, the transaction comes after a challenging year for the luxury sector. Global luxury goods sales were set to contract 22% to €217 billion last year, and are expected to take three years to recover.

The Takeaway: For Exor, the sector looks poised for a rebound. As LVMH founder Bernard Arnault once said, “Luxury goods are the only area in which it is possible to make luxury margins.”

Last night Meghan Markle and Prince Harry spilled the tea on why they fled Buckingham Palace for California.

In order to snag exclusive rights to the Oprah-led interview, CBS paid Lady O’s production company, Harpo Productions, between $7 million and $9 million. Talk about a princely sum.

Watching The Throne

Last year the prince and Ms. Markle stepped down from the throne and relinquished their duties as senior royals. As a result, the power couple no longer receives a stipend from Harry’s father, Prince Charles, or funds from the U.K. taxpayers.

But with a premium lifestyle and not-so-humble abode to pay for, the couple has been hustling to bring in income:

• Last year they inked a Netflix production deal worth a reported $100 million.
• The couple also attempted to trademark the brand “Sussex Royal,” but were stonewalled by British officials.

For its part, CBS was going to try to make a pound sterling or two. CBS was asking $325,000 for a 30-second ad on yesterday's interview, roughly double the cost of other primetime Sunday events.

The Takeaway: A spokesperson for the couple told the WSJ the royals didn’t receive any share of the Harpo licensing fee.

Here’s one for the man or woman whose expense account knows no bounds.

Blacklane, a high-end ride-hailing service, is launching a new inner-city offering in New York today.

Backed by Daimler AG (Mercedes), Blacklane is taking on the black car services of rivals Uber and Lyft with a slightly more upscale touch.

For the Modern, Virus Conscious Man
Blacklane initially began as a niche app offering chauffeur rides to and from airports in 300 cities worldwide — luggage handling, door opening for passengers, and other amenities were included to make you feel especially important.

But that business nearly evaporated when the coronavirus halted air travel, and Blacklane was forced to pivot:

• In December, Blacklane launched an intercity service (think rides from New York to Boston for $399) for business travelers wary of crowded flights in situations where Zoom will not suffice.
• Launching today, Blacklane will now target the same luxury-seeking customer looking to avoid crowded subway rides.

After New York, the service will launch in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, Singapore and Dubai.

Uber and Lyft Less Successful at Losing Money
Despite the pandemic, Blacklane rivals Uber and Lyft — two companies not unfamiliar with losing lots of money — actually got less unprofitable in 2020. Uber reported a net loss of $6.8 billion in 2019, down from a staggering $8.5 billion in 2019.

Uber was able to stem losses by pivoting hard to delivery services, and its delivery gross bookings reached $10 billion in 2020, up 130% from 2019

The Takeaway: Blacklane was targeting a 2022 IPO, but market uncertainty has pushed that back to 2023 at the earliest.

Massive Merger Spurns Fight Over Wall Street Secrets
Imagine your favorite sports team being forced to hand over its playbook to a bitter rival. That would irk any sports fan.

Now imagine a similar scenario, but it’s Wall Street insiders being forced to hand over their precious trade secrets.

That exact fact pattern is unfolding due to a proposed merger between Dyal Capital and publicly traded Owl Rock Capital — a deal that has spawned multiple feisty lawsuits.

“We Honor Our Deals”
Let us set the stage: Dyal Capital, a division of asset manager Neuberger Berman, specializes in buying minority stakes in other private investment companies. A bit like nesting dolls.

In recent years Dyal has acquired stakes in firms including Golub and Sixth Street Partners, two players in the private lending space.

Now Dyal is merging with Owl Rock Capital, another financier specializing in private lending — a deal that would create a $12.5 billion investment behemoth.

The Rub: Golub and Sixth Street are concerned that Dyal — which has access to sensitive information about their operations and some amount of internal influence — will quickly morph from an investor and partner into a competitor:

• In a recent New York State Supreme Court filing, Golub said, “Dyal threatens to compete with Golub while retaining a partnership interest in it," claiming the merger was “untenable and forbidden” under the terms of its deal.
• Sixth Street Partners has filed to block the merger in Delaware state court, arguing it sold a stake “on the fundamental understanding that Dyal would act as a partner — not a competitor.”

For its part, Dyal has attempted to downplay concerns, claiming it has “crafted a robust and comprehensive information control policy designed to restrict access to confidential partner manager information.”

The Icing On The Cake: The tie-up of Dyal and Owl Rock is wrapped up in another Wall Street fad. The pairs merger is being backed by a SPAC called Altimar Acquisition Corp.

The Takeaway: There has never been a more lucrative time to be a Wall Street lawyer.

File this one under: standard operating procedure in corporate America.

Coca-Cola, Whirlpool, Eaton and several other large corporations have all lost significant tax rulings in recent years, opening them up to millions, and in some cases billions, of liability.

According to the WSJ, these companies have excluded the bulk of these costs from their financial reports on the assumption they will be able to overturn the judgments on appeal.

Don’t Try This Without A High-Powered Attorney
Despite its dry reputation, accounting is a far more creative profession than most give it credit for.

When it comes to recognizing the outcome of a tax dispute, companies can either book the loss immediately or defer it if they feel it is “more likely than not” they will win on appeal. The following companies are feeling lucky:

Coca-Cola: Last year a U.S. Tax Court ruled Coke shifted too much profit into lower tax jurisdictions to keep dollars away from grabby IRS authorities. The company recently disclosed that a loss on appeal could mean forking over up to $12 billion (more than its total 2020 profit).

Newell: The maker of Krazy Glue and First Alert smoke detectors has chosen to ignore a new IRS regulation that would impose a minimum U.S. tax on low-tax foreign income. If it loses the battle, it would be on the hook for between $180 million to $220 million. For now, it maintains the regulations weren’t validly issued.

Whirlpool: Similarly, Whirlpool was dinged in tax court for income at its Mexican branch that should have been taxed in the U.S. Arguing that it too will be successful on appeal, the company hasn't paid tax on $50 million in additional taxable income.

The Takeaway: Coca-Cola has set aside only a $438 million reserve, or 4% of the total potential $12 billion cost. Buckle up.

In New York, they're bodegas. In Montreal, dépanneurs. In Berlin, spätis. One thing they’re definitely not known for is being high-end. But that might not be true for long.

Foxtrot, an upscale reimagining of the convenience store, has nabbed a $42 million Series B from a gaggle of culinary gods – Momofuko founder David Chang, Blue Hill co-owner David Barber and Sweetgreen co-founder Nicolas Jammet.

The company, which bills itself as a “better kind of convenience” store, puts local artisan products next to cans of White Claw. So your Snickers bar might be gentrified off the shelf.

Trending in Chicago, Dallas and soon D.C.
Foxtrot has ten stores up and running in Chicago and Dallas, with plans to open nine more in 2021. Washington, D.C., will get its first location on March 1, and Austin and Houston are being eyed as future fancy outposts.

On top of brick-and-mortar shopping, Foxtrot stores offer guaranteed one-hour delivery of food, organic wine, hard seltzer and locally made ice cream. They also stock hip local wares: in Chicago, for instance, that means coffee from industrial chic roasters Metric, old-fashioned doughnuts from Do-Rite’s and IPAs from Pipeworks Brewing.

Last year, store sales grew 55% and e-commerce more than 200% for all the obvious reasons.

Moneyball for Fancy 7/11s: Foxtrot, which hopes to be part morning coffee stop and part late-night hangout, has had the benefit of real estate availability in the wake of the pandemic (an estimated 110,000 restaurants have closed over the last year).

CEO Mike LaVitola said, “We’re seeing leases around 30% lower, and there’s most flexibility in making percentage rent.”

The Takeaway: No word yet on whether they’ll bring in purebred Bengal and Russian Blues to act as high-end bodega cats.

If you have an internet connection, you’ve probably read that the price of bitcoin has surged in recent weeks. Instead of quoting percentage moves, here are a few colorful anecdotes to help paint the picture:

• The owner of two popular New York City bars has listed the watering holes with an asking price of twenty-five bitcoin (roughly $1.4 million).
• Tesla has notched $1 billion of paper gains after disclosing a $1.5 billion bitcoin stake just two weeks ago.

But it’s not just the coins themselves that are minting millionaires. Coinbase, the largest digital currency exchange, has hit a $100 billion valuation in the secondary markets ahead of its planned public listing.

Riding Bitcoin’s Wave
Founded in 2012, Coinbase is the largest crypto exchange in the U.S. as measured by trading volume. In the first nine months of 2020, Coinbase notched $141 million in net income off $691 million revenue from trading fees and commissions.

Mirroring the hyperbolic moves in bitcoin itself, the value of Coinbase shares trading on the secondary market has doubled in recent weeks, and on Friday eclipsed the $100 billion mark.

Expensive As Zuck: The mammoth valuation feels even larger when put into context:

• The last U.S. company to go public with a higher valuation was Facebook, at $104 billion.
• Nasdaq Inc., the well-known exchange operator, has a market cap of roughly $25 billion. ICE, which owns the NYSE and many other prominent exchanges, is worth $64 billion.

The Takeaway: No date has been announced for the public listing, but investors are, clearly, clamoring.

The man who helped save the Euro has bond investors in a frenzy.

