>>> Weekend Press Summary

NEW YORK TIMES
Saturday
• The latest Labor Department numbers show the American job engine has slowed significantly, stranding millions who have yet to find work after being idled by the pandemic, and offering fresh evidence that the recovery is faltering.
• The US had one of the worst weeks since the pandemic began—as infections rise, underlying conditions are playing a pivotal role in who survives, and people in lower-income neighborhoods are experiencing higher exposure risk.
• Trump’s newly expanded regulation that blocks access to green cards for legal immigrants who are deemed likely to accept any government assistance is badly straining relief agencies and presenting a challenge to the incoming Biden administration.
• The FDA granted emergency authorization to a drug called baricitinib to treat a subset of Covid-19 patients in combination with the antiviral drug remdesivir, but the medical community has been skeptical of the benefits.
• Trump is moving ahead with end-of-term troop withdrawals from conflicts around the world and will pull American forces out of Somalia, where they have been trying to push back advances by Islamist insurgents in the Horn of Africa.
• A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to fully restore an Obama-era program designed to shield young, undocumented immigrants from deportation, dealing what could be a final blow to Trump’s long-fought effort to end the so-called DACA protections.
• The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether the Trump administration may impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, an issue that could become moot if the Biden administration eliminates them.
• A growing list of economists, business lobbyists, and advocacy groups are urging lawmakers to rally around the $908B stimulus package currently gaining bipartisan support in Congress, though it would fall short of doing everything needed to help businesses during the pandemic.
Sunday
• Despite Republican efforts to restrict voting, nearly 160M Americans went to the polls in the 2020 elections, by far the most in history and a level of turnout not seen in over a century, representing an extraordinary milestone of civic engagement.
• This holiday season, online shopping will strain the industry as never before: An estimated three billion packages will course through the nation’s shipping infrastructure, about 800M more than delivered last year.
• Somalia fears Trump’s decision to withdraw troops will be seen as a victory for Qaeda-linked militants and create the potential for further chaos at an especially delicate moment for the country and the region.
• Trump used a rally in Georgia for two Republican senators on Saturday to complain about his own election loss, insisting he would still prevail and, with notably less ardor, encouraging voters to re-elect David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

WALL STREET JOURNAL
Weekend
• Most of the jobs that were added in the US in November were in the transportation and warehousing industries that package, ship, and deliver goods to consumers, services which have growing increasingly necessary during the pandemic.
• Because postmasters general serve at the pleasure of the US Postal Service Board of Governors and can’t be fired by a president, Joe Biden will face difficulties getting rid of postmaster general Louis DeJoy, a Republican donor backed by a GOP majority on the board.
• The House voted to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, the first legislation of its kind to get a vote in the chamber, though it isn’t expected to move forward and become law because of a GOP-controlled Senate.
• Winter outbreaks of Covid-19 might be worsened by colder weather and drier indoor air that boost transmission, but it is too soon to know whether they will become truly seasonal, according to new research by scientists studying the disease.
• After White House-brokered talks, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, rival Gulf nations, have reached a tentative deal to end a yearslong feud that has fractured the Middle East, paving the way for broader regional meetings to resolve their differences.
• Cash holdings at nonfinancial companies grew to a record $2.1T at the end of June, according to a recent Moody’s report, a 30 percent increase from the previous year that has investors trying to predict how companies will use the money.
• Getting meetings with venture capitalists has become easier for startup founders during lockdown periods, an unexpected side-effect of the pandemic that has helped some minority tech founders gain ground.
• + BKS: Story reports on how chief James Daunt, who previously fixed UK book chain Waterstones, “has laid off once-powerful managers, overturned relationships with publishers and renovated stores in favor of a more local approach, including a focus on the smallest details.”
• Some Americans are heeding a rising call to support Black-owned businesses this holiday-shopping season, but economists cite limits in addressing economic inequality through shopping.
• H.O.T.S.: Payments stocks such as Afterpay, Sezzle, and Qudpay are getting a boost from retailers’ embrace of buy now, pay later options at checkout; “Investors need to look beyond the cash when restrictions are lifted on shareholder payouts from European banks”; The US employment picture is darkening even more than recent jobs figures suggest.

