Things are not so hot for women in Hollywood right now. We kind of always knew that, of course, but now that Jennifer Lawrence is writing letters about not getting paid as much as her male costars and The New York Times Magazine is writing huge features on how tough it is for women to get anywhere as filmmakers, it’s getting harder to ignore.The thing is, it shouldn’t be ignored—it should be fixed. To help with that, Vimeo is launching Share the Screen, an initiative to help female filmmakers by funding their projects, teaching them the business, and promoting their movies.“From its beginning Vimeo has always stood for the democratization of filmmaking, and of sharing videos, and of gaining access to audiences,” says Vimeo CEO Kerry Trainor. “When we see all of the information from the past couple years about just how wide the gender equality gap is in the entertainment industry, lending our support identifying and celebrating female voices made all the sense in the world.”Under the initiative, announced today at the Sundance Film Festival, Vimeo will bankroll at least five projects from women filmmakers this year. It will identify burgeoning directors through its current acquisitions pipeline, the team behind its original series, and the in-house group that handles the platform’s Staff Picks. Staffers also will meet with female filmmakers during Sundance in a bid to find candidates.
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Once Vimeo chooses the filmmakers, it will help promote the films offer them for sale or rental. It’s similar to what the video streaming site has done with original programming like High Maintenance, but with a female focus. Trainor says the amount Vimeo is willing to invest in the programming—be it a series of episodes, a full-length feature, or a short film—is “uncapped,” and five the minimum number of projects it will fund this year.
The idea, of course, is to change the vicious cycle in Hollywood. A recent study, by the Center for the Study of Women in Film and Television at San Diego State University, found the number of women directors for top-grossing movies remained at 9 percent from 1998 to 2015. While it’s hard to say exactly why that number remained static, it might have a lot to do with studios’ low confidence in female filmmakers’ bankability—which will never change if women don’t get to make films and prove the studios wrong. That’s what Vimeo hopes to change.
Share the Screen kicks off with Darby Forever, a short from Saturday Night Live cast member Aidy Bryant, on February 18. In case you’re wondering why the name doesn’t have the word “female,” “women,” or “lady” in it, it’s because future ventures will finance and support filmmakers of other backgrounds and minorities.
“The ability of the Internet, and Vimeo specifically, to put power in the hands of anyone who wishes to create great video,” Trainer says, “is something that we’re very excited to get behind.”
Research shows diversity is good for business – take your pick from Harvard Business Review, Scientific American,McKinsey & Company and many more. Yet fundamental change in any industry can take time.
We’ve all seen the statistics. Tech investment in women and minorities is lacking, and while Silicon Valley is building a bubble-like paddock for unicorns, outside-the-commercial-box ideas with real social impact can be drowned out by all the eyeballs lighting up with dollar signs and ringing out ‘cha-ching’.
Discussion on diversity in industries was rampant throughout 2015, prompting the establishment of committees and policies, and the promotion of diversity leaders. Some of these efforts merely pay lip service to the cause, but some champions of diversity are taking definitive action.
The change that’s on the horizon is in no small part led by these inspiring individuals. Some are investors cognisant of the homogenous face of the tech industry and actively working to augment it. Others are attempting to change the game completely with new models of investment, while others are driving the diversity debate in the right direction.
Jonathan Haidt writes: Imagine that a major league basketball team is bought by a hedge fund manager who is a firm believer in the value of competition. Not just competition across teams, but competition within teams. He implements a radical new policy: each player’s salary is determined exclusively by the number of points he scores. Crazy, right? Anyone can see that such a policy would ruin teamwork and destroy the team’s ability to compete with more cohesive teams.
Yet this is exactly what is now happening at Sears. Five years ago, Eddie Lampert, the chairman of Sears merged with Kmart, reorganized the company so that each business unit functions like an autonomous company, with its own president, board of directors, and profit-and-loss statement. Lampert runs Sears like a hedge fund portfolio, with dozens of autonomous businesses competing for his attention and money. An outspoken advocate of free-market economics and fan of the novelist Ayn Rand, he created the model because he expected the invisible hand of the market to drive better results. If the company’s leaders were told to act selfishly, he argued, they would run their divisions in a rational manner, boosting overall performance.