Just a few days after Mario Draghi was sworn in as Italy’s new prime minister, the country’s 10-year bond offering drew a record €110 billion of orders on Tuesday.

The Financial Fixer
Draghi — the former president of the European Central Bank — knows his way around a crisis. The economist and central banker extraordinaire was widely credited with navigating the eurozone back from the brink of collapse in 2012.

With a continental debt fiasco in his rearview, Draghi’s new task is guiding Italy to economic recovery after last year’s historic recession:

• Draghi's main imperative will be efficiently deploying Italy’s €200 billion recovery fund.
• Alongside everyone from Sicily to Milan, Italy’s European neighbor states will be keeping a close eye on Draghi’s handling of the situation. They’re footing the bill for Italy’s bailout, after all.

But investors are showing supreme confidence in the man nicknamed “Super Mario.” The latest bond offering priced at a yield of 0.604%, close to the lowest Italy has paid to borrow in the last decade.

Fixing Italy
It may have quality gelato and arancini, but Italy lags many of its EU peers in GDP per capita and absolute growth. Economic output in Italy grew just 0.3% in 2019, compared to 1.6% for the broader EU.

Then in 2020, the Italian economy contracted 8.8% (relative to down 6.4% in the EU), and the European Commission is now painting a not-so-bene picture for the near future:

• The Commission’s forecast last week stated, “While some Member States are expected to see the distance to their pre-crisis output levels close by the end of 2021, others are forecast to take longer.”
• Those unnamed “others” are Spain and Italy, which are not projected to achieve pre-crisis output levels until 2023.

The Takeaway: Italians will look to Super Mario to use the healthy checkbook he’s been given to help wave “Ciao!” to their economic woes sooner rather than later.

Plenty of sports fans go to extreme lengths to support their favorite team, but billionaire Joseph Tsai just took it to another level.

Tsai — a former Yale lacrosse player, the co-founder of Alibaba and owner of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets— offered to front millions of dollars to build an isolated bubble for Ivy League lacrosse teams to compete during the pandemic.

The Brooklyn Nets owner was immediately shot down, but Tsai isn’t the only powerful Ivy alum calling for America’s brainiest schools to get their brawn back on.

Dropping Out to Stay in the Game
The Ivy League scrubbed its fall sports season last July, and by Thanksgiving had also scratched all winter contests.

Other universities, many reliant on lucrative TV contracts and ticket revenue, pressed on. In Division I men’s basketball, for example, 347 of the total 357 teams are competing. The Ivy League represents eight of the 10 schools watching from the sidelines.

Do Not Pass Go: The no-sports-stance has left athletes in eligibility limbo, as the Ivy League typically gives students a four year window of competition. Only last week did the Ivy League issue a one-time pandemic waiver to allow current senior student athletes to play an additional season as graduate students.

But, as described by the Harvard Crimson, many called the move “too little, too late,” and Ivy League teams have been cleaned out by athletes either transferring or taking a gap year. Of the 48 Yale men’s lacrosse players, only 8 remain on the roster.

Tsai’s Field of Dreams Is Just A Dream
Standing along Tsai is a lineup of prominent alums calling on the Ivy League to get sports back on the menu.

There’s Kansas City Chiefs president Mark Donovan, a former Brown football player; George Pyne, fellow Brown footballer and chief executive of Bruin Sports Capital; and Mike Rabil, Dartmouth football alum and co-founder of the Premier Lacrosse League.

Rabil and Tsai drew up blueprints for a three-week lacrosse tournament at a bubble site, offering up $5 million out of their own pockets. But that plan was hastily turned down by the Ivy League Council of Presidents.

The Takeaway: When it comes to academics, many will argue there is no competing with the Ivy League. This year, even in athletics there will be no competing with them. Literally.

“If you build it, they will come.”

In this case, “it” is a lavish, state-of-the-art resort set against a vineyard and “they” are high-roller real estate investors.

The owner of the new Four Seasons in Napa Valley is closing in on a sale at a near-record price for a hotel. Alcion Ventures, which spent 10 years developing the property, has secured several offers exceeding $170 million for the 85-room resort.

It Ain’t Easy Being Mainstream
Strong buyer interest for Napa’s Four Seasons hotel shows the luxury resort market is alive and well, despite troubles in the broader hospitality sector.

We’re in a bit of a continental breakfast depression, in other words:

• The overall hotel industry is reeling from its worst year on record – U.S. hotel occupancy rates were 44% in 2020, down a third from the year before.
• There was a record of more than a billion unsold room vacancies in 2020, and revenue per available room fell by almost 50%. Data tracking firm STR estimates it’ll take until 2024 for revenue to recover.

In the land of high thread counts, the data points are more favorable. Two luxury properties in Napa run by Auberge Resorts reported a strong second half of 2020, as well-heeled guests from Silicon Valley sought repose after many months without travel.

And investors have taken note - earlier this month, Pebblebrook Hotel Trust sold the 416-room Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco, netting $158 million in proceeds.

That’s One Expensive Key
Napa’s Four Seasons, located in Calistoga, is set to open for business in the second quarter. Current bids for the property, including one from California-based Sunstone Hotel Investors, value the resort at over $2 million per key.

The 411 on PPK: Hotels are commonly valued at a price-per-key rate, which helps size-up properties of varying sizes and room counts.

Get Guinness Records on the phone - only two hotels in the U.S. have ever sold for more than $2 million a key: Hawaii’s Four Seasons Resort Hualalai and the Montage Hotel Beverly Hills.

The Takeaway: Will they accept Hilton Honors Points? Please?

It took two full decades, but shares of SoftBank — the operator of the world's largest technology-focused venture capital fund — have recovered to levels not seen since February 2000.

Shares climbed yesterday after SoftBank's Vision Fund posted its largest-ever quarterly profit of $8 billion.

Saved By An IPO Harvest
CEO Masayoshi Son displayed some serious moxie at the presentation.

With a PowerPoint slide depicting a goose laying golden eggs (each representing a SoftBank investment) and the tune of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker March” playing in the background, Son claimed, "investment is rhythm."

Capping off a turbulent 2020, Son focused on the large successes:

• Uber and DoorDash, two companies that have benefitted from food delivery uptick during the pandemic, were the primary drivers behind the latest returns.
• Vision Fund CFO Navneet Govil says he expects the streak to continue with several other portfolio company IPOs lined up this year including South Korean e-commerce group Coupang.

The Vision Fund's results are the culmination of a remarkable turnaround: in 2019 SoftBank reported a record $12.7 billion annual loss after the fund made several bad bets, including pouring $18.5 billion into WeWork.

Do Not Follow This North Star: The strong performance was hampered by Masayoshi Son himself, who frittered away $2.7 billion with ill-timed derivatives bets at the company's "SB Northstar" trading unit.

The Takeaway: While SoftBank is giving up most of its derivative bets, it will retain holdings in Silicon Valley titans Facebook and Amazon. Maybe it’s Son’s way of saying he should stick to golden eggs.

Thirty years ago Denmark became the first country to build an offshore wind farm.

Now, Denmark is looking to advance its clean-energy prowess by becoming the first country to build a so-called “energy island” in the North Sea.

Goodbye, Oily History
Despite a history of wind innovation and a blond population known to favor bikes over SUVs, Denmark is actually the European Union’s largest oil producer.

The Danes are looking to shed that title. Last year Denmark voted to end new licenses for oil and gas exploration projects in the North Sea. They also committed to reducing the country’s CO₂ emissions by 70% by 2030.

The Energy Hub: Last week the Danish government greenlit the energy island — a $34 billion project located 50 miles off Denmark’s windy coast. Hailed as the largest development project in Denmark’s history, the artificial island will initially be the size of 18 football fields and have a capacity of three gigawatts (enough for roughly three million households):

• The hub will collect energy from 200 wind turbines and distribute it to Denmark and surrounding countries via the grid.
• A second round of development would be able to process enough energy for 10 million European households.

Last week Denmark’s Social Democrat government agreed to take a 51% stake in the project with the remainder to be held by the private sector.

The Takeaway: The price of permits on the European Union carbon market has soared to record levels in early 2021, hiking costs for polluters. The green wave is here.

The drama surrounding certain "meme stocks" has quieted-down in recent days, along with an unceremonious plunge in the share prices of GameStop, AMC and others.

Now it's Hollywood's turn to convert drama into dollars.

Jaime Rogozinski, the founder of Reddit's WallStreetBets, has sold the rights to his life story to RatPac Entertainment.

Posters on a Movie Poster
RatPac Entertainment — the production company behind Wonder Woman and Dunkirk — plans to dramatize the tale of amateur online investors rocketing the shares of GameStop and other companies to historic levels, bringing a few hedge funds to their knees in the process.

Rogozinski received a payment in the "low six figures" in exchange for exclusive access to his version of the events.

RatPac exec and disgraced Hollywood veteran Brett Ratner told the WSJ, “This story is such a human story of power and uprising, capitalism and socialism, and so much more.”

But RatPac isn’t alone in the race to bring the Reddit saga to the screen:

• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired a book proposal about the Gamestop carnage written by Ben Mezrich, whose book on Facebook was adapted into David Fincher’s The Social Network.
• Netflix is also trying to rush a film with Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter Mark Boal, and Disney Channel heartthrob Noah Centineo is attached to star.