FINANCIAL TIMES
Weekend
• Front page story reports the Covid-19 surge is threatening the US recovery, and investors believe lackluster economic data will add urgency to government stimulus talks, though president-elect Biden still faces challenges even if a package passes.
• Researchers in China say they have matched Google by achieving quantum supremacy after building a computer capable of carrying out calculations trillions of times faster than the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
• The EU budget commission warned Poland and Hungary that Brussels is willing to cut them out of a €750B recovery fund and proceed without them if they continue to block the passage of an upcoming budget.
• Big Read story says that the collapse of UK retailers Debenhams and Arcadia will create even more empty stores in already struggling town centers, forcing town centers and high streets to reinvent themselves if they hope to continue having a purpose.
• Lex Column: Glencore has dug itself into some deep holes in recent years—but targeting zero emissions by 2050 may help it clean up; UK homebuilder Berkeley has benefited from the pandemic, which has brought investment opportunities; If there was ever at time for Warner Bros. to take a stand in the video streaming wars, it is now.
• Comment: Business leaders have an important role to play in advancing vaccine literacy and uptake in wider society, says Scott Razan—“The stakes are high and the situation could not be more serious.”

NEW YORK POST
Saturday
• Luminar Technologies chief Austin Russell, 25, became the country’s youngest self-made billionaire this when his company made its stock market debut left him with a paper net worth of $3.3B.
• AAPL co-founder Steve Wozniak launched a new company this week called Efforce, which hopes to use cryptocurrency and blockchain to make it cheaper and easier for companies to fund environmentally friendly projects.
Sunday
• A survey found that nearly 55 percent of New York City firefighters won’t take a coronavirus vaccine when they become available, a number that climbs to 70 percent for Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers.
• Columnist Charles Gasparino criticizes NDAQ’s push to diversity the boards of companies listed on its exchange, saying there is no logical reason to believe that adding women or minorities to boards will end illegal insider trading or other misdeeds.

FT : Brexit and Covid harden the case for a proper EU financial market

Brexit and Covid harden the case for a proper EU financial market
Efforts to create banking and capital markets unions have languished for too long

The EU is rightly proud of its single market. But in finance, it is still more aspiration than reality, at least for smaller users.

Households in need of banking services, small and medium-sized companies wanting to invest and expand, and new entrepreneurs seeking funding to develop their ideas, have few alternatives to their own domestic banks.

The result is a fragile and fragmented banking system, and small and shallow pools of risk capital. Both problems have long held back Europe’s growth potential, especially on its southern rim.

It is to European policymakers’ credit that they have at least nominally recognised the nature of these challenges since the sovereign debt and banking sector crises a decade ago. This is what the EU’s goals of a “banking union” and a “capital markets union” are all about. It is not to their credit, however, that they have made so little progress.

The resistance runs deep. In Spain and Italy, a drive to strengthen banks has favoured domestic rather than cross-border mergers. The latter have their own problems, but a trend of domestic consolidation will concentrate banking business further within national borders — the opposite direction from a real banking union. A truly single capital market must cut through the thicket of 27 jealously guarded regulatory and insolvency regimes. Despite many attempts at harmonisation, they fall far short of what is required.

Meanwhile, the need to unify banking and capital markets has become more urgent. One reason is Brexit. Continued fragmentation in EU capital markets allows London to continue to play an outsize role in channelling the financing for European growth. With the UK outside the EU’s rulemaking sphere, this becomes a danger — but, as UBS chairman Axel Weber has pointed out, one that is hard to avoid until Europe unifies its own financial markets.

The pandemic is another reason. While the expected wave of bankruptcies has not so far materialised, many companies are in a bad state, and many government-backed emergency loans will probably never be repaid.

