El círculo rojo ya hizo el switch

Los empresarios mostraron capacidad para acomodarse al nuevo escenario político del país





El círculo rojo se despertó después del sacudón electoral y comenzó a dar señales de reacomodamiento en el nuevo escenario de poder peronista. Ya no teme por el retorno de Cristina Kirchner al poder, o al menos es lo que busca demostrar. Los empresarios confían en que la sociedad política entre el presidente electo, Alberto Fernández, y su vice potenciará la gestión para enfrentar la crisis económica.

Los mismos protagonistas que antes avivaban el fantasma de “revancha” de Cristina Kirchner, en estos días piden un “compromiso” de la expresidenta para ayudar a salir del derrumbe. Distintos empresarios consultados admitieron dejar atrás el análisis pesimista debido al “clima de convivencia” que se vislumbró en la composición del Gabinete nacional y los acuerdos legislativos.

“Es claro que vivimos en una etapa en donde debemos superar las malas experiencias y dejar de lado los preconceptos porque el armado de las listas y del Gabinete deja muestras de que existe una nueva era en el país, en donde todos deberán estar en la misma foto, como sucedió con la Iglesia y la reunión de Alberto y Macri”, afirmó uno de los empresarios más poderosos del país, en estricto off the récord.

Sucede que muchos de las dueñas y dueños de empresas creen que la base de la recuperación será a partir de la solidez del acuerdo político al que alcanzó el Frente de Todos para ganarle las elecciones a Cambiemos. “No hay margen para peleas por espacios y así nos dejaron saber algunos puentes que existen con el nuevo gobierno”, admitió otro de los líderes del sector privado.

Uno de los sectores más cómodos con la transición es el industrial, que prevé un rol principal en las nuevas políticas económicas, según el plan que Alberto Fernández anunció durante su asunción presidencial. El referente fabril en las economías regionales e integrante del Comité Ejecutivo de la UIA, José Urtubey, afirmó: “A mí me preocuparía que Cristina Kirchner no tenga injerencia, porque en una coalición en donde ella es un factor clave, lo lógico y lo saludable es que tenga participación. Eso lo valoro”.

Contundente, Urtubey dejó claro que en la casa industrial no existen preocupaciones por el rol de la vicepresidenta. Allí convivieron distintas miradas, pero el gran temor era el retorno de funcionarios como Guillermo Moreno. Como contrapartida, el círculo rojo destacó, entre otros, a Paula Español, quien será secretaria de Comercio Interior. “Es muy decente y sabe mucho. Es una mujer de esas características me da confianza”, le dijo el dueño de una fábrica grande del país. También señalaron el retorno de Miguel Peirano al que caracterizaron como “un pibe que laburó y sabe mucho de pymes”.

Sin embargo, aclararon que la situación contextual es “crítico”. “Hay mecha corta y no existe un plazo de cinco meses para aprender por lo que es importante la impronta joven del nuevo Gabinete pero con experiencia”, sostuvo otro referente.

Es cierto que la grieta política se mantiene entre los empresarios. “Hay diferencias de puta madre, con colegas que siguen pensando que Alberto Fernández va a ser manejado por Cristina Kirchner, quien no va a dejar de hacer nada. Pero este Gabinete es equilibrado, con juventud y que quiere hacer las cosas bien. Queda claro que si le va mal al presidente, le va mal a todo el grupo”, analizó un comerciante consultado por este diario.

Los empresarios juran que más del 70% del círculo rojo “piensa que esto es un gobierno de coalición y que hay que darle tiempo para que se desarrolle” aunque alertaron que debe haber golpes de efecto porque “la gente está esperando llenar la heladera y eso no va a suceder, pero dentro de 30 días tiene que pasar algo”. “Tenemos que tratar de que acá un mes tenga un pollo más en la heladera”, graficó un industrial que está predispuesto a “hacer el esfuerzo”.

El secretario de la Cámara Argentina de Comercio y Servicios (CA), Mario Grinman, fue elogioso ante el retorno de la expresidenta: “Sin lugar a dudas que la presencia, la participación y el protagonismo de la doctora Cristina Fernández de Kirchner va a ser fundamental, teniendo en cuenta su enorme experiencia en gestión legislativa y en gestión ejecutiva”. Y agregó: “Anhelamos lo mejor porque los argentinos necesitamos reencontrarnos y trabajar todos juntos en la construcción de un país normal”.

Justamente la CAC fue uno de los escenarios más cómodos para el macrismos. Allí encontró buena predisposición para reformas que Cambiemos había propuesto en el marco de la apertura comercial.

Aunque el lugar más representativo del círculo rojo está en IDEA, que también dejó su nueva postura al señalar que “acompaña con felicitaciones y buenos deseos al Presidente Alberto Fernández y a todo su equipo, en el comienzo de esta nueva etapa”.





Lo urgente:negociación con las provincias

Es una pieza clave para la discusión a futuro de la ley de gasto. Debe convencer conformación de gabinete que poco incluye al interior.



Guiños. Civilidad y gestos de acompañamiento de 21 de los 23 gobernadores que ayer participaron de la ceremonia de jura, pese a que coincidía con asunciones propias.Télam


Alberto Fernández trazó una de las definiciones quizás más urgentes en el debut de su gestión. La decisión de postergar el tratamiento de la ley de presupuesto y supeditarlo al inicio de la renegociación de la deuda con el FMI abre paso a una áspera negociación con los gobernadores, cuyo apoyo es esencial para cerrar un acuerdo que permita sancionar la ley de gasto.


El gobierno que inicia llega con un ticket sin marcar que lo habilita a encarar un diálogo directo con los estados subnacionales a través de un gabinete homogéneo, pero de conformación unitaria en un país federal que lo define, en rigor, la liga de gobernadores peronistas que gobierna la mayoría del país y que no logró butacas de fuste en el esquema del gabinete.

El diseño de la economía que viene obliga a una negociación de las provincias con cada una de las áreas del nuevo gobierno que, a priori, parecen tener una mirada distante del interior. Eso a pesar, incluso, de la insistente diatriba del Presidente en pos de una administración en la que los mandatarios constituyan la columna vertebral.



El desafío de la nueva gestión será reconducir la relación con las provincias en un contexto signado por la incertidumbre económica que también las hostiga. El éxito o el fracaso de ese enlace se verá reflejado, más tarde o más temprano, en el próximo presupuesto nacional.

La estabilidad de la relación entre la Casa Rosada y el interior del país dependerá de la habilidad de Alberto Fernández de profundizar y radicalizar algunas de las conquistas de la gestión de Mauricio Macri en cuanto al relacionamiento con las provincias. En los cuatro año de su mandato, Macri logró una notable mejoría en la ajada vinculación con los gobernadores que heredó del útlimo tramo del gobierno de Cristina de Kirchner: reconoció deudas previsionales, facilitó el acceso al superávit fiscal de casi la totalidad de los distritos, ordenó en cierta medida la distribución de los fondos coparticipables y ató la firma de los mandatarios a un consenso fiscal necesario. En términos políticos, otro dato: Macri no objetó -salvo en jurisdicciones propias- la decisión de desdoblar las elecciones provinciales, lo que le permitió a muchos de los gobernadores garantizar la continuidad en el poder, independientemente de los vaives de la economía nacional que terminaron precipitando la derrota electoral de Juntos por el Cambio primero en las PASO y luego en las generales de octubre.

Como dato (y aporte) de civilidad, los gobernadores acudieron en bloque al Congreso Nacional para participar de la ceremonia de traspaso de mando. Muchos, incluso, modificaron sus propias horas o fechas de proclamación para asistir a la ceremonia.

Sólo dos gobernadores no dieron el presente: Gustavo Sáenz, quien no cambió su fecha de asunción en Salta y Gustavo Melella, por problemas de salud de un familiar directo. En total fueron 21 de 23 los que estuvieron en el Congreso.