Regulatory Drama Not Over Yet: It’s unlikely to make for a movie sequel, but there is more WallStreetBets fallout happening in the regulatory sector.

Many are now calling on regulators to ban payment for order flow, which allows trading firms to pay brokerages for the right to handle orders submitted by individual investors. Critics say it incentivizes brokers to maximize revenue while leaving their customers behind.

The Takeaway: Much has been made of the retail surge, but institutional investors have played a large role in the meme-stock drama.

Some grapes shrivel into golden raisins. Others, apparently, turn into gold.

Vivino, the digital sommelier app that suggests and sells wines, announced a mammoth $155 million Series D funding round yesterday. The company is now valued at between $600 and $800 million.

That’s a lot of grape stomping.

Sauvignon Blanc Cheque
Vivino's value proposition is simple, it promises to help you "buy the right wine."

And the demand is there. Vivino's user base has grown from 29 million in 2018 to 50 million today. Sales on the Vivino marketplace hit $265 million in 2020, more than double the year before.

The new cash boost will allow the company to open up shop in Mexico, Japan, Portugal and Poland, and increase staff by at least 50%.

• The company will also use the new cash to develop a personalization feature that its CEO says is like a Netflix viewer rating for wine.
• Still, Vivino — which broke even last year — says it won’t be profitable this year or next (insert your own “Uber of wine” joke here).

IPO a No-Go: One thing that’s off the table, according to executives, is an initial public offering in the near term. It will be some time before retail investors get a taste.

Time to Come of Age
Vivino has raised $221 million to date, and it has 1.5 billion pictures of wine labels in its database.

But rapid expansion means, according to CEO Heini Zachariassen, the company is “relatively thin” in all of its markets. “So one of the big things here, is actually to go much deeper in each market and say, okay, we now know it works here, let’s put more resources in every single market,” he added.

The Takeaway: After the swell of sales during the Covid pandemic, Vivino had the choice to let it breathe or pop and pour. The Series D made things as clear as a Viognier.

Last year the number of streaming subscribers in western Europe eclipsed the number of pay-TV customers for the first time.

As it turns out, The Queen's Gambit and Bridgerton are global phenomena, and American streaming giants have scooped-up the lion's share of European subscribers.

Amidst the U.S. dominance there is one Swedish standout. Stockholm-based Nordic Entertainment Group (“Nent”) is generating more revenue in its home markets than top American rival Netflix. Valhalla awaits.

May the Norse Be With You
In years past, Hollywood would sell its content to be distributed by European rivals. Now, with the stateside streaming market relatively saturated, American streaming giants have made foreign lands a top priority.

The Numbers Tell the Story: Of the 141 million streaming subscribers in western Europe, 86% of them belong to Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney+.

Netflix's $17 billion global content budget — eight times what the BBC spends — has allowed it to ramp up local productions such as Elite in Spain or Dark in Germany.

But while they’ve conquered Britain, France, and Germany — America’s streaming giants are facing a Viking resistance in the north. In Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway, Nent’s Viaplay streaming service is within striking distance of Netflix’s 4.2 million subscribers.

• Nent boasts 3 million subs, making it the only domestic streaming service in all of western Europe to have a second-place audience share in its home market.
• Nent makes more revenue in Scandinavia than Netflix by offering higher-priced sports packages. Rights to the English Premier League — a ratings Mjölnir (that’s Thor’s hammer) in Europe — don’t hurt.

Come Original: Now Nent is eyeing a launch in the U.S. and 10 other territories as a specialist in Nordic drama (think, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). The plan is to raise $415 million to hit 10.5 million subscribers by 2025, with 4.5 million coming outside of the Nordic region.

The Takeaway: CEO Anders Jensen told the FT, “If you don’t copy some of [Netflix] with pride, then you’re making a mistake.”

New figures from Amazon's bi-annual transparency report reveal the number of government requests for customer data soared a whopping 800% during the last six months of 2020.

At the same time, Amazon has ramped up a controversial surveillance network that partners its Ring camera systems with U.S. police departments.

The trend has critics asking, is this Big Tech or Big Brother?

Fed in the Clouds
Requests for user data — pursuant to warrants, subpoenas, or court orders — are climbing faster than a viral Reddit stock. Amazon responded to 27,664 government demands for information on customers from July to the end of the year, up from 3,222 in the first six months of the year.

• German authorities were responsible for 42% of overall requests, with Spain and Italy tied in second place with 18% each, and the U.S. fourth with 11%.
• But for Amazon Web Services, 75% of the 523 data requests were made by U.S. authorities.

Devil in the Undisclosed Details: Amazon is notoriously secretive about what it does with customer data. In 2015, it became the last of the major Silicon Valley titans to put out a transparency report. Every subsequent year the company has pared-back disclosure on items ranging from takedown notices to account removals.

Public-Private Partnership
Over 2,000 U.S. police departments — twice as many as a year ago — are now partnered with Amazon's Ring doorbell system, which allows them to request footage captured by the devices from user homes.

The partnerships have drawn ire from privacy advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which called the initiative a “massive and unchallenged de facto CCTV surveillance network.”

The Takeaway: Amazon says it refuses requests that it believes are excessive. Last year the company complied with 57% of police requests to Ring, down from 68% the year before.

Manchester City, the English Premier League soccer club, is well-known for striking splashy deals to acquire the world’s top soccer talent.

During this season’s trading window, the club’s most significant addition wasn’t a young striker or a talented midfielder. It was a 39-year-old astrophysicist turned hedge fund analyst.

Laurie Shaw has joined Manchester City to lead “artificial intelligence insights.”

Moneyball Madness
An unlikely soccer club executive, Shaw studied astrophysics at Cambridge and Yale and worked at algorithmic hedge fund Winton Capital Management. For the last five years he worked as a statistician at the U.K. Treasury.

Now Shaw is playing a role in what has been described as an “arms race for Ph.D statistics and physics talent” to help use big data to better compete on the pitch. Shaw will use his big brain to:

• Work on player identification, recruitment and individual development, pre and post-match analysis, and recruitment of coaches.
• Build machine-based models to better manage player fatigue, injury and illness.

Liverpool, last year’s Premier League champion, has reportedly pushed heavily into data science. Experts say the move contributed to its first league title in 30 years.

Billy Beane SPAC Fail
Last year Billy Beane, the baseball executive who was depicted in the film Moneyball, launched a SPAC to bring the same big-data tactics to Wall Street.

His SPAC, called RedBall Acquisition, was in talks to acquire a minority stake in the parent company of the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool FC. Last week the deal reportedly fell apart as RedBall couldn’t secure enough outside capital at the proposed price.

The Takeaway: Red Sox fans won't be able to buy stock in the team any time soon.

Regulators have a lot on their minds these days. From tackling the global health crisis to building sustainable energy infrastructure, it's a full docket.

On Thursday, regulators in the U.K. and the EU launched probes into two highly controversial topics: memes and chocolate.

Get a Whiff of Gif
The Competition and Markets Authority (the U.K.’s main competition watchdog) has opened a formal investigation into Facebook’s $400 million acquisition of Giphy, the animated sticker database.

The move comes eight months after the CMA forced Facebook to suspend the integration of Giphy into its operations while the CMA examined the deal's effect on competition:

• The concern is Zuck & co. will be able to use Giphy as a vehicle to uncover data about competing apps and their users (Giphy is integrated with TikTok, Twitter and Apple iMessage).

The CMA will now have until March 25th to decide whether to up its initial investigation into an in-depth probe.

Chocolatier Profiteer
Regulators in Brussels have opened a formal antitrust investigation into whether Mondelez, the maker of Cadbury chocolate, has restricted competition by hindering cross-border trading of its products across the EU.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s executive vice-president for competition, said, “chocolates, biscuits and coffee are products consumed by European citizens daily.” That we already knew.

But Ms. Vestager expressed concern the chocolate maker interfered with a practice known as parallel trade, through which traders can buy products cheaper in one member state and resell them elsewhere in the EU:

• The Commission accused Mondelez of imposing restrictions on languages used in packaging in order to prevent cross-border trade.
• Mondelez may have also refused to supply some traders in an effort to curb imports into certain markets, according to the report.

The Takeaway: Whether it's paying too much for a Toblerone or having your memes spied on, there is a lot on the table.

The Ferragamo family — the majority shareholders of the luxury brand adored for its fashionable attire and flair of European sophistication — has called off plans to sell a minority stake in the company.

Instead, Ferragamo is reportedly working to overhaul the management team and hire independent board members to replace an outfit currently dominated by family and friends. And maybe even a few button men.

The Story
Like many other luxury goods companies, Ferragamo has suffered through the pandemic with the prolonged closure of boutiques and the reality that no one needed $695 loafers last year. ‘Gamo’s revenue dropped 39% during the first nine months of 2020.

Last year the Ferragamo family — which owns a 54% stake in the Milan-listed company — explored selling a minority stake to raise capital. But according to the Financial Times, buyers were put off by the fact the family refused to relinquish control of the company’s governance.

New Talent: Now that a stake-sale has been taken off the table, Ferragamo is focusing on relaunching the brand with the help of a new management team:

• Last week the company appointed former Goldman Sachs banker Claudio Costamagna to the board following the resignation of Giuseppe Anichini.
• Contracts for Ferragamo’s creative director and chief executive, which will expire in the next few months, are reportedly unlikely to be renewed.