This is a unique opportunity to force European business activity to shift from credit to equity financing, by converting debt overhangs into equity stakes and creating a pan-EU market on which to trade those stakes and mobilise investment into new ventures.

Finance ministers signed off last week on treaty reforms for the European Stability Mechanism, the rescue fund created after the eurozone debt crisis. This move will improve the area’s economic governance in two ways. It will be easier to organise creditors to agree a sovereign debt restructuring. And the system to handle failing banks will be buttressed with a new line of defence in the form of a fiscal backstop for the eurozone’s Single Resolution Fund for banks.

These welcome changes are not as important in their own right as they are in removing roadblocks to the bigger agenda. Delay in passing ESM reform halted the little momentum there had been to unify banking and capital markets. An invitation in November 2019 from Olaf Scholz, Germany’s finance minister, to discuss reforms such as common deposit insurance and insolvency harmonisation ran into the sand.

After putting the ESM to bed, governments must start the hard work of giving up their excessive control over their national bank and financial sectors. If harmonisation of national rules is too hard, they should pursue the route of “28th regimes”: EU-level legal frameworks that act as an alternative to national bank licences, insolvency procedures, and incorporation and fundraising rules, and which companies could voluntarily adopt.

A standard criticism of the EU is that inflexibility and indecision make it vulnerable to failure and even disintegration in a crisis. This accusation is mistaken. The EU’s real disability is different: it is bad at making use of crises to create strategic leaps into the future.

Consider the Brexit negotiations, or the agreement in principle in July on a pandemic recovery package to be funded by common bonds. It turns out the EU is quite good at handling crises — even if it tends to string things out to the very last minute. Here the problem is not that the EU fails to do what is necessary, but that it misses opportunities to do more and better. That has been the case for creating a truly single market in finance. In the absence of imminent disaster, policymakers have been too content to let things drag out.

Even this pattern is not without exceptions. The EU has been making impressive progress on putting real policy tools behind the decarbonisation agenda. It must muster the same urgency for financial reform. This is not the time to let another crisis go to waste.

TechCrunch : Watch SpaceX launch its new and improved cargo Dragon spacecraft fo

Watch SpaceX launch its new and improved cargo Dragon spacecraft for the first time

Link to Live :

SpaceX is launching a new spacecraft during its 21st Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) mission for the International Space Station this morning. The launch is set to take off at 11:17 AM EST (8:17 AM PST) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and will be the first ever flight of an updated version of SpaceX’s cargo-specific Dragon spacecraft, which can carry more supplies and experiment materials and which can dock all on its own with the Space Station . Prior Dragon cargo craft required docking assistance from the robotic Canadarm guided by astronauts on board the ISS.
This redesigned version of Dragon can carry 20 percent more than the one it replaces, and it has twice the amount of powered locker cargo storage, which are used for transferring science experiments that require specific transportation environment conditions. It can also stay at the Space Station for over twice the max duration of the original, and each capsule is made to be reused up to five times. This new cargo craft is a modified version of the Crew Dragon, which SpaceX created to transport astronauts to the ISS. One of those is already docked at the station, so when this cargo Dragon arrives on Monday, there will be two SpaceX spacecraft attached to the ISS at once.

SpaceX realizes a bunch of performance improvements by using the new cargo Dragon design, but it also should mean that its supply chain is simpler since it’s essentially building the same Dragon spacecraft with modifications required depending on whether it’s intended for human crew use, or for a pure cargo mission like this one.
Today’s launch also uses a Falcon 9 first stage which flew the Demo-2 crew mission for SpaceX back in May, as well as a Starlink launch and the ANANSIS-II mission. It will attempt a landing at sea on SpaceX’s drone landing ship following separation from the second stage, so that SpaceX can reuse it again in future.