Todos escucharon a Fernández, quien habló sobre los Acuerdos Básicos de Solidaridad en la Emergencia como “punto de partida para detener la caída libre de la situación que recibimos. Saldremos de este cuadro con el consenso y de manera paulatina y sostenida”.

“Vamos a poner en marcha estos Acuerdos Básicos de Solidaridad en la Emergencia contando también con la participación de los Gobernadores de todo el país, con un criterio federal innovador, en clave productiva y social, más allá de lo meramente fiscal”, aseguró el flamante Presidente.

Y agregó que “llevaremos una parte sustancial de la actividad política y administrativa del Estado Nacional a las provincias, creando capitales alternativas, a fin de que la realidad de esos lugares de nuestra Patria pueda hacerse carne en los decisores de política, en los medios de comunicación y adquiera, a su vez, la visibilidad que no tuvieron durante décadas”.

“También vamos a realizar un análisis exhaustivo a fin de descentralizar y/o relocalizar en distintas provincias a los organismos del Estado Federal. Así como ahora el Instituto Nacional de Vitivinicultura funciona en la Provincia de Mendoza y el Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo Pesquero funciona en la Ciudad de Mar del Plata, debemos pensar en diversas alternativas que garanticen un nuevo federalismo”, cerró.

Una vez terminado su discurso, y luego de saludar a Cristina Fernández de Kirchner y Sergio Massa, Alberto Fernández pasó a agradecer la concurrencia de cada gobernador.

Inside Elliott Management: How Paul Singer’s Hedge Fund Always Wins



By Jen Wieczner




A Fortune investigation reveals sophisticated—and often controversial—tactics that have made Elliott Management the world’s biggest, most successful activist hedge fund.

If not for the watermelons, Elliott might have won in Korea.

In the summer of 2015, the activist hedge fund founded by Paul Singer had gone to war in the Republic of Samsung to stop the South Korean conglomerate from going through with what Singer considered to be an unfair deal. Elliott Management, the hedge fund that Singer launched 40 years ago and still leads today, was then a large investor in Samsung’s construction division. The trouble started when Jay Y. Lee, the son of the coma-bound chairman of the Samsung chaebol, started to consolidate power over Korea’s biggest company. When the younger Lee moved to have one part of the family empire buy the construction unit for $8 billion, Elliott balked at what it considered an absurdly low price and began lobbying other shareholders to reject it. Investing farther away from its New York home than ever before, the hedge fund faced a canny opponent with enormous influence in its home country. Samsung went so far as to publish illustrations online depicting Singer, with a vulture beak, accompanied by rhetoric that Singer perceived as anti-Semitic.

In the end, though, it was sugar that may have swayed the voters. As the meeting to approve the deal neared, Samsung representatives went door to door to meet shareholders, bearing watermelons and Korean walnut cakes, in a plea for their votes. The merger passed. Elliott, in a rare surrender, sold its shares a few weeks later.

But the story doesn’t end there. As South Korean authorities unraveled a corruption scandal that toppled the country’s President earlier this year, the trail traced back to Samsung. In August, Lee was convicted of bribery. (He is appealing the verdict.) Samsung had agreed to give a $830,000 dressage horse to the daughter of a key political influencer, who cajoled the National Pension Service—one of the world’s largest pension funds—to vote for the merger and against Elliott. Today, the Samsung heir is in jail, and Elliott has been vindicated. “I had no idea when we were in the midst of this, that this situation was going to lead to the impeachment of the President,” says Jonathan Pollock, co-CEO of Elliott, alongside Singer. It happens that in pursuing misbehaving companies, Elliott sometimes ends up sniffing out nefarious behavior: “Unfortunately, some of the people involved in these situations tend to ignore the rights of shareholders and creditors, and act entitled to do whatever they want.”

The Samsung outcome turned out to be a watershed moment not just for Elliott, but for shareholder activism. Activists use their ownership stakes in public companies to pressure them to change in order to boost returns—whether by restructuring their businesses, shaking up management, or even putting themselves up for sale. Such shareholder agitation has become more common in recent years as a widening pool of global investors seek a competitive edge. And in that world, the 40-year-old Elliott has emerged as both the largest and most active of activist hedge funds, and one that almost always seems to get its way.

“The Elliott book of deals is probably the most instructive, and it’s also one of the most far, far reaching,” says Marty Lipton, founding partner of the law firm Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz and inventor of the poison-pill corporate defense strategy, who has lately faced Elliott more frequently and on more fronts than ever before. “They’ve been enormously successful, and they are a major factor in activism today.”

In the past five years, Elliott has launched activist campaigns at more than 50 companies—19 this year alone—in at least a dozen countries. During that span, the battle with Samsung is the only one that went all the way to a vote, and the only one in which the firm didn’t get what it wanted—a sign of just how effective Elliott is at pressuring management to agree to its demands. At the same time, Elliott’s assets have nearly doubled to roughly $39 billion, including $5 billion it raised in a 23-hour span in May, making it more than twice the size of the second-biggest activist hedge fund, Dan Loeb’s Third Point.





Nic Rapp

That war chest, along with Elliott’s 400-­person staff, has rendered the firm virtually impossible for adversaries—from industry titans to nation states—to beat in a fight. Warren Buffett learned that the hard way this summer, when Elliott used its financial might to successfully block Berkshire Hathaway’s bid for energy company Oncor, by buying up company debt and pledging to exercise its creditor veto right. And Elliott has lately sought to clone its winning strategy: It’s on track to launch about 50% more activist campaigns this year than in 2016—nearly three times as many as any other major activist fund—including, in October, two in a single day.

Elliott’s winning ways are in stark contrast to many of its activist peers, whose recent attempts to take on Fortune 500 companies have failed miserably, from Bill Ackman’s landslide loss in a proxy contest with ADP (adp, +0.13%), to Greenlight Capital founder David Einhorn’s strikeout at General Motors (gm, -0.06%) earlier this year. Even Trian Partners’ Nelson Peltz, who narrowly won a blockbuster proxy campaign with P&G (pg, +0.30%) this fall, is still feuding with that company to accept him onto its board. And Elliott, whose 13.4% annual rate of return over its four-decade history is unmatched among hedge funds, has also outperformed at a time when that asset class has woefully lagged the market. The firm’s flagship fund, Elliott Associates, has returned more than 9.7% annualized over the past five years, compared with just 4.7% for hedge funds overall.

As Elliott ramps up its activism to an unprecedented scale, it is also accumulating a growing body count of deposed executives—not to mention ousted heads of state—who dared fight it. Just last year, Elliott finally prevailed in a 15-year battle to force Argentina to repay its bonds—a saga in which the hedge fund at one point seized an Argentine navy tall ship with the sailors still on it. A few months after Elliott finally collected its $2.4 billion windfall, Argentina indicted its former President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who had led her country into default in 2014 rather than pay Elliott what it owed (a decision that had also cost her party reelection). “Elliott’s the only one that has effected regime change in two different sovereign countries,” says Chris Cernich, managing director of Strategic Governance Advisors, who counsels executives on proxy contests. “They were successful at being right, and very publicly right.”

In their conviction that they’re right, however, Elliott has become adept at wielding pressure on its opponents in ways their foes say can cross ethical boundaries. Through interviews with more than 40 people who have dealt with the hedge fund—including bankers, advisers, board members of various companies, and current and former employees of the firm—Fortune has learned previously unreported details that reveal just how far Elliott will go to win.

To many observers, Elliott appeared vindicated yet again this spring, when a soccer ball showed up at Paul Singer’s door. In January, the hedge fund had publicly called for the ouster of Klaus Kleinfeld, the CEO of aerospace manufacturer Arconic (arnc, -0.47%), which split from Alcoa last year. Elliott objected to the company’s poor stock returns during his tenure, along with his generous compensation. Arconic refused to fire the CEO, and the stage was set for a proxy fight.