The Takeaway: No comment from the Ferragamo family. Makes sense - you never tell anyone outside the family what you’re thinking.

You can discard the rumors: San Francisco's tech community is alive and well.

Just a few months after launching its first product, San-Francisco based startup Fast announced a $102 million funding round on Tuesday.

What is Fast? For starters, it’s not a weight-loss tool. Instead, Fast helps enable seamless online shopping experiences by letting consumers pay with a “one-click checkout.” CEO Domm Holland likened Fast to Amazon’s “Buy Now” feature, which allows shoppers to avoid visiting the shopping cart altogether.

The Value Proposition: is abundantly clear. Internet users tend to get distracted, resulting in “abandoned carts,” which — for an e-commerce company — means lost revenue.

Fast is not alone in wanting to tackle the market opportunity:

• In late December, Bolt, which provides online checkout, identity and payments services, raised a $75 million extension to its Series C round.
• In mid-January Checkout.com, which is working on a “one-stop shop" for all things related to payments, raised $450 million at a $15 billion valuation.
• Just one day after the Checkout.com raise, Rapyd announced it raised $300 million at a $2.5 billion valuation. Rapyd provides fintech services via an API and supports global eCommerce payments.

The Takeaway: Fast's round was led by fintech giant Stripe, one of the most valuable unicorns in the world.

As anyone who has been on Twitter knows, the internet can be a hostile place.

No one understands that better than Andrew Left, a well-known short seller who unwittingly found himself at odds with one of the most powerful groups in the stock market: a Reddit thread known as r/wallstreetbets.

So Far: WallStreetBets, 1. Andrew Left, 0.

What’s The Battle About?
GameStop. The beleaguered video game retailer.

The saga began last August when Chewy.com founder Ryan Cohen began building a position in GameStop. Cohen snapped up 9 million shares, equating to a 13% stake in the company, and last week it was announced he will join the company’s board.

Meanwhile, GameStop is one of the least-favored stocks on Wall Street. According to CNBC, 140% of GameStop’s available shares are sold short (bets against the company).

The Crescendo: The tug of war came to a head late last week when Andrew Left of Citron Research was publicly discussing its short position in GameStop, claiming the company is “pretty much in terminal decline.” Left added fuel to the fire when he described buyers of GameStop stock as “suckers at this poker game.”

Those comments drew ire from what Left described as an “angry mob” of Reddit retail traders who were, he says, acting in a coordinated fashion to push the stock higher:

• When Left attempted to hold a live stream to explain his bearish thesis, he said multiple people attempted to hack his Twitter account and interfere with the video.
• Left claims he is being harassed with unwanted food deliveries and he has even be signed up for Tinder.

Left said he has “never experienced anything like this viciousness,” and he has asked the FBI, SEC, and local law enforcement to investigate the intimidation tactics.

The Scoreboard
A lot of money is trading hands, and it's not clear how much Citron has left.

On Friday roughly 194 million shares of GameStop were traded, more than eight times its 30-day daily average and trading was halted multiple times.

Over the last two weeks, GameStop shares have climbed more than 225%.

• According to S3 Partners, GameStop short sellers have suffered more than $3.3 billion of mark-to-market losses this year.
• Cohen has notched a paper profit of roughly $500 million.

The Takeaway: GameStop shares are surging higher in pre-market trading this morning. Today will be expensive for someone, one way or another.

You might get a kick out of this story.

David Beckham hung up his cleats seven years ago, but he is still putting up big numbers: Since 2019, Beckham and his wife Victoria have paid themselves $19.9 million (about $55,000 a day) from their various media interests.

The hefty payout packages have reportedly drawn the equivalent of a red card from auditors and creditors.

Posh Awash in Loss
David Beckham Ventures Limited, the company that manages Beckham’s image deals and his stake in Major League Soccer’s Inter Miami CF, reported a £600,000 increase in annual revenue to £16.2 million in 2019 (the latest numbers available in yesterday's report). That was good for £11.3 million in pre-tax profits.

But Victoria’s turn at entrepreneurship — through her interest in luxury goods purveyor Victoria Beckham Holdings Limited — has resulted in something of an own goal:

• Despite a £2.5 million jump in sales, pre-tax losses at Posh’s luxury fashion business ballooned to £16.5 million in 2019.
• Victoria was forced into an “extensive cost-cutting program” to survive the pandemic.
• The Beckhams can bend a soccer ball, but apparently not credit covenants. Victoria and her private-equity partners were forced to inject £9.2 million in cash to pay down a loan whose terms had been breached.

Gilded Age
On top of monetizing his likeness on billboards around the globe, David Beckham has been investing in video games. Last fall he took a “significant minority interest” in budding e-sports company “Guild ESports,” which subsequently went public.

The Takeaway: Six years after being dubbed People magazine’s 2015 “Sexiest Man Alive,” David can still take those looks to the bank. Victoria’s business could use a little extra spice.

He may not have been holding a newspaper with the date on it, but Alibaba founder Jack Ma was seen yesterday after a suspicious three month disappearance from public life.

Representatives from the Jack Ma Foundation confirmed that Ma gave a virtual speech for a charitable event celebrating China's rural educators.

A Picture is Worth $58 Billion
Speculation about Ma’s whereabouts has swirled since he deviated from the party line — “that's what Xi said” — while making a speech in October.

Ma, who has a history of advocating for greater market freedoms, was feared to have gone one step too far by accusing China’s financial regulators of stifling innovation in the tech sector.

• Ma and two top executives from Ant Group (the financial affiliate of Alibaba) were swiftly summoned to a closed-door meeting with Chinese regulators.
• President Xi Jinping then pulled the plug on Ant's $34 billion IPO, which would have been the largest in history.

A Sigh of Relief: Despite the fact Ma stepped down from his formal role at Alibaba in 2019, yesterday's appearance was clearly meaningful for investors: Alibaba shares soared 8.5%, adding $58 billion to the company's market cap.

Ruling With An Iron Fist
This is not the first time Xi has been forceful with companies that grew too large too quickly.

In 2018, China forced HNA Group to dump holdings in hotels, finance and technology, and refocus on its core airline businesses. It also seized control of Anbang Insurance, steering it back towards core operations after the company expanded into investment products.

Not Out Of The Woods: In December regulators outlined a plan which will require Ant to curtail certain operations and put up significant amounts of capital to support its financial operations.

There’s an old saying “the two happiest days in a boat owner’s life: the day you buy the boat, and the day you sell the boat.” The expression certainly applies here.

In an effort to stay afloat during turbulent times, Royal Caribbean is jettisoning a full operating subsidiary - yesterday announcing a deal to sell the Azamara cruise line to private equity firm Sycamore Partners for just over $200 million

Going Down With The Ship
We won't rehash the full recent cruise line narrative. The pandemic pain persists and Royal Caribbean is expected to post a $2 billion loss for the latest quarter.

Deal Drivers: But despite the economic pain, Royal Caribbean finance chief Jason Liberty told the WSJ the deal “wasn’t driven by financial reasons.” Instead, Liberty said the deal will help prioritize the “minds and time of management” and consolidate the portfolio:

• Royal Caribbean also owns the Celebrity Cruises and Silversea brands, which overlap with the high-end Azamara clientele.
• At just 1.5% of total capacity, Azamara operated just three ships. More of a flotilla than a fleet.

Popular Strategy: Last week Carnival said it was on track to sell 19 older ships representing 13% of its total capacity.

Looking Ahead
We're still a long way away from returning to all-you-can-eat buffets and packing into over-crowded cruise ship pools. Most of Royal Caribbean's sailings across the globe are canceled until at least April 30.

The return of U.S. cruises will hinge on the CDC, which has told operators they’ll need to apply two months in advance before they want to start passenger trips again.

The Takeaway: Carnival has bold plans for 2022. The publicly-traded cruise operator is currently marketing its "nudist cruises" where travelers will be permitted to parade around in their birthday suits. Read more about the "Bare Necessities" cruise here.

Fourth quarter earnings season kicked off in earnest last week, and soon one of the most tumultuous years in financial markets history will be fully in the books.

Some of America’s largest banks set the tone on Friday with results befitting of 2020: equal parts optimism and existential worry.

The Early Reports
Buoyed by a reversal of loan loss reserves, Wells Fargo and Citigroup each bested earnings expectations.

Then there was JPMorgan. The bank revealed it turned a record $12.1 billion profit in Q4 and many analysts were swooning over the numbers. Colorful analyst Jim Cramer called it “one of the greatest quarters I have ever seen.”

• Prime Strength: The majority of JPMorgan’s customers are what they call “prime” borrowers who have, according to CEO Jamie Dimon, “a lot more income” than an average bank customer. Dimon noted these customers continued to pay down their credit card balances at an “extraordinary” pace.
• JPMorgan reported a 20% increase in trading revenues, meaning it successfully captured the volatility you may have seen in your brokerage account.

Still, investors were turned off by tepid loan growth and a still cautious outlook from Dimon, sending shares down nearly 2% on the day.

FinTech Drama
Responding to a question from an analyst, Jamie Dimon expressed concern about the growth of competition from emerging fintech players.

Making note of Visa, PayPal, Ant Financial, Tencent, Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon, Dimon acknowledged there is a long list of talented companies he is “scared ****** of". Exact quote.