NY POst : Stevie Nicks in $100M publishing rights deal with Primary Wave Music

Stevie Nicks in $100M publishing rights deal with Primary Wave Music



Stevie Nicks has parted ways with a majority of her music publishing rights.

The 72-year-old musical superstar — known for her solo work as well as her performances with Fleetwood Mac — sold the rights to Primary Wave Music, which announced the deal in a news release Friday.

Citing people familiar with the transaction, the Wall Street Journal reported the sale was made to the tune of $100 million, giving the company an 80% stake in the rights.

Included in the deal are the rights to hits such as “Edge of Seventeen,” “Landslide,” “Stand Back,” “Rihannon” and “Dreams.”

The purchase also gives Primary Wave the rights to Nicks’ name and likeness, and the singer will be allowed to sign new songwriters to a joint venture.

“To say we’re excited to welcome the incredible Stevie Nicks to the Primary Wave family would be a dramatic understatement,” CEO and founder Larry Mestel said. “If Primary Wave were starting our company today, Stevie Nicks would be one of the shining pillars, a true legend among legends.”

He added: “She is a groundbreaking artist, and the longevity of her iconic career comes from writing songs, instantly recognizable and critically acclaimed, that stand the test of time.”

Nicks recently saw a surge in revived popularity alongside her Fleetwood Mac bandmates when “Dreams” reentered the Billboard charts following a viral TikTok video featuring a man skateboarding and lipsyncing to the tune.

Originally released in 1977, “Dreams” was featured on the iconic album “Rumours.” The record as a whole also rose in popularity and hit the top 10 chart this year, 43 years after its release.

Nicks is also the only woman to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice — once as a member of Fleetwood Mac in 1998 and again in 2019 as a solo artist.

WWD : How CeraVe Ruled the Internet

How CeraVe Ruled the Internet
What makes a 15-year-old U.S. drugstore skin-care brand become a bestseller and social-media darling today?


PARIS — The packaging is plain, the name’s tricky to pronounce and there’s no Kardashian or Hadid in sight. But that hasn’t stopped CeraVe from becoming the runaway success story of 2020.

The accessible drugstore brand codeveloped 15 years ago with U.S. dermatologists to tackle dry skin concerns has become an influencer-driven phenomenon — practically overnight.

“This brand is really on fire,” Jean-Paul Agon, L’Oréal’s chairman and chief executive officer, exclaimed during the company’s most recent financial analyst call in October.

CeraVe notched up 82 percent like-for-like sales gains in the first nine months of this year, with demand around the world so strong that its products sold out in certain markets.

Analysts estimate CeraVe, the buzziest beauty brand on Reddit, will generate around $600 million in revenues by the end of 2020, putting it on track for billionaire status soon.

Agon characterized CeraVe’s growth as an “acceleration on acceleration on acceleration.”

“The success of this brand is a combination of several factors,” he said, noting that CeraVe has “the right quality, the right formula with the right mix at the right moment. It’s probably the brand that has the most potential in the industry right now.”

Dermocosmetics brands are a hot commodity today and among the fastest-growing categories in beauty, spurred largely by Millennials. Such labels are promoted not for any cosmetic benefit, but for skin health, which is increasingly a key driver for consumers.

Pre-coronavirus pandemic, CeraVe would be recommended by dermatologists during an in-person medical visit. (The brand already tops derms’ recommendations in the U.S.) During COVID-19 lockdowns, doctors staked their claim online.

“Doctor influencers” with an impressive social media following include Dr. Dray on YouTube, Dr. Henry on Instagram, and Dr. Dustin Portela and Dr. Shah on TikTok.

“They’re making serious subjects very accessible, easy-to-understand with a lot of humor,” Giraud said. “This allows the young generation, especially the Gen Z [for the first time], to connect more easily on those types of topics, which are important for them.”

For teenagers today, a big concern is how mask wearing can lead to acne.

Another category of influencers bolstering CeraVe online is skin-care experts, led by Hyram Yarbro, first on YouTube and then on TikTok, where he has 6.7 million followers and #cerave-tagged content boasts a collective 303.4 million views, according to Tribe Dynamics.