The results have been disastrous, in part because Lampert was ideologically committed to the metaphor of the invisible hand and the associated idea that people are purely selfish. Ideology is a lens – it makes some things more visible, others less so. Lampert’s ideology prevented him from seeing that he was destroying the invisible band – the bond that forms around groups that can trust each other and work together toward shared goals. Evolution is a different lens – one that we believe brings unparalleled focus and resolution when examining complex human systems. A brief look through the evolutionary lens would have made it obvious how dysfunctional Lampert’s reorganization was likely to be. Competition and Cooperation
Laoise Casey writes: A miniature army of black trompette mushrooms awaits its fate on a blue cloth as a chef picks over them. One is held up for inspection – a wisp of black velvet with a perfectly furled stem. Another chef – me – selects our best-looking sourdough. Nearby, Robin Gill, head chef and owner of The Dairy restaurant in Clapham, south London, paces while eyeing the pans arranged on the stove. He has cancelled his plans for today. Cancelled, because Alain Ducasse has just sat down for lunch. For Gill, this is “like having the chance to cook for Escoffier” – the grandfather of French cuisine.
The 59-year-old French chef has 23 restaurants in seven countries, including two in London, and a total of 20 Michelin stars. He also runs cookery schools, has written numerous cookbooks, and last year he even devised a menu for the International Space Station (bon app, Tim Peake!). Back in The Dairy kitchen, seven chefs flock around each plate as it leaves the pass. Later, an excited murmur ripples through the kitchen: Ducasse liked it. That night I, the novice, hatch a plan to win an audience with the master.
Alain Ducasse with chef Laoise Casey (Anna Huix)
I’m a chef at the start of my career, and keen to learn about his view of women in the traditionally macho environment of kitchens. Several of Ducasse’s head chefs are female, of whom he speaks very highly: “It has always k been important for me to have women in my restaurants, both front and back of house.” The Michelin-starred Hélène Darroze, head chef at the Connaught in London, trained under him at the Louis XV restaurant in Monaco, and was encouraged by him to begin working in the restaurant kitchen. “Two of my head chefs are female. Laetitia Rouabah at Allard, perpetuates the legacy of Marthe Allard – a ‘mother cook’ who founded the restaurant in 1932 – and brings it up to date aptly. At the helm of Benoit, one of the last authentic Parisian bistros, we have Fabienne Eymard. Both maintain the traditions and bring their touches to those places.”
In 2011, Ducasse established the Femmes en Avenir (Women of the Future) programme in association with the French government to encourage women in the outskirts of Paris to earn a culinary diploma and then into relevant employment. Ducasse points out that cooking itself is a “social ladder” and that regardless of background, “anyone can start as a commis and become a successful chef”.
Provided, that is, that they are willing to work hard enough. “This difficult trade”, as Ducasse calls it, is often portrayed unrealistically in TV shows that claim to reveal the working life of restaurants. “Beyond the glamour, one must not forget that our trade is very demanding,” he says. “But cookery shows can reactivate the desire for young people to be part of this adventure.”
What’s more, Ducasse believes these shows could help combat the current shortage of chefs in the UK: according to reports at the end of last year, there has been a drop in the number of students enrolling in chef courses. If the trend continues, it’s thought there will be a shortfall of 11,000 chefs by 2022.
Hélène Darroze, who trained under Ducasse at Louis XV (Rex Features)
His restaurants are a portfolio of fine dining and bistro cuisine. And the one venture that Ducasse will tell me he has in store for 2016 (“I have many, many plans – too many”) is a bistro, in the Les Halles neighbourhood of Paris.
Time is pressing and his restaurant at the Dorchester beckons. If he hadn’t been a chef, he would have been an explorer and architect, he tells me: “[Now] I get to do all three.” I ask him when he might stop. He smiles… “I guess I will keep doing this for as long as I can.” Before leaving for his restaurant, he invites me to visit and stage (do kitchen work experience) at the Plaza Athénée. Who can say no to the master?