The Takeaway: There is good reason to be worried. Square, founded just over a decade ago, now has a market cap on par with that of Goldman Sachs. 

According to The Wall Street Journal, media startup Axios is set to launch its first software product in February.

The platform, called AxiosHQ, will help businesses draft internal newsletters in the “just-the-facts” style that Axios is known for.

Tell Me, But in Bullet Points
After raising $57 million in venture capital, Axios has had a big few years with its high-profile political coverage and HBO show. Now, Axios wants a taste of recurring revenue and the valuation that comes with it.

Tool Specifics: AxiosHQ will help businesses streamline internal communications with a writing template that users can fill in. The software will provide a “Smart Brevity” score that gives feedback on how clear and succinct the writing is.

• Users will have the ability to consult an independent team of editors at Axios.
• Once the memo is sent, management will be able to track engagement analytics like open rates.
• Speculating here: Extra points for starting briefs with “hope all is well” and closing with “tx.”

CEO James VandeHei has called the Axios style “exponentially more efficient” than traditional writing. With a starting price of $10,000 per year for AxiosHQ, one would hope so.

Diversify, Diversify, Diversify
Several news companies have had success selling their internal software as a subscription service:

• The Washington Post’s technology platform, Arc, is used by around 90 companies and nets the company between $10,000 and $150,000 per customer.
• Chorus, Vox Media’s publishing platform, was developed by the company for internal use. Now it’s used by 350 companies and is a growing part of Vox’s operations.

The Takeaway: So far Axios has 20 paying customers signed on including AT&T and Delta Air Lines.

Heads up - this story could make you feel antsy.

The European Food Safety Authority has declared the yellow mealworm (the larval form of the mealworm beetle) safe for human consumption, paving the way for its arrival at the dinner table.

Insect Invasion
According to the UN, more than two billion people around the globe (primarily in Asia, Africa, and South America) already consume insects as part of their regular diet.

Crawling In This Direction: In the west, the market for insects (while still small) is evolving quickly. In 2017 the European Commission said it would allow the use of insects in fish feed, and in 2018 Brussels established a formal regulatory framework for the sector.

Yesterday's announcement from the EU Food Safety Authority pertained to an application from French insect farmer Micronutris — one of the early players in the space. Micronutris plans to use mealworm larvae as a protein additive in snacks, bars, and other foods.

Now, analysts say the insect farming business is buzzing with potential:

• Analysts at Barclays believe the market for insect protein could rise to roughly $8 billion by 2030 from $1 billion today.
• EU-based venture capital firms poured $177 million into insect startups last year, and food giants such as Cargill and Nestlé are racing to catch up.

Sustainability Play
With more and more focus being placed on the sustainability of food production, many analysts see potential in insects. Advocates point to high nutritional value and the relatively small amount of energy needed to produce insects at scale.

The Takeaway: No need to bug out quite yet - yesterday's safety news is just the first step in the authorization process. It will be some time before insects hit grocery store shelves.

If you’ve ever bet on a sporting event, you’re likely aware that having money on the line can spice-up the viewing experience.

FuboTV knows it too. Yesterday, the streaming service focused on live sports announced a deal to acquire nascent sports betting platform Vigtory.

The Strategy is Clear: Rake in both consumers’ monthly streaming fees and ill-conceived bets.

Sportsbook Central
FuboTV was launched six years ago with a focus on a narrow but extremely passionate audience: American soccer fans looking to watch European games (if you knew one, you'd know). Since then, Fubo has become a full-blown streaming platform while still maintaining its emphasis on sports content.

Fubo completed an IPO last October at $10 per share, and since then shares have been on a roller-coaster ride à la the life of a Bills fan.

Gambling Strategy: According to management, the acquisition of Vigtory will help diversify the company’s revenue stream and boost engagement with viewers:

• The deal comes just a month after FuboTV bought Balto Sports, which created the animation software that powers the Vigtory app.

A Popular Playbook
Fubo won’t have the playing field all to themselves.

DraftKings has partnered with both ESPN and AT&T’s Turner Networks to integrate their gambling platform into the respective media platforms’ offerings. And Bally's Corp. has a similar arrangement with Sinclair Broadcast Group.

The Takeaway: Guard your wallet, folks.

Yesterday pharmaceutical startup EQRx announced a $500 million Series B funding round, bringing the company’s total haul to a whopping $750 million in its first 12 months of existence.

In a pharma landscape where lobbying for higher prices is the norm, EQRx is leaning into a contrarian business model: undercut the competition with lower-cost, "fast follower" therapies.

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Market Disruption
Playing copycat is standard operating procedure in the world of healthcare. Generic and “biosimilar” drugs typically hit the market immediately after a brand-name drug loses patent protection.

The EQRx model is different. Instead of waiting until after a brand-name drug loses protection, EQRx will develop entirely new drugs that leapfrog off validated clinical research:

• In essence, EQRx will tweak the biological mechanisms of other drugs and go through their own set of clinical trials to develop what they call "equivalars."
• By doing so, CEO Alexis Borisy says they can get through clinical and regulatory approval more quickly and for a fraction of the cost vs. other drugs (savings which they plan to pass through to payers).

The Players: The bold plan has drawn skepticism from some, but the fundraising haul and top-flight investors — including Alphabet subsidiary GV and life sciences investment firm Casdin Capital — suggest this is no Theranos redux.

Pharma Economic Realities In The USA
While the U.S. brings more therapeutic innovation to market than any other country in the world - consumers and the broader healthcare system are paying for it.

Americans pay more for prescription drugs — about $1,200 per person per year — than any other nationality in the world.

We'll see if EQRx can bring down the average.

Buoyed by record-low interest rates, demand for larger homes and general exuberance - home prices are soaring across much of the country.

But much to the chagrin of secretive billionaires, the ultra-luxury real estate market in Manhattan has (with some exceptions) not participated in the boom.

According to Bloomberg, the 58th-floor condo of a prominent luxury tower recently sold for $16.8 million, a 51% markdown from its purchase price in 2014. It’s the largest loss for any condo at One57, the building that set off New York’s high-end construction boom in a neighborhood known as Billionaires’ Row.

Empty Investments
Following the 2008 real estate crash, deep-pocketed foreign investors rushed to buy newly-constructed condos atop Manhattan’s skyline - often as a way to shelter money. The New York Times found in 2015 that $8 billion was spent annually on NYC properties costing at least $5 million.

Interestingly, more than half of those purchases were made via shell companies by owners that rarely set foot in the residences.

Many buyers had very little practical use for the properties - viewing them more as a store of value. Lately, that hasn’t been working out - at One57 four other condos sold at a 40% loss last year.

Double The Pain: Meanwhile, on Jan. 1, Congress passed a bill that will prevent buyers from shielding their identity behind LLCs.

Why It Matters: Unless you are a Saudi sheikh, it probably doesn’t.

“If only there was just one more streaming service I could watch,” said no one. Ever.

Yet here we are: Yesterday former executives of Disney and Discovery announced a new streaming platform called “Struum,” which will make its debut this spring.

Instead of offering its own original content, Struum will give viewers à la carte access to hundreds of niche streaming services without forcing them to subscribe to each individually.

Marching To The Beat Of Your Own Struum
Discovery+ notwithstanding, the streaming landscape is dominated by elephants. A whopping 95% of U.S. households subscribe to one of Netflix, Disney’s Hulu or Amazon’s Prime Video. A fourth tech giant, Apple, entered the fray in late 2019.

These well-capitalized firms have made it nearly impossible for new entrants to break in (just ask Quibi, which failed in spectacular fashion after raising nearly $2 billion in venture capital).

Struum Playbook: Inspired by ClassPass, which lets people pick and choose classes at gyms they’re not members of, Struum will do the same for streaming:

• Struum has struck deals with nearly three dozen unnamed, niche streaming services representing 20,000 TV shows and movies.
• For $9.99 a month, users will get 100 “credits” that allow them to pick and choose what shows they want to watch from different streaming services.

Use Case: If (for some odd reason) you're in the mood for an art-house horror flick, Struum would give piecemeal access to a streaming service like Screambox (which, you may not want to pay for every month).

The Takeaway: The venture is being backed by Tornante, the investment firm of former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, who told the WSJ Struum is a “no brainer.” Famous last words in the streaming arena. 

CoinDesk, one of the largest digital media outlets focused on cryptocurrency, announced yesterday a deal to acquire TradeBlock, a bitcoin-focused subscription data company.

The Building Blocks of Bitcoin
TradeBlock's most notable product, the XBX Index, addresses a fundamental and underappreciated reality of bitcoin: knowing its "true" price at any given time is a bit of a mystery.

Unlike equities which trade on centralized exchanges (like the New York Stock Exchange), bitcoin and its crypto brethren are traded on hundreds of digital exchanges around the world.

Other large bitcoin transactions, we presume, happen in back alleys by way of USB flash drives.

Why That Matters: As bitcoin continues to gain acceptance in the mainstream financial community, knowing what it's "worth" at any given time becomes important. An accurate reference price is needed to build financial products underpinned by bitcoin - such as ETFs.

TradeBlock’s XBX is an "institutional-quality" reference rate that compiles data from exchanges across the globe as well as from "verified" off-exchange trades. It is used as the benchmark price that underpins investment vehicles such as the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.

Big Players Diving In
The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust has seen its assets climb from $2.5 billion in June 2019 to $20 billion last month.