“It’s very interesting, they comb through ingredient lists,” Giraud said. “They decode the products for everybody.”

Hyram, she said, understands what’s in a product, recommends the right routine and stirs in humor.

“It’s a new way of communicating on skin care that really speaks to consumers,” Giraud added.

Formerly, makeup was the major beauty subject discussed on social media.

“Now, there are a lot of people posting their [skin-care] routines on TikTok, and influencers are commenting on them,” the executive said.

Founded in 2005, CeraVe in the U.S. includes a line of more than 70 skin-care products, such as cleansers, moisturizers, sunscreens, healing ointments and a range for babies. Prices run from about 5 euros to 25 euros.

L’Oréal acquired CeraVe, alongside AcneFree and Ambi, from Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. in a $1.3 billion deal in 2017. The trio of labels put L’Oréal head-to-head with Nestlé’s blockbuster Cetaphil brand, and almost doubled the size of L’Oréal’s Active Cosmetics Division in the U.S., where it had been relatively underrepresented.


At the time, CeraVe’s estimated annual sales were $140 million, according to industry sources. L’Oréal considered CeraVe to be among the fastest-growing skin-care brands in the U.S., with average gains over the prior two years of more than 20 percent. The marketing mix included partnerships with dermatologists and some in-store operations.

Then after CeraVe’s purchase, different ways of driving its awareness were unleashed, such as TV spots. Some 18 months in, the brand’s international footprint expanded by 38 countries (outside of Southeast Asia and Africa) with a catalogue of 14 core products.

But the sea change occurred most recently, thanks to social media, especially the deafening chatter about CeraVe on Reddit and TikTok, a platform with more universal reach than Twitter or YouTube.

“We have more influencers that we’re in contact with who speak of our brand, and this creates an overspill in countries like the U.K. and Australia, which are English-speaking, but also Brazil, France and Germany,” Giraud said.

Unlike in traditional social media, where having a link on YouTube to drive traffic to a brand’s platform was key, that’s not the case with TikTok. Young people, she said, see a product they want to try and then go directly in search of it themselves.

A year ago, one of CeraVe’s cofounders, Tom Allison, created a Twitter account to be in direct contact with medical professionals. Then he began conversing with influencers and consumers, and today Allison has almost 400,000 followers, a verified influencer.

“This direct-to-consumer, direct-to-influencer communication has been ongoing,” Giraud said. “It allows us to discuss with all the people who are talking about our products. That’s quite insightful for us.

“When it comes to new topics coming up, like maskne, it allows us to work with some influencers very quickly on how to educate and give routines,” she continued.

CeraVe is sometimes seeded with influencers, but other endorsements are organic.

On his own volition, Hyram created his first YouTube video on CeraVe in April. Next, the brand reached out to him for a partnership, and in May, he created “duets,” appearing with someone else.

“That became super viral,” said Giraud, highlighting one video in particular where Hyram and a woman speaking with SpongeBob SquarePants’ voice discussed acne and the brand’s SA Smoothing Cleanser.

The spot garnered 27 million views, and there was a direct impact on sales of that product, which was out of stock for a few weeks.

CeraVe plans to partner with more skin-care influencers, who Giraud believes can elucidate the category, which may seem complex. She explained an influencer’s community can give the thumbs up to branded partnerships.

“There is a sense of solidarity now, because they want their influencers to get paid for what they’re doing,” said Giraud, adding: “It has to be a natural fit. But when this occurs, people love it.”

WSJ : Google Spars With Barry Diller’s IAC on Misleading Marketing Practices

Google Spars With Barry Diller’s IAC on Misleading Marketing Practices
Alphabet unit considers penalties after its audit faulted IAC’s treatment of Chrome browser extensions

Google is deciding whether to impose severe penalties on the online conglomerate IAC/InterActive Corp. IAC 2.18% over what the search giant concluded were deceptive marketing practices, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the matter.