Four months later, Kleinfeld responded in the form of that soccer ball, sent by courier directly to Singer’s office, across town from Arconic’s New York headquarters. He enclosed a letter on his personal stationery, in which he sardonically alluded to some “lastingly legendary” partying Singer had supposedly done while attending the 2006 World Cup in Berlin. In a postscript, Kleinfeld insinuated that the hedge fund manager’s alleged debauchery had included wearing Native American headgear and warbling “Singin’ in the Rain” in a public fountain. He pledged to send Singer a feathered headdress next.

By Elliott’s telling, it was the corporate equivalent of a bloody finger in a box. “We do understand Dr. Kleinfeld to be making veiled suggestions that he might intimidate or extort Mr. Singer,” Elliott’s general counsel, Richard Zabel, wrote to Arconic’s board. Less than a week later, Arconic’s board gave Kleinfeld no choice but to resign. Elliott, it seemed, had lucked into its desired outcome out of the blue, by way of its opponent’s unforced error.

Behind the scenes, however, the hedge fund had been waging a sort of Cold War with Kleinfeld and Arconic, engaging in covert espionage ranging across the Eastern seaboard and all the way to Europe, Fortune has learned.





For Kleinfeld, it started when a pair of people who identified themselves as private investigators showed up at the door of his next-door neighbor in New York’s Westchester County about a year ago, inquiring about “loud parties” at his house. As Elliott ramped up its pressure on Arconic, friends and colleagues of Kleinfeld, along with board members of Arconic, reported more suspicious run-ins: Others who live near the CEO were followed to a local restaurant by strangers who then approached the couple; they claimed to be considering investing with Kleinfeld, but first had a few questions. The German-born executive declined to speak with Fortune, but five people familiar with the events confirmed this account. They all believed Elliott to be behind it: “We thought they crossed the line,” one of the people says.

The most unnerving incident was when one of Kleinfeld’s daughters, a student at Harvard Business School, was approached on campus by someone who asked to “friend” her on Facebook; the person also spoke to her friends, fishing for information about her family. While lawyers and advisers say it’s common to hire investigators to do opposition research in the context of a proxy campaign, executives’ kids—of any age—are typically considered off-limits.

Elliott does not seem to share those qualms: On at least three occasions, according to both court testimony and the accounts of seven people who spoke with Fortune, children of people facing the hedge fund’s attack have been pulled into the fray in some way, in an apparent bid to gain either information on or leverage against their parents. In an instance involving Norbert Essing, an Arconic PR consultant in Germany, neighbors of his children in London received visits from people asking about drug abuse by them or their father. This happened shortly after Elliott publicly blamed Essing for helping or encouraging Kleinfeld to write his soccer ball letter. (Essing denies the accusation.)

Elliott, which offered limited access to two of its executives for this article, declined to comment on the use of private investigators in its activist campaigns; a person close to the firm denies that information from or about anyone’s kids was part of the scope of its Arconic research effort. But in the insular world of activist hedge funds, Elliott appears to have a reputation for particularly hardball tactics, several sources say. Distaste for this no-holds-barred approach even led one prominent activist, Jeff Ubben, the CEO of hedge fund ValueAct, to stick up for Kleinfeld during a panel discussion on activism at the Milken Institute conference in May.

Still, dirt-digging and other aggressive tactics, while controversial, have the benefit of exerting power beyond what money can buy. And they shed light on just what distinguishes Elliott from its less successful peers. “To do activism really, really well, you have to be not only smart and persistent, but you have to be willing,” says David Rosewater, who advises companies as the global head of Morgan Stanley’s shareholder activism and corporate defense group, and who has previously represented Elliott as an attorney. “Not everybody is willing to be the bad guy.”

Elliott Management was founded in 1977 by Paul Elliott Singer, a lawyer by training who found he could use the court system to great gain as an investor in bankruptcy situations and arbitrage. Conservative in almost every sense of the word, the billionaire Singer, now 73, insists on hedging all his investments to reduce the risk of loss, and prizes “manual efforts”—in other words, old-fashioned elbow grease—as the defining characteristic of his investment style.

A powerful GOP donor who split with his party by funding the “Never Trump” movement—and by supporting same-sex marriage—Singer is also obsessed about his own and his employees’ physical safety, according to those who know him well. Elliott largely bans staff from social media; with few exceptions, employees cannot post pictures of themselves online—not even an official headshot—making them virtual ghosts in the digital age. The precaution is meant to protect them from anyone who might hold a grudge against the firm. “Paul has always been paranoid about security,” says one Elliott investor, who asked not to be identified for fear of offending Singer. In an extreme extension of that philosophy, Singer has even hedged his Manhattan headquarters, maintaining a backup version of the five-floor offices in New Jersey, just in case.

In the 1980s and ’90s, Elliott applied its acumen primarily to distressed debt and other more esoteric securities where relatively few Wall Street investors ventured. But the modern history of Elliott’s activism begins in 2004 with the arrival of Jesse Cohn. Now 37, Cohn is Elliott’s enfant terrible; a car fanatic and triathlete from Long Island who can talk so quickly it sometimes seems like he’s on fast-forward. A self-described computer-camp geek, Cohn spent two years as an M&A banker at Morgan Stanley before joining Elliott. That’s where he started writing letters to small tech companies, urging them to put themselves up for auction to garner big gains for their shareholders.





Singer: Misha Friedman—Bloomberg/Getty Images; Cohn: Courtesy of Elliott Management

Cohn’s fanboy-meets-dealmaker affect earned him a reputation as a bit of a whippersnapper. In 2010, in a letter to the board of Novell, he boasted of earning one of the company’s IT certifications when he was 14—a charming bit of common ground that shared the pages with a hostile bid to buy the firm. The brash move worked—Novell was sold to private equity—and Cohn’s formula impressed his bosses enough that they promoted him to head all of its U.S. equity activism. Cohn’s campaigns have resulted in the takeouts or buyouts of more than a dozen companies, including BMC Software, Informatica, LifeLock and, biggest of all, EMC, which Dell acquired for $67 billion in 2015. “I don’t know if anyone has any more experience than he does prosecuting activist campaigns,” says Chris Young, head of contested situations at Credit Suisse, who has known Cohn since the latter started at Elliott.

While Singer eschews sitting on corporate boards, Cohn sits on four, and has become so integral to the firm that some of Elliott’s investors mistakenly believe Cohn is Singer’s nephew. While Singer seldom appears in public (he declined to be interviewed for this article) and rarely takes part in negotiations with companies the firm targets, Cohn is often on the front lines. “Paul is the final decision maker on lots of these issues, but Jesse is the guy, and everyone in the activist community knows who he is,” says Marc Weingarten, a partner and cochair of the shareholder activism group at law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel who has represented Elliott.

In private, people sitting across the table from Cohn have seen another side of him, that of a maestro in the art of applying strategic pressure. That aspect of him bubbled into public view with Compuware, the Detroit-based business software maker that eventually sold to private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $2.4 billion in 2014 as a result of Elliott’s campaign.

In September 2013, a delegation from the Compuware board flew to New York to meet with Elliott about its demands for the company. Cohn opened the meeting by casually flipping through a six-inch-thick manila folder of purportedly embarrassing information on his guests, which included former GM CEO Fritz Henderson. Bill Grabe, an advisory director at private equity firm General Atlantic who sat on Compuware’s board at the time, would later testify in arbitration proceedings that Cohn unabashedly brought Henderson’s daughter into the conversation. “And you know, you have a daughter that’s doing this and whatnot,” Grabe recalled Cohn saying, paraphrasing the young fund manager. “You’re dealing with somebody whose tactics it is to intimidate, to splinter, to do everything they can to be disruptive,” Grabe testified. In the same case, then–Compuware CEO Bob Paul testified that in a follow-up phone call, Cohn dropped a “veiled threat” that he knew Paul kept an Aston Martin in his garage, saying, “By the way, love that English car you’re driving.”