With investor interest soaring, old-world data players are beginning to take notice. Last fall Standard & Poor’s announced it would soon launch its own cryptocurrency index.

Takeaway: None of this is relevant for the folks who believe bitcoin is worthless.

Heading into 2020, few could have predicted a television series about chess would turn out to be one of the most successful shows of the year.

But with Tiger King long in the rearview, Netflix’s smash hit The Queen’s Gambit was watched by more than 65 million households last fall.

Now, Hollywood is doubling down on the theme with an even less likely focal point: the Rubik’s Cube. Endeavor Content and Hyde Park Entertainment Group have reportedly teamed up to produce a feature film (and full content ecosystem) based on the three-by-three brain teaser.

Cubed-Squared
The Rubik’s Cube was invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor Erno Rubik. Since then, more than 450 million Rubik’s Cubes have been sold worldwide.

The cube is now set to take center stage in the world of film and television:

• Hyde Park and Endeavor will create a full-length feature film based on the best-selling puzzle toy.
• Hyde Park has also partnered with Glassman Media, which created game shows The Wall and Spin the Wheel to create a game show based on the Rubik’s Cube.

Graham Taylor, co-president of Endeavor, said, “The Rubik’s Cube is an iconic and family-friendly brand. In partnership with Hyde Park we look forward to creating film, television, and game show content for global audiences.”

What Else Cubed?
For the last few years, “speedcubers” have done battle at the Rubik’s Cube World Championship Finals in Boston, which is sponsored by Red Bull (seriously). Here's what that is like.

A Netflix-hosted mini-documentary from last year, “Speed Cubers” followed the friendship between two solving savants who competed against each other in the 2019 World Cube Association’s World Championships.

The Takeaway: Stay tuned, this has all the makings of a blockbuster.

Just over one century ago the world was suffering through the Spanish Flu, one of the deadliest pandemics in history. When the outbreak subsided in the spring of 1920, a decade of social and economic opulence - now known as the Roaring Twenties - ensued.

While the coronavirus pandemic isn’t over, many credible epidemiologists predict we will soon be coming down the caseload curve.

Now feels like as good a time as any to peek ahead to a post-pandemic reality.

Urban Renaissance?
One of the more dramatic phenomena during the pandemic has been the flight from urban density to suburban sprawl. More space, outdoor recreation, and a yard for the pandemic puppy were all popular amenities in 2020.

The numbers tell the story: In New York City, the U.S. Postal Service processed 333,588 change of address requests between March and November.

But some analysts say demand for suburban life has peaked and urban housing markets are showing signs of life:

• In May, residential transaction volume in Manhattan was just 20% of its typical level.
• By November, transaction volume had fully recovered, even eclipsing 2019 levels.

Commuter Conundrum: And when city offices ultimately re-open, many of the so-called "bedroom communities" could be facing challenging (and crowded) commutes. The MTA (which operates the Metro-North commuter rail line in New York and Connecticut, as well as the Long Island Railroad) has warned that without $10-plus billion in federal aid, commuter services could be cut in half.

Roaring Twenties Reboot?
Public health restrictions have forced many to cut back on the hedonistic aspects of life. Some believe that reality has created huge pent-up demand for dining, drinking, vacations and general entertainment.

When Zoom happy hours become a relic of a bygone nightmare, many sociologists are predicting the world will enter a Great Gatsby-esque era.

And the economics support it:

• Every month since the pandemic’s onset has seen a vastly higher personal savings rate than 2019’s average of 7.6%. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the rate hit a record high of 33.7% in April.
• Policy support for strong demand growth — government deficits and ultra-loose monetary policy — is likely to stay in place for some time.

The Takeaway: A lot of social and economic upside to be hopeful about.

If you've seen The Sopranos, you know it's not feasible to "tax" someone outside of your jurisdiction.

With work-from-home becoming a reality in 2020 (and states desperate for tax revenue) a fight is brewing in the Supreme Court over which state has the right to tax remote workers' pay.

Tax Tussle
Heading into the pandemic, six states followed what's known as the “convenience rule.” Under the rule, a New Jersey-based remote employee of a New York company (for example) would still be taxed in New York if the telecommuting took place for the "convenience" of the employee.

While it's clear that coronavirus is more than a little inconvenient, states are trading blows on the tax interpretation.

Newcomer: Massachusetts temporarily adopted the convenience rule during the pandemic and has continued to tax nonresident remote workers as if they were still commuting.  

That move got the attention of Massachusetts’ northern neighbor, New Hampshire, which charges no income tax and is home to many-a-Boston commuter. In October New Hampshire filed a petition to the Supreme Court.

• The Granite State claims the taxation undermines its public services, its appeal as a place to live, and even its sovereignty.
• Governor Chris Sununu said Wednesday, “Massachusetts’ current position is a far cry from our country’s rallying call of ‘no taxation without representation,’ which they seem to have forgotten originated in their state.” 

The News: This week over a dozen states including Texas, Ohio, Connecticut, Iowa and New Jersey chimed-in, asking the Supreme Court to hear the case.

Getting Fiscal
Governors’ offices nationwide will be feverishly following any Supreme Court ruling, which would have major implications for state budgets.

• In 2018, New Jersey and Connecticut residents paid New York a combined $5 billion in income taxes, according to the NY State Department of Taxation and Finance. That’s about 10% of all income tax New York collected in 2018.

The Takeaway: Massachusetts has argued its new tax rule is maintaining the status quo to prevent "disruption" to taxpayers. But it's not clear if workers would view a smaller tax bill as disruptive.

Internet holding company IAC, chaired by media mogul Barry Diller, announced yesterday it will spin-off its Vimeo video unit to shareholders.

Strictly Business For Vimeo
Vimeo was started in 2004 as a side project for employees of the online comedy platform "CollegeHumor." The project was quickly scooped-up by IAC in 2006 as part of a larger acquisition.

Now known as the "other YouTube," Vimeo sells a suite of video-creation and editing tools to content creators and businesses to help build their online presence.

The pandemic has driven a surge in demand for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies like Vimeo, which now boasts 1.5 million paying subscribers. That includes over 3,500 enterprise customers like Amazon, Starbucks and Rite Aid.

Who's laughing now?

• For the first nine months of 2020, Vimeo earned $199 million in revenue, up 41% vs. last year.
• Vimeo recently raised $150 million from investors Thrive Capital and GIC at a valuation of $2.75 billion.

On the Q3 earnings call, IAC CEO Joey Levin asserted, “Clearly, Vimeo is now in control of its own destiny.” Levin has also stated a spinoff would benefit Vimeo, as its rapid growth meant “access to capital inside of IAC will be much more expensive than access to capital outside of IAC.”

Business As Usual For IAC
Vimeo is far from IAC’s first rodeo when it comes to spin-offs. The holding company’s go-to maneuver has been to build up companies from within and then break them off once they have matured:

• Vimeo would be IAC and its predecessors’ 11th spin-off. Expedia, LendingTree and Ticketmaster are a few household names the holding company has strengthened and subsequently parted ways with over the years.
• More recently, IAC spun-off online dating company Match Group.

The Takeaway: Shareholders applauded the move with a 14% jump in IAC's share price.

Not even the $900 billion stimulus could overpower headlines from yesterday such as: “U.K. Tightens Rules As A Variant Of The COVID-19 Virus Spreads.”

Sensationalism aside, here is what's known about the new strain of COVID-19 spreading in the U.K. that spooked global markets yesterday.

The World Holds Its Breath, Again
We’ll start with the bad news. Boris Johnson’s announcement that the new mutation is believed to be 70% more contagious than other strains led to a swift global response.

A growing list of countries including most of Europe, Canada, Colombia, Israel, Hong Kong, Morocco and India have closed their borders to travelers from the U.K.

The reaction from the financial markets was equally swift:

• The (European) regional Stoxx 600 index fell by 2.3%.
• The British Pound, which hit a 2-year high last week, fell as much as 2.4% against other major currencies before recovering late in the day.
• Airline stocks, fresh off a vaccine bump, were clipped across the globe with British Airways’ parent company falling 8%.

As of this morning, thousands of European truck drivers were stranded on the British side of the English Channel because of French border restrictions put in place on Sunday.

U.K. supermarkets warned they will run out of certain perishable goods by the end of the week if the trade route remains closed.

The (All Important) Nuance
Putting on our science caps for a minute.

The new strain of the virus, which is being called B.1.1.7, was first detected in mid-October by the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium. The samples were actually collected on Sept. 20 and 21, meaning B.1.1.7 has been circulating for months.

The variant has also been identified in Denmark (nine cases), Australia (two) and Italy, the Netherlands and Iceland (one each). Importantly, the UK is one of only a few countries actively sequencing COVID-19 to detect variants - and many scientists believe B.1.1.7 is already much more widespread.

But it's not all bad news. While there are certain traits in the mutation which suggest B.1.1.7 could be more transmissible, some leading scientists caution the spread of B.1.1.7 could be due to chance (as was the case with other mutations). And there is no evidence B.1.1.7 leads to more severe disease.

Vaccine Takeaway: This morning the CEO of BioNTech (which developed a vaccine with Pfizer) said he was "confident" that the vaccine works against the U.K. variant.