Google, which determined that IAC misled users about its browser extensions, could go as far as banning those products from its Chrome browser. IAC, under Chairman Barry Diller, is pushing back, saying such a move would devastate a key part of its business.

The Alphabet Inc. GOOG 0.07% unit so far hasn’t acted on the internal recommendation of its Chrome trust and safety team regarding IAC in part because the two are rivals in some categories and because the search giant’s executives, including Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker, are concerned that penalties could be viewed as anticompetitive, according to people familiar with the matter.

Google was sued in October by federal prosecutors for allegedly operating an antitrust monopoly in search. State officials are wrapping up their own investigations, which may result in additional charges. Google has said it would contest any allegations in court.

The search company’s concern with IAC centers on browser extensions, which are external applications that run inside Google’s Chrome browser. IAC-made browser extensions promise users quick access to content such as daily Bible quotations, power-tool manuals and government forms.


Google’s investigators found that IAC’s browser extensions often promise functions they don’t deliver and steer users toward extra ads, according to documents reviewed by the Journal. The Google report said the behavior was egregious and recommended “immediate removal and deactivation” of IAC’s browser extensions from the search company’s web store, the documents show.

The concern is a big one for IAC and Google, which collect hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue through deals with each other, the people familiar with the matter said. Google earlier this year took down five IAC browser extensions, the documents show, but many more remain operational.

A Google spokesman, Scott Westover, said in a statement that the two companies remain in discussions. “We’re reviewing the remaining extensions and our enforcement options, and have not made a decision regarding IAC’s status on the store,” he said.

An IAC spokeswoman, Valerie Combs, disputed that the extensions violate Google policies. “Google has taken hundreds of millions of dollars from us to advertise and distribute these products in the Chrome Store,” said Ms. Combs. “There’s nothing new here—Google has used their position to reduce our browser business to the last small corner of the internet, which they’re now seeking to quash.”

Publicly traded IAC owns Angie’s List, Investopedia and more than 100 other online products. The company offers a search engine called MyWay that maintains a tiny fraction of the search business, using results and ads provided by Google.

Google is by far the world’s largest online advertising brokerage. Researchers estimate about one of every three dollars in online ads are sold through the company.

Mr. Diller’s company was once Google’s biggest advertiser, according to Kantar Media, and current and former Google employees said IAC remains one of Google’s larger advertising clients.

IAC spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on Google ads, according to people familiar with the matter, and its financial statements show Mr. Diller’s company received 27% of its total revenue last year from Google.

IAC’s dozens of browser extensions, which Google documents show have been installed by Chrome users more than 150 million times, accounted for $291 million in IAC revenue last year. The extensions change users’ Chrome home pages to versions of MyWay, the IAC-owned search engine.

IAC earns money from the Google-furnished ads served in MyWay’s search results. Google both takes a share of that revenue and earns money on the ads that IAC buys on Google platforms to promote its browser extensions. IAC’s profit from the browser-extension business has fallen 87% over the past three years, according to the company, and in the most recent quarter accounted for only 5% of overall revenue.

The concerns raised by Google’s enforcement staff center on whether IAC’s browser extensions and their marketing are misleading Chrome users.

The search giant this year performed a broad audit of IAC’s business practices on Google platforms.

Many users of IAC extensions expressed agitation, the audit found. “Tricked into installing it and can’t delete it,” said one user in a review on the Google Chrome store, which the audit called representative. “DO NOT INSTALL” warned another.

“IAC’s business model appears to rely almost exclusively on unintentional installs,” members of the Chrome safety team wrote in the audit.

Of special concern in the audit were ads that IAC ran against search terms such as “how to vote,” “vote by mail” and “voter fraud.” Users who clicked on the ads didn’t get voting-related information, the audit found. Instead, their browser home pages were reset to MyWay, and the separate, IAC-owned Ask.com toolbar was installed on those users’ browsers, the audit found. The audit found that IAC continued to run such ads even after Google told the company to stop.