The Atlanta Federal Reserve writes: Economies don’t always perform the way we like. Getting them back into winning form takes careful strategy. That’s why we need a monetary policy. Our nation’s monetary policy is an economic strategy is an economic strategy that influences interest rates and the supply of money and credit. So, why does this matter to you? A good monetary policy promotes price stability and high employment. That means people can find jobs and make better-informed choices about what to spend, and businesses can make better informed decisions too. That helps keep the economy moving in the right direction.
It’s the Fed’s job to come up with that monetary policy. In 1913, Congress created the Federal Reserve to provide a more stable and secure monetary and financial system. The Fed’s role in the economy has evolved over time. Sometimes what has ailed the economy is a sudden need for liquidity. During a financial panic, the public’s demand for cash can catch banks by surprise. And since most of the money the banks hold is tied up in loans, they may find getting their hands on cash difficult. Acting as the lender of last resort, the Federal Reserve can lend money against a bank’s good assets and prevent the financial panic from disrupting the economy. This tool is called “The Discount Window.” In 1977, Congress amended the Federal Reserve Act, stating the Fed’s monetary policy objectives were to maximize employment and maintain price stability.
For more than 100 years, the Fed has used its policies to help our economy run smoothly. To create a monetary policy that will work best for the entire nation, the Fed needs a lot of grassroots information. Where does it come from? From farmers, and real estate agents, and car dealers, and factory owners. All over America, different kinds of main street people share what’s going on in their own businesses with their region’s Federal Reserve Bank. The Reserve Banks gather this information and combine it with economic statistics like inflation measures and employment data. Then, from all over the country, that information heads to Washington DC. Eight times a year, the twelve Reserve Bank presidents, along with the Fed’s Board of Governors, meet in Washington and report on their regional economies and present their economic projections. The Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, combines all these detailed views of what’s going on nationwide and studies the whole picture. At the end of each FOMC meeting, the voting members – five of 12 Reserve Bank presidents and the seven Fed governors – cast a vote on setting monetary policy. Decisions on monetary policy are immediately communicated to the public.
To build a healthy economy, the FOMC needs good tools. If the Fed needs to adjust interest rates and affect inflation, it uses open market operations, which is the buying or selling of government securities. Buying or selling these securities expands or contracts the supply of money in the banking system. Raising or lowering the federal funds rate, which is the interest rate banks pay each other for borrowing money that is maintained at a Reserve Bank, also effects the inflation rate. And finally, all banks are required to have reserve requirements: nest eggs set aside and kept at the ready so the economy stays fluid.
To meet the challenges posed by our last recession, the Federal Reserve developed new tools and communications for the extraordinary circumstances following the financial crisis. One of these is forward guidance, which is the Fed’s descriptions of its likely future policy making. This helps shape the market’s expectations of interest rates. Another tool is quantitative easing, which is a way to inject liquidity into the economy and help keep long-term interest rates low. No matter what tools or policies the Fed is using, we’ll always let you know what’s going on.
Why is all this important? Ultimately, all these factors work together to create an economic strategy that works for each region, making our national economy run smoothly across the board.
Michael Hudson writes about the meaning of banks and what they are meant to be. iThe inherently symbiotic relationship between banks and governments recently has been reversed. In medieval times, wealthy bankers lent to kings and princes as their major customers. But now it is the banks that are needy, relying on governments for funding – capped by the post-2008 bailouts to save them from going bankrupt from their bad private-sector loans and gambles.
Yet the banks now browbeat governments – not by having ready cash but by threatening to go bust and drag the economy down with them if they are not given control of public tax policy, spending and planning. The process has gone furthest in the United States. Joseph Stiglitz characterizes the Obama administration’s vast transfer of money and pubic debt to the banks as a “privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a ‘partnership’ in which one partner robs the other.” Prof. Bill Black describes banks as becoming criminogenic and innovating”control fraud“.
High finance has corrupted regulatory agencies, falsified account-keeping by “mark to model” trickery, and financed the campaigns of its supporters to disable public oversight. The effect is to leave banks in control of how the economy’s allocates its credit and resources.