These encounters, first disclosed during a wrongful termination dispute with Compuware cofounder Peter Karmanos Jr., have provided ammunition for Karmanos’s current suit in Michigan state court, accusing Elliott of “blackmailing” the directors into selling the company. “Elliott is taking advantage of the situation,” Karmanos tells Fortune, “and then when they wanted to push it a little harder, they bend the rules.” Karmanos started Compuware in 1973 with a few hundred dollars in tax refund checks. He had already announced his retirement from the board when Elliott launched its campaign, but was fired as a consultant a few months later for saying publicly that he “would tell the hedge fund to go fuck themselves”—comments he says he does not regret. “It’s hard to watch it just get torn apart by those jerks in New York,” he says.

A person who was in the room when Cohn brought out the dossiers says the ploy had no influence on the board’s decisions, though it was unmistakably a threat to release damaging information. “There was no question as to what the intent was of that folder,” the person says. The directors had come to the meeting prepared, after their counterparts at rival BMC, which Elliott had come after a year earlier, warned them of similar tactics. That effort included a disturbing phone call to a BMC director’s daughter, the Compuware directors say.

Elliott declined to comment. But a person close to the firm says the shtick was designed “to be sort of funny, but sort of brutal,” a kind of shame game cataloging the board’s conflicts of interest, and conveying that the jig was up. The intel itself implicated the director, not his daughter, even if she was the source of it, the person adds: “We draw the line there. His daughter doesn’t sit on the board.”

Still, such maneuvers are concerning to investors like ValueAct’s Ubben, who worry that Elliott may undermine the ability of other activists to work with companies in good faith, whether by its indifference to the human toll of its campaigns or because of its apparent affinity for knocking companies out of existence. “Our form of activism could not be more different than Elliott,” Ubben tells Fortune. Ubben’s hedge fund’s behind-closed-doors campaign at Microsoft (msft, +2.02%), now going on five years, is credited with expediting the tech giant’s turnaround under CEO Satya Nadella. “Elliott is single-handedly making the public markets less attractive to companies,” Ubben says, “and we see it in the shrinking number of public companies and the growth in private ownership.”

While Cohn was in the trenches with Compuware, a sea change was taking hold inside Elliott. Elliott’s top brass saw Cohn’s strategy as an obvious extension of the firm’s bread-and-butter, labor-intensive investing, and five years ago they kicked it into high gear. Elliott had a generation of young managers eager to do what Cohn had done in their respective industries, from energy to metals and mining. Jonathan Pollock, who had practiced closed-end fund arbitrage in Europe and Asia, had returned to New York a few years earlier, and now fused the principles upon which Singer had built the firm into an equity strategy that could travel across Elliott and the globe.

The first big test was Hess. With a market cap of about $25 billion at the time, the family-run oil and gas empire was the largest company Elliott had ever gone after, and it occupied a nostalgic place in American culture thanks to the novelty toy trucks it released each year at Christmastime. Hess never saw Elliott coming. Elliott owned only 4% of Hess’s stock—not enough to necessitate an activist warning-shot 13D filing with the SEC—in January 2013 when the fund went public with a proxy campaign to replace five of the board’s directors. Elliott alleged that Hess was paying execs some of the highest compensation packages in the industry, while stock returns were near the bottom. It was “a sneak attack,” recalls Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey and one of the Hess directors in Elliott’s crosshairs.

Hess had an aura of impenetrability as one of America’s last dynastic corporations. But the hedge fund nominated an unimpeachable lineup of new directors (including former CEOs of BP and American Express), none of whom worked for Elliott, forcing shareholders to evaluate its arguments on merit. The Hess board “looked like the junior varsity B team when you compared them to the Elliott slate,” Cernich says. Elliott, Kean claims, told some institutional shareholders that failing to support its candidates would be tantamount to neglecting their fiduciary duty—an allegation with potential legal consequences.
“Elliott is single-handedly making the public markets less attractive to companies.” - Jeff Ubben, activist investor and CEO of hedge fund ValueAct

On the eve of the proxy vote at the May 2013 annual meeting, representatives of Elliott and Hess holed up counting incoming votes in the Four Seasons hotel in Houston. It was only around 10 p.m., when the outcome was still too close to call, that the two sides came together, working through the night on a settlement: At 6:30 a.m., Hess announced that it would add three of Elliott’s nominees to its board. Kean, after 23 years of service, relinquished his seat. “By taking that on, they showed that they could move up the weight class to take on bigger companies, and that’s that,” Kean says. The Hess family’s defeat also reverberated beyond Elliott, says a banker who advises companies on facing activists: “Once that broke, I think everybody was like, party on.”

Inside Elliott, the mounting victories catalyzed the activist impulse. In October 2015, the hedge fund took on its first retail company with Cabela’s, which eventually sold itself to Bass Pro Shops. For Cohn, the moment of enlightenment came with American Capital. Elliott had originally invested in the obscure financial stock as part of an arbitrage trade, but when a colleague saw that the company was laying groundwork to shield itself from activist investors, he went across the hall to Cohn for the first time.

Running the company through Elliott’s activism checklist—Is the company undervalued? Can it be fixed? Can you convince other shareholders of the need for change?—Cohn brought the idea of a campaign to Pollock and Singer, who immediately signed off. In mid-November 2015, Elliott sent a public letter to American Capital while simultaneously revealing an 8.4% stake; the company caved just nine days later, announcing it was beginning a sale process. It was the quickest turnaround of any of Elliott’s public campaigns. (Ares Capital acquired the firm six months later for $3.4 billion.) “It showed that the process really works,” says Cohn. “And it’s scalable. That’s part of what I think we’ve proven—we’re not just a group of tech people doing just tech trades; we’re a team that’s able to take what we’ve built and do it over a long period of time, and roll it out to other industries and geographies, too.”

Still, Cohn wasn’t quite satisfied with the machine he’d helped build. From his earliest days at Elliott, he’d harbored a dream that he’d frequently express over dinners with colleagues and advisers. For as many times as he’d pushed companies onto the block, as many sales as he’d secured, there was something missing: Jesse Cohn wanted to buy companies himself.

To hear Cohn tell it, he’d fallen in love. The time and effort Elliott put in to researching companies before launching campaigns often imbued the activists with an intimate knowledge of, and deep appreciation for, their targets. With EMC, for example, Elliott had spent months getting to know the data storage company, interviewing some 700 of its customers before launching a campaign urging it to pursue M&A opportunities. But when computing giant Dell, with financing from its private equity owner Silver Lake, bought EMC, Elliott was shut out of the deal. One day, Cohn hoped, Elliott would be big enough to afford whales of its own.

Cohn’s dream finally came true this fall, when Elliott acquired cybersecurity firm Gigamon for $1.6 billion, less than six months after unveiling a position in the stock. It was the first time Elliott had taken an entire public company private by itself, a major milestone for its relatively new Silicon Valley–based private equity arm, Evergreen Coast Capital.

But in a bit of high-finance irony, Elliott’s reputation for sharp elbows, Cohn realized, could be a liability in achieving these new goals. Cohn is now often sourcing leads for deals from the very bankers and lawyers who sat across from him during tough negotiations in the past. And with that adjustment, people who’ve worked with him say, has come a newfound sensitivity to how both he and Elliott are perceived.