The practice of changing a user’s browser settings without his or her full understanding and consent is known as “browser hijacking” and has been deemed unethical by antivirus companies.

Ms. Combs, IAC’s spokeswoman, acknowledged that some of the ads cited by Google’s investigators were inappropriate and misleading. She blamed affiliate marketers that the company said it has since fired.

But IAC bristled at the finding that its browser extensions were generally unwanted and duplicitous, adding that Google approved those extensions in its Chrome store for years as part of the companies’ partnership agreement. Emails reviewed by the Journal reflect Google’s involvement, with Google staff discussing the extensions’ marketing, down to the wording of disclosures and the sizing of fonts.

“Google exercises significant control over what we do with these products,” Ms. Combs said.

FT : UK set for parliamentary ping pong on law that breaks Brexit treaty

UK set for parliamentary ping pong on law that breaks Brexit treaty
Boris Johnson will have to decide whether to reinsert clauses in internal market bill

Boris Johnson will personally decide whether to maintain clauses that break international law in upcoming legislation later this week, potentially throwing any EU-UK trade deal into disarray.

The internal market bill, which the prime minister has argued is required to protect trade between the four nations of the UK, undermines the withdrawal agreement signed last year between the UK and the EU in relation to Northern Ireland.

The parts of the legislation that break international law in a “limited and specific way” were stripped out by the House of Lords last month. MPs are due to vote on Monday on whether to reinsert the clauses, but no one in government is certain whether Mr Johnson will ultimately push the point.

The sensitive timing is made all the more delicate by the plan for Mr Johnson to call the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to review the last-ditch talks on a trade deal that got under way on Sunday afternoon in Brussels.

Downing Street has insisted that the clauses will be voted back in on Monday, but it is unknown whether they will seek to keep them in if the House of Lords votes to remove them for a second time.

If MPs vote to reinsert the clauses at this point, peers will have one final opportunity to remove them on Wednesday when the bill returns for the final scrutiny from peers.

“Everything we’re being told suggests the clauses will come back, but we haven’t got a deal yet. Just as the PM will have to decide on a deal, he’ll have to decide on the [internal market] bill,” one cabinet minister said.

A government official said: “The PM is going to have to make this call personally, he’s incredibly forceful about the need to have a safety net. But safety nets can always be taken away when they’re not needed.”

The EU has warned that the bill constitutes an “extremely serious violation” of the withdrawal agreement and has requested Mr Johnson withdraw the clauses. Any Brexit trade deal is also likely to hinge on whether the UK will respect the withdrawal agreement.

Conservative MPs are expected to support adding the clauses back into the bill. Just two MPs voted against the clauses in September, but 30 abstained — including former prime minister Theresa May.

One Tory grandee predicted a similar-sized rebellion on Monday. “I think the government’s majority will hold. The real question is whether the Lords do it again.”

If a Brexit deal is struck, Mr Johnson may choose to allow the clauses to fall away in the Lords instead of forcing MPs to vote on reinstating them again.

One senior Tory added: “We’ve marched up the hill to support the [internal market] bill. We can’t march them down again.”

As well as the internal market legislation, the government is expected to table the taxation bill on Wednesday that will include similar measures relating to Northern Ireland.

The legislation to implement any EU-UK trade deal in British law will be drafted at “unbelievable speed”, with parliamentary aides suggesting it will take about a week to produce a workable bill.

Although parliament’s lower and upper chambers were due to rise for the Christmas break on December 17, it is widely expected that MPs and peers will continue to sit into the next week. “I can’t see how we can get the deal passed before December 22 or 23,” one official said

WSJ : Companies Could Face Pressure to Disclose More ESG Data

Companies Could Face Pressure to Disclose More ESG Data
The Biden administration may push for rules that require companies to clearly spell out climate-change related risks, as well as other sustainability metrics

Companies may be required to disclose more information on carbon emissions, diversity and other types of sustainability metrics in the coming years if the incoming Biden administration carries through on its election promise.