Solvents, sports, and SUVs - here’s what they have in common:

Ineos, the London-based chemicals giant which specializes in solvents, adhesives and pigments, is doubling-down on its extracurricular activities.

On Friday the company announced a deal to acquire a one-third stake in the Mercedes Formula 1 racing team.

Ineos Empire
Led by billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe (one of the 100 richest men in the world), Ineos is not a household name on the American side of the pond. With a reported $80 billion in annual revenue, Ineos serves industrial end-markets with chemicals such as chlorine and titanium dioxide.

But in recent years, the company’s public profile has ballooned:

• Ineos has spent half a billion dollars acquiring French soccer club OGC Nice, Switzerland’s Lausanne Sports FC and U.K. cycling club “Team Sky” (which it renamed Team Ineos).
• Ineos has funded Britain’s efforts in the prestigious America’s Cup sailing race.
• It also (successfully) sponsored an effort by Kenyan Eliuid Kipchoge to run a sub-two-hour marathon.

While Ratcliffe says the sports pursuits are born from a genuine interest, others have criticized the company of “sportwashing,” or building a positive public image to dissociate from environmentally unfriendly business activities.

Mercedes Maven: Ineos' automotive ambitions don’t end at the race track. The company recently purchased a Mercedes plant in France and plans to launch its own SUV, called the Grenadier, in 2021.

Ola Kallenius, Daimler chairman, said Ineos could also become a future partner in building sustainable fuel technologies.

The Takeaway: Here is what Ineos' first car will look like.

Our readers know we aren’t in the business of giving financial advice.

But this sure feels like an easy way to get burned.

Balmuda, the boutique Japanese household electronics company that specializes in toasters and tea kettles, made its stock market debut in Tokyo yesterday. Shares skyrocketed 88% on strong demand from retail investors, giving the company a $270 million valuation.

Punching Above Its Weight
Balmuda is a relative minnow in a landscape of Japanese manufacturers such as Toshiba and Panasonic. The company pulled in just over $104 million of revenue last year, and only began selling products outside of Japan and South Korea just this year.

But the company’s design-forward products and playful marketing (which flirts with the absurd) has given it a near-mystical quality with consumers (and now investors).

“BALMUDA The Toaster” as the company refers to its toaster SKU, retails for $329 and has quite the value proposition:

• Company founder and designer Gen Terao (who has reportedly been moved to tears over a loaf of bread) has been tweaking the appliance for over 20 years.
• The Balmuda toaster uses a steam cooking method to “envelop the bread, lightly toasting its surface, while keeping its inner moisture and flavor from increasing.”

American reviewers have been impressed. WIRED’s Joe Ray was at first unmoved by the toast, but the design hooked him. “I stuck it on a bookshelf one night when my wife and I had company because I wanted it to be a conversation piece.”

Why It Matters: The real story here is the strength of the IPO market in Japan. More than 25 companies are scheduled to debut by Dec. 31 on Japan’s Mothers market, a NASDAQ-style exchange for startups. That’s a record for this late in the year.

This news will not help bring the SPAC-euphoria back down to earth.

On Tuesday, Blade —ahem, Blade Urban Air Mobility — announced a deal to go public by way of a merger with “Experience Investment,” a special purpose acquisition company controlled by KSL Capital Partners.

Blade Background
For the uninitiated, Blade was founded by former Sony exec Rob Wiesenthal on the premise that well-heeled New Yorkers would pay almost anything to avoid traffic.

Blade ferries customers on short flights (between 60 and 100 miles) to and from places like East Hampton, Nantucket, Westchester, Aspen, Miami and Los Angeles.

Similar to Uber, Blade doesn’t own or operate its own fleet of choppers and planes. The company books seats and markets the flights of licensed third party operators and pilots.

The company boasts that it’s the “most time-efficient, cost-effective and inspiring way to mitigate urban travel pain.”

• Painless? Sure. After booking your flight by app, a car service takes you to the closest helipad. On-site Covid-19 testing and luxury lounges await on both ends.
• Cost-effective? Less clear. The “Blade Bounce” flight will get you to JFK in five minutes for $195. The 40 minute trip from Manhattan to East Hampton will set you back $795.

The Pandemic Adds (Jet) Fuel to Blade’s Tank

While the pandemic has devastated the travel industry, Blade had a strong summer thanks to NYC elite’s new commuting habits. (Notably, Uber Copter has been suspended during the pandemic).

Blade’s cash cow was always weekend jaunts out of the city. But now, New York executives are using the service to hop between midtown and the Hamptons on a near-daily basis, according to Bloomberg.

• Wiesenthal told the outlet that 35% of commuters are making round-trips in and out of Manhattan on the same day, with the majority bringing no luggage.
• Blade’s recently launched $965 Hamptons “commuter pass,” which lets customers buy unlimited trips for just $295, sold out within hours for September and October.

There is at least one feel-good angle here. Blade is the largest transporter of human organs in the Northeast, helping to reduce the costs and transport time for hospitals and patients in need.

The Takeaway: Blade was most recently valued at $140 million in 2018. Pro forma for a $400 million cash infusion as part of the deal, Blade is being valued at $825 million.

Yesterday was a big day. Just over three-quarters of a year since the start of the pandemic, the inoculation process began in the U.S.

Wall Street analysts predict a significant haul for Pfizer and Moderna, anticipating the firms will earn a collective $32 billion from the vaccines in 2021 alone. Talk about a shot in the arm.

Shot-Makers, Profit-Takers
Morgan Stanley projects Pfizer will reap $19 billion in Covid-19 vaccine revenue in 2021. That blows away its best-selling product – a pneumonia vaccine that brought in $5.8 billion in sales last year.

And looking ahead, Morgan Stanley expects Pfizer to collect another $9.3 billion in revenue in 2022-23 as its vaccine rolls out worldwide.

Unlike Pfizer, an established pharmaceutical maven, Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine put the company on the map. Moderna has never brought a drug to market and had just $60 million of revenue in 2019 (from grants and collaborations).

With its shot on the cusp of FDA approval and shares up almost 700% in 2020, Morgan Stanley says Moderna investors expect $10 to $15 billion of Covid-19 vaccine sales in each of the next two years.

Taking Shots
Not everyone is over the moon about the economic spoils. Eli Zupnick of progressive watchdog Accountable.US called it “absolutely wrong” for drug companies to profit on vaccines “so heavily subsidized and supported by American taxpayers.”

• Moderna received $955 million in federal grants to support its vaccine development.
• Pfizer did not accept federal funding for the R&D of its vaccine, but struck a $1.95 billion advance purchase agreement with the U.S. government for 100 million doses.

Still, others defended the companies as enterprises that have invested heavily in building their technology platforms.

The Takeaway: Pfizer said its vaccine development has been “entirely self-funded, with billions of dollars already invested at risk."

At the outset of the pandemic, a sharp contraction in economic activity led to a temporary drop in pollution and a boost to air quality. Some national news outlets clung to the feel-good narrative, even indulging in fake stories about dolphins returning to the canals of Venice.

While the pandemic-related drop in pollution was (by and large) temporary, a more structural reduction is coming by way of economics: The cost of polluting in the European Union is near an all-time high.

What’s The Story?
The EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) was established 15 years ago as part of the “cap and trade” program to curb carbon emissions. The system allows companies to trade carbon credits (called "allowances") which represent the right to release one ton of carbon into the atmosphere.

How It Works: Certain industries are allocated free carbon credits each year (airlines, utilities, etc.), while other credits are bought at auction. The system is meant to encourage investment in sustainable innovation, and companies that reduce their emissions can sell their credits on the open market.

As environmental restrictions become more onerous, and the EU allocates fewer free credits over time, the price of carbon allowances has been steadily rising:

• Over the past three years, the price of credits on the EU ETS has more than quadrupled.
• On Friday, the cost of one credit reached a 15-year high of €31.

Who’s Playing? It’s not just coal companies and Ryanair competing for the right to emit. Hedge funds, betting that restrictions will continue to ramp up, are scooping up carbon credits as a “green trade.”

How About In The U.S.?
At present, there are no national carbon trading programs or carbon taxes in the U.S. But that may soon change.

Janet Yellen, President-elect Biden’s Treasury secretary nominee, has vocally supported a carbon tax and was a founding member of the Climate Leadership Council, a bipartisan group of influential economists and business leaders that aims to find a “cost-effective climate policy solution.”

The Takeaway: But a tax on high-emitting industries hasn’t been required to change the energy landscape in the U.S. Coal mining capacity has fallen nearly 30% over the last decade, according to the Energy Information Administration.

For the religious among us, the church offers guidance on matters spiritual and interpersonal.

The Church Of England is taking on a different type of role at ExxonMobil: activist investor à la Gordon Gekko.

Talk about divine intervention.

Active Management
The Church Commissioners manage a £8.3 billion investment fund on behalf of the Church of England. Its mandate is to earn a 5% return on capital and invest in an ethical and responsible way.

But the Commissioners are beginning to question their devotion to Exxon and have joined fellow activist investors in pushing the firm toward greener investments.

Bess Joffe, the head of responsible investment for the church fund, said action was “urgently needed for the company to improve its ability to create long-term sustainable value and pivot its strategy to support the energy transition.”

And the church is not alone in that view:

• An emerging activist investor called Engine No. 1, which owns $40 million of Exxon stock, has called for an overhaul of the company’s strategy and a slate of new board members.
• Earlier this week it was reported famed hedge fund D.E. Shaw has built a sizable stake in the oil giant and is pushing for cost cuts.