If there is any silver lining to today’s debt crisis, it is that the present situation and trends cannot continue. So this is not only an opportunity to restructure banking; we have little choice. The urgent issue is who will control the economy: governments,or the financial sector and monopolies with which it has made an alliance.
Fortunately, it is not necessary to re-invent the wheel. Already a century ago the outlines of a productive industrial banking system were well understood. But recent bank lobbying has been remarkably successful in distracting attention away from classical analyses of how to shape the financial and tax system to best promote economic growth – by public checks on bank privileges. The model for ending casino banks
John West writes: Vietnam began its transition from central planning towards a market economy in the mid-1980s with reforms known as “Doi Moi” or “Renovation“. This was not a philosophical choice. With famines ravaging the country, and the loss of Cold War support from the former USSR, the government had to do something to get the country moving.
A long series of policy changes have included opening to international trade and investment, and allowing private property rights and private enterprise. Reform is an ongoing process, with important milestones being a free trade agreement with the US in 2000, and membership of ASEAN in 2004, the World Trade Organisation in 2007, and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) in 2015.
Vietnam also has an education system that delivers impressive results, at least until the high school level, according to the OECD.
Policy reforms have stimulated large flows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Vietnam’s stock of FDI (foreign direct investment) surged from $243 million in 1990 to $82 billion in 2012, representing some 47% of GDP — around the same rate as Malaysia and Thailand, which both started the period at higher levels.
Investors have been attracted by Vietnam’s strategic location near global value chains (GVCs), its lower cost structure than China, and its political and economic stability. Japanese companies have been the leading investors in Vietnam, supported by the Japanese government. Singapore, Korea and Taiwan have also been important sources of FDI. In 2014, Vietnam attracted FDI from world class companies like Samsung, Nokia and LG.
These inflows of FDI have enabled Vietnam to join GVCs for products like garments, shoes, and electronics. The FDI sector contributed 62% of exports in 2014, up from 47% in 2000, and some 18% of GDP in 2014, an increase from 13% over the same period. Trade has doubled to 160% of GDP over the past two decades, reflecting the active trade in parts and components that characterise GVCs.
But despite this excellent performance, Vietnam’s exports are dominated by unsophisticated products with low domestic value added, and limited technological spillover from foreign to domestic enterprises. Domestic manufacturers have proved unable to move along the supply chain to capture higher value. And the potential benefits of FDI have been greatly compromised by widespread tax cheating by multinational companies.
There are good prospects for continued high inflows of FDI in light of Vietnam’s membership of the TPP. Vietnam
Andrea Wong writes: It’s a secret of the vast U.S. Treasury market, a holdover from an age of oil shortages and mighty petrodollars: Just how much of America’s debt does Saudi Arabia own?
But now that question — unanswered since the 1970s, under an unusual blackout by the U.S. Treasury Department — has come to the fore as Saudi Arabia is pressured by plunging oil prices and costly wars in the Middle East.
In the past year alone, Saudi Arabia burned through about $100 billion of foreign-exchange reserves to plug its biggest budget shortfall in a quarter-century. For the first time, it’s also considering selling a piece of its crown jewel — state oil company Saudi Aramco. The signs of strain are prompting concern over Saudi Arabia’s outsize position in the world’s largest and most important bond market.
A big risk is that the kingdom is selling some of its Treasury holdings, believed to be among the largest in the world, to raise needed dollars. Or could it be buying, looking for a port in the latest financial storm? As a matter of policy, the Treasury has never disclosed the holdings of Saudi Arabia, long a key ally in the volatile Middle East, and instead groups it with 14 other mostly OPEC nations including Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria. For more than a hundred other countries, from China to the Vatican, the Treasury provides a detailed breakdown of how much U.S. debt each holds.
“It’s mind-boggling they haven’t undone it,” said Edwin Truman, the former Treasury assistant secretary for international affairs during the late 1990s, and now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. Because relations were rocky and the U.S. needed their oil, the Treasury “didn’t want to offend OPEC. It’s hard to justify this special treatment for OPEC at this point.”