President-elect Joseph Biden campaigned on requiring companies to provide more detail on environmental risks and greenhouse-gas emissions within their operations and supply chains, as part of a broader agenda to combat climate change.

American corporations for years have been able to choose what they want to disclose in their annual sustainability reports, which are often glossy summaries of a company’s socially conscious actions. Under Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, public companies must only disclose ESG information if they deem it material to investors’ perception of the business.

Investors for years have pushed companies for more nonfinancial data, but some businesses haven’t been forthcoming.

“There’s a growing pressure for mandatory disclosures of public companies about climate change risk,” said Amy Borrus, executive director of the Council of Institutional Investors.

Mr. Biden’s transition team didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The number of companies that report on their sustainability efforts has increased over the past decade amid the rise of socially conscious investing. Last year, 90% of companies in the S&P 500 index issued sustainability reports, up from about 20% in 2011, according to the Governance & Accountability Institute Inc., an ESG consulting firm.

At issue, however, is what these companies disclose. In the absence of enforceable standards or regulation, companies can cherry pick what metrics to make public and which to keep confidential. That puts them at odds with some investors who want a clear summary of the nonfinancial risks a company faces and the ability to benchmark a company’s ESG performance across an entire sector.

“Until we have some authoritative body, and maybe regulation mandating what to do, it’s just going to be the Wild, Wild West when it comes to standards and reporting for the time being,” said Louis Coppola, executive vice president at the Governance & Accountability Institute.

The SEC under Chairman Jay Clayton didn’t draft new rules on ESG disclosures, despite pressure from some of the commissioners to have companies do so. Mr. Clayton, who plans to step down this month, said earlier this year that combining analyses of environmental, social and governance in disclosures won’t be useful to investors. The regulator in September raised the bar for investors to submit proposals—most of which pertain to ESG issues—for a vote at companies’ annual meetings.

Exactly how the SEC could address the issue is unclear. Securities regulators could require companies to adopt an existing reporting framework, such as those from the nonprofit Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, investors and advisers said. Investors say they prefer the SASB benchmark because it is straightforward, and the board actively consulted investor groups in the development of the rules.

“It took a long, long time for financial accounting standards to reach their current level of maturity,” said Marshall Chase, director of sustainability at Micron Technology Inc., a Boise, Idaho-based memory-chip maker. “Sustainability standards aren’t there yet, and it would be great if they could get there over time, hopefully sooner rather than later.”

Drafting a proposal and soliciting industry feedback would take time, meaning that a rule is unlikely to be completed until at least 2022, according to Amy Lynch, a former SEC accountant who is now president at consulting firm FrontLine Compliance LLC.

“It will be an additional burden [on companies] and they will not go forth willingly, most likely, but it will happen,” Ms. Lynch said.

Expectations for an SEC rule making come amid a push for global reporting standards.

The foundation that oversees international accounting rule makers this fall proposed creating a new board to oversee sustainability reporting. That effort, led by the International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation, has received support from BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager.

“The sooner we can get to a globally recognized and adopted standard, the better we think in terms of reducing the reporting tax on companies,” said Michelle Edkins, BlackRock’s managing director for investor stewardship. Meanwhile, countries could move forward with their own rules, such as in the U.K., where regulators last month said they would require companies to report on the financial impact of climate change.

For some companies, the absence of ESG reporting rules can come at a cost. Companies are left to respond to a range of requests for sustainability reports and metrics from investors, ratings firms and community groups, which all have different interests. Additionally, choosing which ESG framework to use can be confusing, some executives said.

“The lack of standardization does make it difficult to adopt any one particular standard,” said Devinder Ahuja, CFO of Atlanta-based aluminum producer Novelis Inc. “The Biden administration is going to be much more active on this agenda.”