Wednesday, 7 November 2018
What We Don’t Know About Amazon’s Split HQ2
States, cities and counties often run their own incentive programs, each with different requirements. New York State, for example, provides tax credits to employers that move to certain parts of boroughs beyond Manhattan. Many experts expect large deals like this to come with offerings that would require state legislative approval. Usually they involve little public debate. After just a 10-minute public comment period, Apple got $213 million in state and local incentives to build a data center in Iowa, according to The Des Moines Register.
New York offered potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies, according to a person briefed on the process.
While Virginia has a reputation for being business friendly, it is not known for particularly outsize incentive programs. Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, which tracks corporate subsidies, said he expected that the legislature would pass a larger package just for Amazon.
In New York, Amazon could also benefit — directly or indirectly — from a provision in the tax overhaul that President Trump signed last year. To spur investment in “distressed” parts of America, the provision creates so-called opportunity zones, which were selected this year by governors and approved by the Treasury Department. Projects in those zones can reduce capital gains taxes and avoid those taxes entirely on profits from an investment held for more than a decade.
There are a dozen opportunity zones in Long Island City, including in several areas marked for business development.
Proposed program regulations from the Treasury Department would prevent Amazon from reaping the largest possible windfall of the tax break, because most of its business is outside the zone. But Amazon could set up a real estate company to buy land for the headquarters or surrounding buildings — and avoid any potential capital gains taxes if it ended up selling the property. Or it could lease the land from another developer that invests in the zone, insisting on more favorable leasing terms because the landlord is in line to reap opportunity zone tax benefits.
“Amazon coming, plus the opportunity zone incentive, is a huge gift to whoever owns the land in Long Island City,” said Brett Theodos, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research group. “Now, if Amazon is a shrewd negotiator, they’re going to say: ‘We don’t have to come here. We want a piece of that.’”
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Where’s the accountability Facebook? – TechCrunch
Facebook has yet again declined an invitation for its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to answer international politicians’ questions about how disinformation spreads on his platform and undermines democratic processes.
But policymakers aren’t giving up — and have upped the ante by issuing a fresh invitation signed by representatives from another three national parliaments. So the call for global accountability is getting louder.
Now representatives from a full five parliaments have signed up to an international grand committee calling for answers from Zuckerberg, with Argentina, Australia and Ireland joining the UK and Canada to try to pile political pressure on Facebook.
The UK’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee has been asking for Facebook’s CEO to attend its multi-month enquiry for the best part of this year, without success…
In its last request the twist was it came not just from the DCMS inquiry into online disinformation but also the Canadian Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.
This year policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic have been digging down the rabbit hole of online disinformation — before and since the Cambridge Analytica scandal erupted into a major global scandal — announcing last week they will form an ‘international grand committee’ to further their enquiries.
The two committees will convene for a joint hearing in the UK parliament on November 27 — and they want Zuckerberg to join them to answer questions related to the “platform’s malign use in world affairs and democratic process”, as they put it in their invitation letter.
Facebook has previously despatched a number of less senior representatives to talk to policymakers probing damages caused by disinformation — including its CTO, Mike Schroepfer, who went before the DCMS committee in April.
But both Schroepfer and Zuckerberg have admitted the accountability buck stops with Facebook’s CEO.
The company’s nine-month-old ‘Privacy Principles‘ also makes the following claim [emphasis ours]:
We are accountable
In addition to comprehensive privacy reviews, we put products through rigorous data security testing. We also meet with regulators, legislators and privacy experts around the world to get input on our data practices and policies.
The increasingly pressing question, though, is to whom is Facebook actually accountable?
Zuckerberg went personally to the US House and Senate to face policymakers’ questions in April. He also attended a meeting of the EU parliament’s Conference of Presidents in May.
But the rest of the world continues being palmed off with minions. Despite some major, major harms.
Facebook’s 2BN+ user platform does not stop at the US border. And Zuckerberg himself has conceded the company probably wouldn’t be profitable without its international business.
Yet so far only the supranational EU parliament has managed to secure a public meeting with Facebook’s CEO. And MEPs there had to resort to heckling Zuckerberg to try to get answers to their actual questions.
“Facebook say that they remain “committed to working with our committees to provide any additional relevant information” that we require. Yet they offer no means of doing this,” tweeted DCMS chair Damian Collins today, reissuing the invitation for Zuckerberg. “The call for accountability is growing, with representatives from 5 parliaments now meeting on the 27th.”
The letter to Facebook’s CEO notes that the five nations represent 170 million Facebook users.
“We call on you once again to take up your responsibility to Facebook users, and speak in person to their elected representatives,” it adds.
The UK’s information commissioner said yesterday that Facebook needs to overhaul its business model, giving evidence to parliament on the “unprecedented” data investigation her office has been running which was triggered by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. She also urged policymakers to strengthen the rules on the use of people’s data for digital campaigning.
Last month the European parliament also called for Facebook to let in external auditors in the wake of Cambridge Analytica, to ensure users’ data is being properly protected — yet another invitation Facebook has declined.
Meanwhile an independent report assessing the company’s human rights impact in Myanmar — which Facebook commissioned but chose to release yesterday on the eve of the US midterms when most domestic eyeballs would be elsewhere — agreed with the UN’s damning assessment that Facebook did not do enough to prevent its platform from being used to incite ethical violence.
The report also said Facebook is still not doing enough in Myanmar.