For its part, the Treasury “aggregates data where more detailed reporting might disclose the positions of individual holders,” spokeswoman Whitney Smith said in an e-mail.
Treasuries range from the $3 million stake held by the island nation of the Seychelles, to the $69.7 billion investment from the oil-producing economy of Norway, and those of China and Japan, which are both in excess of $1 trillion.
Representatives for the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, known as SAMA, and the nation’s finance ministry declined to comment.
Apart from the kingdom itself, only a handful of Treasury officials, and those at the Federal Reserve who compile the data on their behalf, have a clear picture of Saudi Arabia’s U.S. debt holdings and whether they’re rising or falling.
For everyone else, it’s a guessing game.
The special arrangement, born out of the 1973 oil shock following the Arab embargo, is just one small concession among many that successive U.S. administrations have made over the years to maintain America’s strategic relationship with the Saudi royal family — and its access to the kingdom’s deep reserves of oil.
The exception extends to 12 other countries in the Treasury’s oil-exporter group, all from the Middle East or Africa. Based on aggregate data released this week, that group has trimmed its stakes by a few billion dollars since March and held $289 billion as of November.
Because its holdings are believed to be the largest, Saudi Arabia’s moves have drawn scrutiny, particularly as other central banks in emerging markets sell Treasuries to raise cash in defense of their currencies.
And events in recent months, from President Barack Obama’s landmark nuclear deal with Iran to Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric who challenged the royal family, underscore just how sensitive U.S.-Saudi relations have become. The longstanding rationale for the alliance has also been undercut by America’s domestic oil boom, which has made it far less dependent on Saudi exports.
Figures from SAMA suggest the kingdom might be reallocating some of its reserves into short-term, liquid assets to help the finance ministry meet budget commitments and defend its 30-year-old currency peg of 3.75 riyals to the dollar.
The central bank has increased foreign currencies and deposits held abroad by 7 percent in the first 11 months of 2015, while at the same time reducing foreign securities, consisting of equities and longer-term debt, by 20 percent.
That cash has become key. Oil’s slump past $30 a barrel, from more than $100 two years ago, has eroded the petrodollar-fueled wealth that quadrupled per-capita income since the late 1980s and provided Saudi Arabia with the largess to offer free health care, gasoline subsidies and routine pay raises to its citizens.
SAMA isn’t a typical central bank because it acts as a quasi-sovereign wealth fund, he said. More clarity by central banks is long overdue — particularly when it comes to the U.S. Treasury.
“In the old days at the Treasury and central banks, transparency wasn’t the word of the day” and politics made special treatment a non-issue, he said. Now, “it’s simply a legacy issue. You want to deal with it sooner or later.”
Jonathan Browning writes: China’s listed firms are in the midst of their biggest-ever overseas shopping spree, taking advantage of a wide and attractive valuation gap between domestic shares and foreign assets.
Haier Group Corp. said last week it will use its publicly-traded arm in Shanghai to acquire General Electric Co.’s home-appliance business for $5.4 billion, pushing outbound deals from the nation’s listed companies to $8.6 billion so far this year. The Chinese stock market rout this month hasn’t slowed the volume of foreign acquisitions, which has already reached one-third of last year’s record tally, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Pricey stocks leave ample room for Chinese companies to boost returns by buying more profitable assets overseas for less. With domestic firms valued at more than three times the level in the U.S., what was previously a select group of China’s outbound acquirers is set to widen, helping the nation continue its record dealmaking run.
Rich Valuations
Shanghai and Shenzhen-traded firms announced $25.6 billion of overseas acquisitions and investments last year, up 48 percent from 2014, Bloomberg-compiled data show. Top dealmakers, including Tsinghua University’s investment arm and the owner of China’s fourth-largest airline, are using their listed units to make deals. Smaller firms with less of a track record are also pursuing acquisitions overseas, often using their own stock to fund the purchases.