At Athenahealth, for example, which Elliott targeted this spring, Cohn has been polite and even complimentary in his interactions with management, despite being a “regular drumbeat” of a presence, according to people close to the health IT company. On occasion, Cohn has been known to let a tinge of guilt creep in when he reflects on his more swashbuckling days. “Our tactics probably evolved over time,” says Pollock, who is Cohn’s boss. “We’re looking more toward this constructive engagement approach.”
“Our tactics probably evolved over time. We’re looking more toward this constructive engagement approach.” - Jonathan Pollock, co-CEO, Elliott Management

That’s why Elliott’s attack on Arconic this year ruffled feathers inside and outside the firm. Led by 38-year-old portfolio manager Dave Miller, the campaign rhetoric packed more vitriol than any of Elliott’s campaigns in recent memory. Elliott’s 336-slide deck, distributed to Arconic shareholders and released publicly, depicted Kleinfeld as the Monopoly man, running away with money bags. It also alluded to Kleinfeld having personality abnormalities (a claim Arconic dismissed as an “unsubstantiated” ad hominem attack), prompting some to observe that Elliott could have a split personality of its own. “The problem is, I don’t know whether I’m going to get the mensch or the schmuck,” Joele Frank, of the eponymous public relations firm that has helped companies fight Elliott and other activists, commented at a panel at a Tulane law school event in March. (Miller, for his part, was promoted to head of U.S. restructuring at Elliott this spring.)

The Arconic campaign also illustrated Elliott’s power to deploy a seemingly bottomless amount of resources. In May, nearly a month after Kleinfeld resigned, Elliott did something no one has done before or since. Along with paper proxy-vote cards, the hedge fund mailed rechargeable video players, slightly smaller than an iPad, loaded with a four-minute attack ad—alleging Kleinfeld “has the worst track record of any CEO in the S&P 500 over his tenure”—that played automatically when investors opened the package. Sent to tens of thousands of large retail shareholders, the gimmick alone cost Elliott as much as $3 million, proxy contest advisers estimate. While Arconic disclosed it spent $58 million defending itself, it’s likely the hedge fund spent nearly as much if not more in the attack, according to people who worked on the campaign. After two failed rounds of settlement talks in which Singer made a rare personal appearance, Arconic ultimately agreed to add three of Elliott’s four picks to its board. “When Elliott shows up, it’s a completely different ball game,” says Weingarten, the Schulte lawyer. “They are relentless. They have the money, and they will spare no expense to ensure that they win.”





Jonathan Pollock, co-CEO of Elliott Management, at Elliott's New York City offices in a 2015 photo. Pollock belongs to the younger generation of Elliott principals that has doubled down on activist campaigns.


From Elliott’s perspective, the approach was warranted, given the resistance they’d encountered. Pollock notes that Arconic was one of just a handful of its campaigns, along with Hess and Samsung, where a true battle ensued. “I don’t count the three or four as a success, necessarily,” he says. (Adds someone close to Arconic, “We didn’t decide to take them on, we just said we disagree.”)

Bankers say the Arconic presentation has made the rounds in other companies’ board rooms, and looms large over Elliott’s subsequent campaigns, a warning of what can happen to those who resist its overtures. Whether it fits the firm’s ideals or not, Elliott’s ruthless legacy continues to color its endeavors. Unlike the activist firms run by Bill Ackman or Dan Loeb, the fund Paul Singer founded has raised an army of activists who can influence corporate fiefdoms everywhere. “There’s some sense that there’s an institution that survives the founder,” says Cernich, the governance adviser, “and that it expands and multiplies the power and effectiveness of the organization.”

Promises Pollock, “We’ll be around for a while.” Boards, beware.

Clarification: This article was updated on Dec. 8 to clarify the chronology of events in a bribery case involving Samsung.

A version of this article appears in the Dec. 15, 2017 issue of Fortune with the headline “Whatever It Takes to Win.”

Alemania no paga con tarjeta





Por Belén Kayser (Berlín)


Una de la tarde en Berlín. Recorro la Oranienstrasse con dos amigas buscando un sitio donde comer en festivo. Si encontrar un local abierto en un día como este es un milagro, encontrar uno que además acepte tarjetas, requiere de una alineación de astros mucho mayor. Uno de cada dos alemanes prefiere pagar en efectivo y los locales no se complican la vida. La Oranien es una de las calles más hipsters de Berlín. Los cafés veganos se alternan con locales de productos turcos y la comida asiática barata comparte acera con el restaurante del inventor del kebab; es cierto que su cercanía a la insegura Kottbuser Tor le podría quitar adeptos, pero todo lo contrario. En resumen y haciendo un cálculo rápido… en esta calle se mueve mucho dinero.

Avistamos nuestro milagro en mitad de la Oranien. Las señales no fallan. Su logo es una virgen, aunque zombie, y el toldo es verde esperanza. Además, mexicano y condecoradísimo por todas las guías del ocio. “¿Aceptarán tarjetas?”, pregunta la más veterana en la ciudad. “Eso de ahí seguro que es un datáfono”, añade mi otra amiga señalando en el mostrador lo que claramente es una calculadora. ¡Alerta, spoiler! La cuenta fueron unos 14€ por cabeza. ¿Y la calculadora…? Era una calculadora. Ni rebuscando en el bolso, bolsillos y forros de la cazadora conseguimos juntar el dinero. Eso que dicen de que los españoles hacemos las maletas de vuelta antes de adaptarnos, es totalmente cierto. Creo que si aguantamos tanto es, en parte, porque esperamos que acepten nuestras tarjetas. Toca echar a suertes a quién le toca andar 15 minutos hasta el banco más cercano. El cajero de enfrente no vale. Es genérico, eso quiere decir que por no ser banco amigo cobran una comisión de 3,99€.

Campeamos la situación gracias a la bici y a conocer la ciudad, pero los turistas podrían tener menos suerte en la aventura porque, aunque hay comercios que pegan un cartel en la puerta “Keine Kartenzahlung möglich…!” (no se acepta ningún tipo de pago con tarjeta), no siempre se informa, y a ver qué hace uno con una cuenta de 50€ y sin efectivo ni cajeros a la vista. Esta situación, que nos puede parecer un drama del primer mundo, es perfectamente normal en el país de Merkel. Los raros para ellos somos el resto del mundo; de hecho no tienen ningún reparo en demostrártelo con un gesto de desaprobación cada vez que les preguntas si aceptan tarjetas. Y ahora veremos por qué.

El temor a quedarse sin dinero

Si a usted le aborda un encuestador a la entrada del metro y le pregunta: “Suponga que se queda sin dinero en efectivo un día y la única forma de pago que tiene es con tarjeta o pago electrónico… ¿Qué le parecería esta situación?”. El español medio pensará: “pago con tarjeta si la admiten y si no le pido a un amigo o me voy a sacar a cualquier cajero”. En resumen, que no le supondría un problema, ¿verdad? ¿Sabe lo que opinan, según la asociación de bancos alemanes –Bankenverband– los ciudadanos de estos lares? “Schlecht”, que es, como su sonoridad indica, terrible.

Quedarse solos ante el peligro con una tarjeta y sin bargeld (efectivo), sería horrible para el 67% de los alemanes. Otro 24% cree que eso “no estaría demasiado bien”; sólo el 8% lo aprueba y hay un 1% al que se la trae al pairo. Preguntados por su método favorito en igualdad de condiciones, según este informe, facilitado por el Deutsche Bank, gana el efectivo con casi la mitad de los votos (47%) frente al 22% de la tarjeta. Sé lo que están pensando. ¿Entonces, cuánto dinero lleva encima un alemán? Es difícil de saber, aunque hace poco la Reserva Federal, que apuntaba a que hasta el 82% de los pagos en Alemania se hacen en efectivo, publicaba datos de varios países y redondeaba la suma alemana en 110€. También sabemos que saca del cajero varias veces al mes y pide entre 100 y 200€ en el 45% de los casos. El 25% de los germanos se llevan de 300 a 500€ y hay un 6% que saca más de 500€ de cada vez. Aunque es cierto, que este pueblo no es amigo de irse de compras en plan película, es más de tiendas pequeñas donde aceptan sus tarjetas o solo efectivo. De hecho, la sociedad lleva tiempo pidiendo eliminar los billetes de 500€.