Low on Fuel
Despite the brewing shareholder pressure, Exxon has remained wedded to its fossil fuel roots.

Competitor BP recently published a report saying oil demand would fall by half in the coming three decades. For its part, BP said it would reduce fossil fuel output by 40% by 2030.

Exxon sees it differently. The company intends to increase its fossil fuel output by a third over the next four years and believes oil will remain a pillar of the world’s economy for decades to come.

Takeaway: Oil prices have been rising on vaccine optimism, but for now, Exxon is still in a rough patch.

Accidents happen, they’re a reality of life. For most people, they involve a broken dish or a bounced check.

Yesterday Jeremy Grantham described to the Financial Times how he made more than $200 million “by accident.”

Safe to call it a happy accident.

Special Delivery
Grantham, a retired investment manager, spends his time investing in passion projects and opportunities with an environmental angle.

Seven years ago he invested in a company called QuantumScape, a spinout from Stanford University which showed promise in emerging battery technologies.

Turned out to be a winner. QuantumScape recently merged with a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) run by Kensington Capital Partners at a valuation of $3.3 billion. After a 30% share price jump yesterday, the newly merged entity now boasts a market cap of nearly $30 billion.

QuantumScape is hardly the only SPAC that has added commas to certain investors’ brokerage balances:

• Luminar, which makes technology for autonomous cars, went public last week by way of SPAC merger, making 25-year-old CEO Austin Russell a billionaire in the process.
• Yesterday a European SPAC called “2MX Organic” raised €300 million to “build a European champion in organic food.”

So, Where’s The Accident?
Despite being the massive beneficiary of SPAC-enthusiasm, Grantham attacked the SPAC model, calling it “reprehensible.”

He told the FT, “It gets around the idea of listing requirements, so it is net a useful tool for a lot of successful companies. But I think it is a reprehensible instrument, and very, very speculative by definition.”

Referring to the number of companies that have gone public by way of SPAC, Grantham said, “This is unlike anything else in my career.”

The SPAC sensation, he warns, could lead to a blank-check bubble— a market euphoria akin to the 1990s dot-com bubble and the bull market of 1929.

The Takeaway: More than 200 SPACs have listed in 2020, raising a record-smashing $66.3 billion in the process, according to the FT.

This isn’t a typical Daily Upside story, but let’s just say it caught our ear.

Last weekend Mike Tyson (54) entered the ring after a 15-year hiatus to fight Roy Jones Jr. Tyson showed fans he’s still got it—going eight rounds to end in a split decision.

And people tuned in. A lot of them. According to social-networking service Triller, the event’s distributor, the bout drew more than 1.6 million pay-per-view purchases and generated $80 million in revenue.

Bankable Boxer
By the time all the pay-per-view purchases have been tallied, Triller owner Ryan Kavanaugh believes the fight will rank among the top-10 most purchased PPV events of all-time.

While financial details were not disclosed:

• Tyson earned a rumored $10 million for his first sanctioned match since 2006.
• The 51-year-old Jones, a former world champion in four weight classes, reportedly earned $3 million.
• Jake Paul (a YouTuber) and Nate Robinson (a former NBA star) fought in the undercard and are also expected to get a share of the money.

What’s Next? Last week Evander Holyfield (58) said he would fight Tyson in a rematch of their infamous 1997 ear-splitting battle.

This story brings new meaning to the term: swimming in money.

Wall Street, tapping into its ability to put a price tag on anything, has launched a way to bet on the price of water.

Water World

Yesterday the Chicago-based CME Group launched a futures contract tied to the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index.

For those whose knowledge of the water market ends with Poland Spring and Dasani, the Nasdaq Veles Index was established in 2018 to set the benchmark price of water in California. The index measures the volume-weighted average of water transaction prices in the state’s five largest water markets.

Why California? With high-volume activities like almond and pistachio farming and celebrities watering their lawns during a drought, California is the largest water market in the U.S. by a multiple of four.

The futures contracts will be financially settled, meaning buyers won’t need a second pool to take delivery. The contracts began trading yesterday under the ticker NQH20.

Why It Matters

Until now, farmers had no way of hedging their exposure to the price of water. Should prices soar during the wrong season, they could be financially drained. According to CME, the futures will help water users manage risk and better align supply and demand.

The futures market will also serve as a scarcity gauge for investors and other interested parties.

• Two billion people live in nations with water shortages, and nearly two-thirds of the world could face a shortage in the next half decade.
• An analyst at RBC Capital Markets told Bloomberg, “Climate change, droughts, population growth, and pollution are likely to make water scarcity issues and pricing a hot topic for years to come.”

The Takeaway: If anyone has seen James Bond’s “Quantum of Solace,” you can imagine how this goes wrong.

Tesla doubters have experienced a jolt of economic reality.

According to S3 Partners, short-sellers of Tesla’s gravity-allergic stock have lost $35 billion in 2020.

Falling Short
Tesla shares have been in ludicrous mode all year and are now up over 600%. In November, Tesla climbed 46% and short-sellers lost $8.5 billion in a single month.

Bruised and battered, many short-sellers have simply given up. The percentage of shares sold short has fallen around 63% so far this year. Still, about 6% of Tesla’s shares are held by short-sellers, well above the 1-2% average for large companies.

A few numbers to put the losses in perspective:

• Short-seller losses for high-fliers Amazon and Apple have been roughly $5 billion each this year.
• The U.S. airline industry posted combined losses of $24.2 through the first nine months of 2020, the worst in its history.
• Through the first 11 years of Tesla’s corporate history, it lost $6.7 billion.

Elon’s Warning: In an email to employees obtained by Electrek, he warned that if investors grow concerned with Tesla’s 1% profit margin, the stock will “immediately get crushed like a soufflé under a sledgehammer.”

By some estimates, coronavirus-related shutdowns have cost the U.S. economy $20 billion per day. In the fullness of time, the true cost of the pandemic could reach upwards of $20 trillion.

With a rollout of the vaccine within spitting distance (pardon the expression), it’s possible there has never been a single more important product for the health of the economy.

According to reports from IBM and Interpol, the high-value of the vaccines has made them “liquid gold” for organized crime groups.

Global Onslaught
Late Wednesday, Interpol (the International Criminal Police Organization) released what’s known as a global orange notice, or a warning of a serious and imminent threat to public safety.

• The crime-monitoring body warned “criminal networks will be targeting unsuspecting members of the public via fake websites and false cures, which could pose a significant risk to their health, even their lives.”

Meanwhile, IBM’s threat intelligence task force warned of a specific and high-profile threat to the vaccine supply chain. Hackers, pretending to be executives of a Chinese refrigeration company, mounted a phishing campaign toward organizations integral to the cold supply chain.

• The goal of their cyber espionage appeared to be stealing intellectual property or disrupting the vaccine delivery process. IBM’s threat intelligence lead believed the hackers wanted to undermine global trust in the vaccines.

Another IBM security analyst told the Financial Times this first attempt could be “the tip of the iceberg.”

Who were these hackers? According to the report, it was likely a “sophisticated operation” that potentially had the backing of a nation-state.

A Vulnerable Supply Chain
Pfizer’s vaccine, approved by the UK earlier this week, must be transported at a temperature of about -95°F. But the companies versed in ultra-cold transportation don’t have the same security pedigree as, say, financial institutions. Security analysts say public-private partnerships are needed to protect the vaccines.

The most vulnerable places along the supply chain are distribution centers, truck stops and even hospitals. Counterfeits and theft of pharmaceutical products have risen 70% the last five years, according to the Pharmaceutical Security Institute.

Outdoing the hackers: Vaccine makers will use “dummy” trucks and plan fake shipments to throw criminals off the scent. In America, U.S. Marshals will travel with the vaccine trucks. 

Nothing like some good-old-fashioned hardball.

According to a report by Bloomberg, Goldman has failed to convince its former president Gary Cohn to return $10 million in past compensation as restitution for the 1MDB corruption scandal.

The Story
For a full accounting of the 1MDB story, you can read this colorful piece from the Guardian (if you have an hour). In short, certain Goldman employees were implicated in a scandal where nearly $1 billion was siphoned from a Malaysian investment vehicle.

Predictably, the money was used to buy yachts and to shower Victoria’s Secret models with gifts. The main perpetrator is still at large.

Goldman recently admitted wrongdoing in what was the largest foreign bribery case in U.S. history and agreed to pay roughly $5 billion in fines to break free from ongoing investigations.

Although Goldman’s senior-most executives were not implicated, the board called on executives to forfeit pay as a public gesture of remorse for the “institutional failure.”

• In October, Goldman disclosed plans to keep or recoup $67 million awarded to former executives and deduct another $31 million from the 2020 compensation of current top executives.

Six weeks later, Gary Cohn is the lone holdout. According to the report, Goldman has “failed to persuade” Cohn to part ways with the $10 million.

Good To Know: When Cohn left Goldman for a brief stint as the director of the National Economic Council in 2017, he was able to accelerate $65 million in cash and stock rewards and another $220 million of Goldman equity and stakes in company-run investment funds.

Under certain “conflict-of-interest” laws, Cohn was reportedly able to do so while deferring capital gains tax.

The Takeaway: Must be nice.