Shanghai-listed BTG Hotels (Group) Co. last month announced a $1.8 billion agreement to acquire budget lodging chain Homeinns Hotel Group. BTG Hotels, backed by the Beijing city government, is seeking Chinese regulatory approval for a 3.9 billion yuan ($593 million) equity offering to fund part of the purchase.
Including debt, U.S.-traded Homeinns was valued at 22.6 times earnings before interest and taxes, while BTG Hotels trades at 45.2, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. After announcing the transaction Dec. 24, BTG Hotels surged more than 75 percent over the next six trading days.
Stocks in China’s domestic market trade at a median 53.2 times earnings, more than three times the multiple in the U.S. and more than five times that in Hong Kong, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Shandong Delisi agreed to buy 45 percent of Bindaree Beef Pty for A$140 million ($97 million), valuing the Australian meat producer at 24 times EBIT, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The Chinese company trades in Shenzhen at a multiple of 235 times.
“Just like Chinese consumers who shop around the world, Chinese companies are looking overseas for nice bargains,” said Ken Chen, a Shanghai-based analyst at KGI Securities Co. “It resembles what Japanese companies did in the 1980s on the back of the country’s industrialization and a strong yen.”
Bubbles in China’s housing and stock markets leave companies with limited investment options domestically, and the government has encouraged enterprises to “go out” and help promote the yuan’s internationalization, Chen said. The yuan became part of the International Monetary Fund’s basket of reserve currencies in December.
“Chinese like to cut corners and overtake,” said Brian Lin, who manages NT$9.2 billion ($272 million) at Capital Investment Trust Corp. in Taipei. “They like to upgrade themselves fast by buying assets, techniques and patents.”
While A-share firms sometimes struggle to gain regulatory approval for share sales and are required to make early disclosures that may spike deals, they are finding workarounds, UBS’s Lo said. Companies can take out bridge loans that are later repaid through a share placement, or the controlling shareholder can make an acquisition first before a listed unit issues stock to take it over, he said.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission sped up approval for equity offerings in December after five months of slackness following a stock rout. Companies completed $21.9 billion of additional share sales in December, nearly triple the November value. This month’s stock rout has not slowed things down with $14 billion of deals done in three weeks.
In addition, Chinese companies and private-equity funds are eyeing U.S.-listed stocks for arbitrage opportunities. At least 40 U.S.-listed Chinese companies announced buyout bids last year totaling a record $38 billion. Qihoo 360 Technology Co., a developer of mobile-phone security software, received a $9.3 billion going-private offer last month, the biggest of its kind in 2015.
China pulled out all the stops in the third quarter to try to stem a stock rout and prevent the bubble from bursting, setting up a bailout fund of as much as 3 trillion yuan to prop up share prices, people with knowledge of the matter said in July. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index, which rose 1.3 percent Friday, is still down 44 percent from its June high.
Online marketplaces for used cars have been in a renaissance over the last few years with a host of new classified auto sites popping up and grabbing venture capital dollars. One of these startups is Beepi, a nearly two-year-old startup that wants to grab a piece of the $106 billion dollar used car industry.
On Thursday, Beepi revealed that it raised $70 million in new funding in late 2015 led by China’s largest domestic automaker, SAIC Motor Corporation. SAIC makes and sells passenger and commercial vehicles in China as well as auto parts and engines. Outside of manufacturing, the company also provides services including logistics and auto financing.
Instead of merely charging a fee for listings, Beepi visits a seller’s home to inspect the car and certify that its meets certain criteria. Cars must have less than 60,000 miles, be less than six years old, and have had no more than three owners. The startup then helps buyers to set a price and then lists the car for them on Beepi’s site along with on other car sales sites like eBay Motors.
After the car is sold, Beepi arranges for the transfer of title and delivers the car to its new owner. Beepi doesn’t charge a flat fee, but instead takes a cut on sales from buyers.
Beepi faces challenges from rival car sites like eBay Motors and Carmax, both of which have longer track records in used car sales. It also competes with fellow fledgling used car startups including Shift and Carvana.
The company was raising around $300 million in new funding at a rumored $2 billion valuation, up from a previous valuation of $200 million in 2014.
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