Pero esta forma de pagar está tan arraigada en el adn alemán que hasta se educa en esa dirección. Por ejemplo: si uno se matricula en la escuela oficial de idiomas, el tema dos es precisamente el excepcional modelo alemán, una mezcla de efectivo, transferencias y tarjetas propias, como la EC Karte o Girocard. ¿Se estudia en el primer nivel? No, no, en el B2.2, cuando ya eres capaz de entenderlo. Lección: ‘En forma para las finanzas’, página 26, traduzco: “La EC Karte, la transferencia y el efectivo son los métodos de pago más seguros”. ¿A que ahora se siente como… como… como más alemán?

La obsesión por el ahorro

Ahorrar es casi una cuestión ética desde el kindergarten (guardería). No es raro ver a niños de menos de diez años un domingo por la mañana frente a su portal, aprovechando que las aceras son bien anchas, con una manta en la que exponen sus juguetes viejos, los venden… y lo que sacan, a la hucha. Como dice Andreu Jerez, corresponsal de El Confidencial: “Endeudarse tiene una implicación moral negativa en Alemania, schuld significa tanto deuda como culpa”. Ahorran tanto, explica “que tienen un déficit cero pero en muchos pueblos sus infraestructuras se caen, porque prefieren ahorrar a gastar”.

Dorothea Schäfer, directora de investigación de mercados financieros del DIW (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung-Instituto alemán para la investigación económica) se sube al argumento del ahorro: “A los alemanes no les gusta estar en balance negativo y pedir un crédito es algo completamente impopular”, e insiste en que “si pagan en efectivo, después no necesitan tener que revisar los movimientos de sus cuentas”. Bah, sí, claro que era una indirecta, pero los españoles estamos acostumbrados a la mirada de desdén de los alemanes cuando hablamos de finanzas, porque creen que nuestra historia reciente les da la razón en cualquier caso.

¿Pero por qué este miedo al plástico? Pues precisamente por su historia, pero no exactamente la reciente. Frank P. es doctor en Filosofía y da clases en la universidad. Berlinés de nacimiento, vivió la segunda guerra mundial, la guerra fría y la caída del muro y ahora es propietario de un edificio de viviendas Mitte, posiblemente el distrito más caro de de la ciudad. Su punto de vista sobre la aversión al crédito, aunque peculiar, representa muy bien al berlinés medio que sacó partido a la historia: “Perdimos dos guerras y aprendimos a sobrevivir siendo pobres, a sobrellevar a la reunificación, todo esto nos ha enseñado a ser ahorradores”. La hiperinflación, la guerra fría y sus espías, la pobreza extrema… Todo esto les ha hecho desconfiar de absolutamente todo lo que no se pueda ver y tocar. “Es algo llevamos en los genes, por eso no nos endeudamos”, explica este profesor. “El crédito se considera un riesgo”, añade la portavoz de DIW, “porque la gente quiere comprobar regularmente los movimientos de la tarjeta y con la de crédito sólo puede hacerlo una vez al mes”.

Llegados a este punto, no desvelamos nada si contamos que detrás de todas estas cifras se esconde en realidad la personalidad alemana: el ahorro y el control. El 61% de los encuestados sostiene que si paga en efectivo controla mejor lo que gasta y dónde lo hace. La directora de investigación de mercados financieros del DIW avala este dato y va más allá: “Pagar con tarjeta de crédito es un hecho muy nuevo en nuestro país”, explica. Es cierto, escuchar esto desconcierta, pero francamente, los conceptos de débito y crédito generan tal confusión que en ocasiones es difícil explicar a un alemán qué es una tarjeta de crédito y qué es una de débito.

Las conversaciones

Viviendo en Alemania me he visto envuelta en no pocas conversaciones sobre las tarjetas. Recuerdo una de ellas, durante la cual un universitario ya entrado en la treintena justificaba el efectivo por la desconfianza que tienen los alemanes en cualquier pago electrónico que no sea de un banco de origen germano. Es decir, ni visa, ni Mastercard ni American Express, sólo la Maestro y EC o Girocard, o sea, las suyas. Comiendo un día con una antigua jefa, a la hora de la cuenta me quejé de que no aceptaran mi tarjeta de débito y no conseguí hacerle entender la diferencia entre una tarjeta de débito y otra de crédito. Me quedé con la sensación de que consciente o inconscientemente para ella no había diferencia. Cuenta el periodista Andreu Jerez que su banco, la Sparkasse, le recomienda “usar la visa sólo en el extranjero y la EC o Girocard, que es de débito, en los comercios alemanes”.

Otro de los aspectos que parece conflictivo para los germanos a la hora de pagar con tarjeta es la sensación de falta de privacidad. Según este informe de la Bankenverband, uno de cada cuatro encuestados pone en valor la privacidad de sus movimientos, y pagar con tarjeta es sinónimo de dejar un rastro. ¿Paranoia? “No, es que no quieren que se sepa en qué se gastan el dinero”, explica Marina Forteza, colaboradora de El Economista en Alemania, “cada cierto tiempo la prensa alemana abre periódicos con la amenaza del robo de datos, de la seguridad de internet, de las tarjetas… Aquí les preocupa mucho su privacidad, posiblemente por un pasado como el suyo, donde la Stasi seguía prácticamente viva en los 90”.

Ese celo por la esfera privada e incluso a la austeridad, sin embargo, está cambiando. En parte, influenciada por la llegada de inmigrantes de todo el mundo, “especialmente de Asia, América y el resto de Europa”, nos explica una portavoz del Deutsche Bank, “está girando esta situación y cada vez más se demanda el uso de aplicaciones móviles y tarjetas para pagar”. Margarita Ruby, dueña de la librería La Rayuela, ubicada en el barrio turco de Kreuzberg, profundiza en el asunto. De padres españoles pero nacida y criada en Alemania, Ruby se ha resistido durante años al famoso TPV, o datáfono. “Durante mucho tiempo tenías que pagar 50€ por el alquiler y tener uno para las tarjetas ordinarias y otro para las alemanas, en un negocio como el mío, sale muy caro”. Preguntada por si cree que ha perdido clientes por este motivo, ella cuyo público objetivo son españoles, defiende que da la opción de pago por transferencia bancaria, pero no le parece un problema.

¿Qué pasaría si el negocio de Margarita estuviera en un barrio de clase media en Madrid? Hemos preguntado a un negocio de características similares, sobre la misma cuestión. Alejandro Muñoz es encargado de una zapatería del madrileño barrio de Peñagrande y su balance es parecido. “No compensa” tener datáfono en negocios que mueven poco dinero al mes, “porque se pierde dinero entre el mantenimiento, el alquiler del terminal y la comisión por compra”, pero aún así sabe que no puede hacer “la revolución a los bancos”. “Lo intentamos y hubo gente a la que le pareció una decisión acertada por principios, pero perdíamos clientes”.

Visto lo visto, y con estos datos en la mano, los próximos años se avecina un drama en Alemania. En primer lugar, porque las nuevas generaciones han heredado este afán por llevar dinero encima. Jóvenes de 14 a 17 se decantan por el bargeld en un 78% de los casos, aunque es cierto que cuando cumplen la mayoría de edad, este porcentaje se reduce. ¿Quizá es que ven más fácil el pago vía móvil? Pues no, tampoco. De hecho, a más de la mitad (57%) no les gusta dejar sus compras en manos del teléfono móvil. Y en segundo lugar porque el resto de Europa se dirige hacia la desaparición total del plástico y el teléfono para luchar contra el blanqueo de dinero. La cashless society es casi ya una realidad en Suecia y la penetración de teléfonos móviles en Europa hace imaginar un euro 3.0 en menos de lo que pensamos. Entonces, será interesante ver qué pasa en Alemania. Confieso que me genera tanta curiosidad como impaciencia.