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Google employees across the globe are walking out now to protest sexual harassment – TechCrunch
Google employees are fed up with the search giant’s lack of transparency when it comes to handling sexual harassment and misconduct allegations.
This morning, thousands of Googlers from San Francisco to Dublin are walking out in hopes of bringing real change to the company. The protest follows a New York Times report last week that revealed Google had provided Android co-creator Andy Rubin a $90 million payout package despite credible allegations of sexual misconduct made against him.
The protestors have five key asks:
- An end to forced arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination.
- A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity.
- A publicly disclosed sexual harassment transparency report.
- A clear, uniform, globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and anonymously.
- Elevate the chief diversity officer to answer directly to the chief executive officer and make recommendations directly to the board of directors. And appoint an employee representative to the board.
Plans of the walkout emerged earlier this week, just days after the bombshell NYT report was released. According to BuzzFeed, some 200 Googlers began staging the protest; the group quickly grew to thousands, including non-U.S. Googlers. Google CEO Sundar Pichai had reportedly condoned the protest in an internal e-mail to employees Tuesday.
“Earlier this week, we let Googlers know that we are aware of the activities planned for today and that employees will have the support they need if they wish to participate,” Pichai said in a statement provided to TechCrunch today. “Employees have raised constructive ideas for how we can improve our policies and our processes going forward. We are taking in all their feedback so we can turn these ideas into action.”
Pichai also responded to the NYT report with a letter co-signed by vice president of people operations Eileen Naughton, admitting that 48 people had been terminated at the company for sexual harassment in the past two years alone, including 13 senior employees.
We’ll be at the San Francisco protest, which begins at 11:10 a.m. PST. Here’s a look at protestors around the globe this morning.
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Grab pulls in $250M from Hyundai as ongoing round reaches $2.7B – TechCrunch
Grab, the Singapore startup that bought Uber’s Southeast Asia business earlier this year, continues to announce strategic investors for its ongoing Series H funding round. The latest edition revealed today is Korean automotive firm Hyundai, which is investing $250 million.
Hyundai first invested in Grab in January, and it joins recently announced investors Microsoft (undisclosed) and Booking Holdings ($200 million) in the round, which is aimed at reaching at least $3 billion before the end of this year. Grab first announced a $1 billion investment from Toyota in June and that was doubled to $2 billion when a range of institutional backers joined. Those include OppenheimerFunds, Ping An Capital, Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Macquarie Capital, and today Grab disclosed two others: Goldman Sachs Investment Partners and Citi Ventures.
In total, these additions take that Series H round to $2.7 billion so far, Grab said. That means that Grab, which is valued at over $11 billion, has now raised more than $6 billion from investors including SoftBank and China’s Didi. That’s a figure that extends its record for a startup in Southeast Asia. Grab claims 125 million downloads across its eight markets in Southeast Asia and over 2.5 billion rides completed to date, up from two billion in July.
Like Toyota, Microsoft and travel giant Booking — which was formerly known as Priceline — Hyundai’s involvement includes a fairly hefty strategic portion: electric vehicles.
Grab said that it will work with the Korea firm introduce a series of EV pilots in Southeast Asia that’ll feature Hyundai and Hyundai-owned Kia vehicles. The companies began working on the rollout of Hyundai’s IONIQ vehicle in Singapore earlier this year and now they will add Kia EVs and explore opportunities beyond Singapore.
(Right to left) Euisun Chung, Executive Vice Chairman of Hyundai Motor Group, and Anthony Tan, Grab CEO, mark the new $250 million investment deal [Image via Bloomberg New Economy Forum]
Grab has an EV fleet in Singapore — size undisclosed — and it is working with Singapore Power to roll out a network of charging hubs and packages for Grab EV drivers as it expands that EV presence in the country. But this Hyundai partnership would represent its first EV foray into other markets in Southeast Asia, which has a cumulative population of more than 600 million consumers, although it didn’t name which markets or give a timeframe.
As in Singapore, Grab said its EV strategy will include engaging governments and “infrastructure players” to set up the right conditions for EVs, such as charging networks, maintenance packages for drivers and general research into how EVs perform in more humid environments.
Beyond the EV plans, Grab’s Series H is being put aside for a number of ventures which include its push to become an all-in-one ‘super app’ that goes beyond transportation to cover food deliveries, services on-demand, payments and fintech services, and more. There’s also likely an allocation for competition because, although Grab consumed Uber’s local business in the region, Indonesia-based rival Go-Jek is expanding in the region.
Go-Jek, which is aiming to raise $2 billion in its latest funding round according to sources, has entered Vietnam, is in the process of launching in Thailand and has just begun recruiting drivers for a Singapore rollout. That means Grab needs to keep a substantial amount of powder dry in case of the (likely) event that its battle with Go-Jek descends into a discount war, as was often the case during its rivalry with Uber.
That explains why it is raising an enormous $3 billion round despite having already removed Uber from the region via the buyout deal, which saw the U.S. ride-hailing giant take a 27.5 percent stake in Grab.
That deal, by the way, didn’t really go as planned. Not only was Grab over ambitious on the logistics, including plans to consume most of Uber’s 500 staff, but it misread the public reaction and incurred the wrath of regulators. Singapore’s consumer watchdog hit Uber and Grab with a total of $9.5 million in fines for the “anti-competitive” merger, while the pair got a lighter reprimand in the Philippines.
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