The Real Future of Work



 

Forget automation. The workplace is already cracking up in profound ways, and Washington is sorely behind on dealing with it.


By DANNY VINIK





In 2013, Diana Borland and 129 of her colleagues filed into an auditorium at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Borland had worked there for the past 13 years as a medical transcriptionist, typing up doctors’ audio recordings into written reports. The hospital occasionally held meetings in the auditorium, so it seemed like any other morning.

The news she heard came as a shock: A UPMC representative stood in front of the group and told them their jobs were being outsourced to a contractor in Massachusetts. The representative told them it wouldn’t be a big change, since the contractor, a firm called Nuance Communications, would rehire them all for the exact same position and the same hourly pay. There would just be a different name on their paychecks.


Borland soon learned that this wasn’t quite true. Nuance would pay her the same hourly rate—but only for the first three months. After that, she’d be paid according to her production, 6 cents for each line she transcribed. If she and her coworkers passed up the new offer, they couldn’t collect unemployment insurance, so Borland took the deal. But after the three-month transition period, her pay fell off a cliff. As a UPMC employee, she had earned $19 per hour, enough to support a solidly middle-class life. Her first paycheck at the per-line rate worked out to just $6.36 per hour—below the minimum wage.

“I thought they made a mistake,” she said. “But when I asked the company, they said, ‘That’s your paycheck.’”

Borland quit not long after. At the time, she was 48, with four kids ranging in age from 9 to 24. She referred to herself as retired and didn’t hold a job for the next two years. Her husband, a medical technician, told her that “you need to be well for your kids and me.” But early retirement didn’t work out. The family struggled financially. Two years ago, when the rival Allegheny General Hospital recruited her for a transcriptionist position, she took the job. To this day, she remains furious about UPMC’s treatment of her and her colleagues.

“The bottom line was UPMC was going to do what they were going to do,” she said. “They don’t care about what anybody thinks or how it affects any family.” UPMC, reached by email, said that the outsourcing was a way to save the transcriptionists’ jobs as the demand for transcriptionists fell.

It worked out for her former employer: In the four years since the outsourcing, UPMC’s net income has more than doubled.

What happened to Borland and her coworkers may not be as dramatic as being replaced by a robot, or having your job exported to a customer service center in Bangalore. But it is part of a shift that may be even more historic and important—and has been largely ignored by lawmakers in Washington. Over the past two decades, the U.S. labor market has undergone a quiet transformation, as companies increasingly forgo full-time employees and fill positions with independent contractors, on-call workers or temps—what economists have called “alternative work arrangements” or the “contingent workforce.” Most Americans still work in traditional jobs, but these new arrangements are growing—and the pace appears to be picking up. From 2005 to 2015, according to the best available estimate, the number of people in alternative work arrangements grew by 9 million and now represents roughly 16 percent of all U.S. workers, while the number of traditional employees declined by 400,000. A perhaps more striking way to put it is that during those 10 years, all net job growth in the American economy has been in contingent jobs.




Illustration by Chris Gash

Around Washington, politicians often talk about this shift in terms of the so-called gig economy. But those startling numbers have little to do with the rise of Uber, TaskRabbit and other “disruptive” new-economy startups. Such firms actually make up a small share of the contingent workforce. The shift that came for Borland is part of something much deeper and longer, touching everything from janitors and housekeepers to lawyers and professors.

“This problem is not new,” said Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, one of the few lawmakers who has proposed a comprehensive plan on federal labor law reform. “But it’s being talked about as if it’s new.”

The repercussions go far beyond the wages and hours of individuals. In America, more than any other developed country, jobs are the basis for a whole suite of social guarantees meant to ensure a stable life. Workplace protections like the minimum wage and overtime, as well as key benefits like health insurance and pensions, are built on the basic assumption of a full-time job with an employer. As that relationship crumbles, millions of hardworking Americans find themselves ejected from that implicit pact. For many employees, their new status as “independent contractor” gives them no guarantee of earning the minimum wage or health insurance. For Diana Borland, a new full-time job left her in the same chair but without a livable income.

In Washington, especially on Capitol Hill, there’s not much talk about this shift in the labor market, much less movement toward solutions. Lawmakers attend conference after conference on the “Future of Work” at which Republicans praise new companies like Uber and TaskRabbit for giving workers more flexibility in their jobs, and Democrats argue that those companies are simply finding new ways to skirt federal labor law. They all warn about automation and worry that robots could replace humans in the workplace. But there’s actually not much evidence that the future of work is going to be jobless. Instead, it’s likely to look like a new labor market in which millions of Americans have lost their job security and most of the benefits that accompanied work in the 20th century, with nothing to replace them.

The scale of the change, for many economists, clearly suggests that it’s time for Congress to rethink the social contract around work, updating it for the new relationship between employers and workers in the 21st century. Letting it slide further risks hamstringing the country with an outdated system that hurts both middle-class workers and, experts fear, the economy that depends on them. The shift is already well underway. What’s far less clear is whether Washington is paying any attention.


***

If anyone was in a position to help the federal government get its head around the problem, it was David Weil. A management professor at Boston University, Weil has spent the past few decades researching and documenting the changing nature of work, including informally advising the Bill Clinton administration on labor policy. In 2013, President Barack Obama nominated him to head the division at the Department of Labor that oversees the government’s laws on wages. He was confirmed by the Senate in April 2014.

When Weil looked at the landscape of American business, he saw a change that went beyond the traditional labor-employer power struggle. Instead, he saw a shift in management philosophy. “There was something bigger than just trying to outsource for the sake of lower labor costs, to get around unions, to get around labor laws,” he said in an interview last year. “All of that was true, but there was this larger theme of business organization restructuring that was going on. The more industries I looked at, the more commonly I saw that it was happening.”

The very first Washington failure he had to grapple with was the failure to measure the problem at all. There simply weren’t numbers to work with. Back in 1995, after early rumblings about outsourcing, the Department of Labor conducted a count of the contingent workforce in America. It followed it up with four surveys over the next 10 years. But under budget pressure, the department hasn’t run the survey since 2005. Officially, today, Washington has no idea how big the problem is.


Over the past two decades, the U.S. labor market has undergone a quiet transformation, as companies increasingly forgo full-time employees.

Weil eventually did have some picture, though, because two economists decided to do it themselves. Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger updated the count in 2015 by fielding a similar survey, funded with university research money, with a smaller sample size. Today, their data are acknowledged as the best measurement of the contingent workforce—they refer to it as “alternative work arrangements.” What they found was startling.

In some cases, the Katz-Krueger data confirmed what was already known about the labor market, such as that construction is a highly subcontracted industry; about a quarter of construction workers were contingent workers in 1995, a share that has stayed roughly constant over the past 20 years. But in many other industries, they found the curves had begun to bend sharply upward. Among “transportation and material moving workers,” a category that includes everything from taxi drivers to flight attendants, the share of contingent workers had doubled: In 2005, it was 9 percent; it was 18.2 percent by 2015. Among health care support workers like Diana Borland, it nearly doubled, from 9.5 percent to 17.9 percent. The share of food preparation workers in contingent work had quadrupled. And this trend wasn’t limited to blue-collar jobs: The rise in contingent work was as large for people with a bachelor’s degree as it was for those without a high school diploma.

It was also clear from the Katz-Krueger data that the shift to contingent work wasn’t driven by the rise of the sharing economy. Just 0.5 percent of workers are in the sharing economy, accounting for at most 10 percent of the labor market shift over the past 10 years. In other words, for all the concerns about Uber and other sharing economy companies using independent contractors to skirt state and federal labor laws, the shift toward these workplace arrangements predates those companies. They’re followers, not leaders.




Source: Current Population Survey; Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger (2015)

When Weil considered how to address this, he focused on two separate but related factors in the rise in contingent work. The first was on one key question: How do workers classify their employees? From a policy perspective, worker classification is crucial. In the mid-20th century, the federal government developed a litany of workplace protections—minimum wage, overtime, collective bargaining, workplace safety, tax withholding, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation—that apply only to people classified as employees. Even more importantly for many people, benefits like employer-sponsored health insurance and retirement saving plans are also administered by employers, and are less accessible for independent contractors. As new benefits arise, they’re built on the same model. For instance, Republicans included a new credit in their 2017 tax bill that encourages companies to provide paid leave to their workers—a break that would apply only to employees, not independent contractors.

Congress didn’t create similar workplace protections for independent contractors because they were considered to effectively be their own small business, setting their own hours and responsibilities, providing their own benefits and determining their own economic outcomes. More independence came with fewer social protections, a tradeoff that many Americans support. According to a 2015 Government Accountability Office report, independent contractors are slightly more likely to be satisfied with their jobs than full-time employees, and fewer than 10 percent said they would prefer a different type of employment.

Businesses prefer these arrangements, too, because they can shed expensive benefit packages and are not responsible for following federal labor laws. But that also gives them an incentive to “misclassify” their workers, overseeing them as if they were employees but officially classifying them as independent contractors to cut costs. Data on misclassification are limited, but state-level audits indicate that about 10 percent to 30 percent of American workers are currently misclassified. There are also some indications that misclassification is becoming more widespread. And even if independent contractors aren’t misclassified, they have less access to benefits and more job insecurity. The GAO study found that, compared with full-time employees, independent contractors are more than twice as likely to say that their benefits aren’t good and almost three times as likely to say that they will lose their job in the next year.

The second, and perhaps more important, trend that Weil focused on was the increasing number of Americans who aren’t classified as independent contractors but whose work has become less secure, such as on-call workers or workers whose jobs have been subcontracted out to third-party companies—often, like Borland, reporting to work at the exact same office. According to the Katz-Krueger data, the rise in contingent work is centered on these types of workers. Companies can save money by focusing on their core business, but a growing body of evidence indicates that it harms workers in myriad ways. According to the GAO study, these types of contingent workers are twice as likely as full-time employees to say they are “not at all” satisfied with their jobs; they earn considerably less per hour than their traditionally employed counterparts, even after controlling for characteristics like age, sex and education; and they work fewer hours per year and have far less access to workplace benefits, like health insurance and 401(k)s.




Source: Current Population Survey; Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger (2015)

“[Companies] want to have their cake and eat it too,” said Weil, who refers to these shifts in the labor market as “fissuring.” In February 2014, not long before his confirmation to the DOL job, he had published “The Fissured Workplace,” a 410-page book that combines his research on the contingent workforce, an overview of the powers and resources at the Department of Labor and ideas for solving this problem. He argued that the fissuring of the workplace was bad for workers, undermining social protections and reducing wages. In 2015, in his federal job, he published an “administrator’s guidance” on how the agency intended to enforce its definition for whether a person is an employee or independent contractor, a six-part test about the control a company has over the worker and other economic factors. That document didn’t change the law, or carry any weight in court, but it effectively told companies that the agency was carefully watching them. Weil also revamped how the agency conducts enforcement, moving from a system that focused primarily on responding to complaints to one that launched its own investigations.

He tried to expand its enforcement resources as well. The Wage and Hour Division has a budget around $227 million, little money to enforce minimum wage and overtime rules for the entire country. Weil repeatedly asked Congress for an additional $50 million, much of the money, he hoped, going to hire up to 300 new investigators to reduce worker misclassification. He was rebuffed every year.

Weil’s argument that contingent workers are generally worse off in their new job arrangements is not universal. Many conservatives say the rise of the contingent workforce has positives as well as negatives, giving employers new flexibility and leading to lower prices for consumers. The business community pushed back on Weil’s efforts to strengthen enforcement, saying he went beyond his authority. “We shouldn’t be going and looking for ways to make the law to apply to situations that it wouldn’t otherwise,” said Paul DeCamp, who led the Wage and Hour Division during the Bush administration and now represents employers in federal labor law cases, “based on some normative view about what a business ought to do for a worker.”


***

Weil was a late-term appointee, and it’s tough to quantify his policies’ impact on contingent workers. As he cleared out his desk in January, President Donald Trump swept into office, promising to stick up for the forgotten workers and spur a new era of wage growth.

But with Obamacare repeal and tax reform dominating the agenda, Trump hasn’t spent much time on labor issues. His first nominee to head the Department of Labor was former fast-food executive Andrew Puzder, whose franchisees had racked up dozens of labor-law violations during his time at the company. (Puzder eventually withdrew from consideration after Politico uncovered a video of his ex-wife accusing him of abuse.) Trump’s second nominee, current Secretary Alexander Acosta, is a lawyer who so far hasn’t taken a clear position on issues of misclassification and the fissured workplace. Trump’s nominee to succeed Weil at the Wage and Hour division is a lawyer named Cheryl Stanton, who currently runs South Carolina’s Department of Employment and Workforce; she previously defended companies, including FedEx and Domino’s, in suits alleging that they violated workplace laws.

Acosta so far has sent mixed signals on the issue. He rescinded Weil’s administrative guidance—a move cheered by the business community, which believed Weil’s working definition of an “employee” was too expansive. The Wage and Hour Division’s budget request for fiscal 2018 did not request additional money for investigators and focused largely on helping businesses comply with the law, a shift from Weil’s focus on enforcement. “That tells you a lot,” said a Democratic congressional aide.


Policymakers are just beginning to really consider how to reform the 20th-century social contract to fit the labor market of the 21st century.

But the agency also filed a legal brief in November in support of police officers who say they were misclassified as contractors rather than employees when they moonlighted as security guards—an action met with approval by labor advocates. The agency has also continued to renew agreements with states to share information and resources over misclassification cases, a tactic predating Weil that is generally believed to strengthen enforcement. Roughly three dozen states now have agreements with the Department of Labor, an indication that states are taking the issue seriously as well. Politico reached out to 13 states with agreements that have recently expired or will expire early this year to learn if Wage and Hour is continuing to use this tool under Acosta. Of the 10 states that responded, seven said they have renewed or will soon renew their agreements. The other three said the agreements were currently under review.

A spokesperson for the Department of Labor did not respond to questions about the agency’s budget but said the Wage and Hour Division “plans to review its [agreements] with each of the states.”

Outside the executive branch, there has been some attention paid to the issue, but it’s not yet a widespread policy concern. Mark Warner, a Democratic U.S. senator from Virginia, has been pushing for money to fund the Department of Labor’s contingent worker survey. He says he became interested in the issue via the gig economy—which he first thought was a major disruption, and then realized was just a small piece of a broader change. “Initially, I focused a lot on gig workers because here you have these hot new companies that seem to be transforming the traditional notion of work,” he said in an interview. “What I found when I dug a bit deeper … was this was the next iteration of something that had started in the 1990s where corporations decided that every function that was not core to their mission would be outsourced.”

Elsewhere in Congress, it’s hard to find people engaged on it. In part this may be because lawmakers are hesitant to criticize their colleagues on an issue that hasn’t become polarized politically yet; they are still hoping to find common ground. But there’s frustration among congressional aides and labor policy experts about congressional inaction. “Everyone thinks of this issue as an app problem with Uber, Lyft and TaskRabbit,” said a second Democratic congressional aide. “People don’t realize that you go to a hotel and the workers are subcontracted out. You go to a restaurant and it’s the same thing. It’s becoming so prevalent, and people don’t realize it.”

To see the problem through the lens of startups, as many lawmakers do, makes it seem less like a problem for today’s workers and more a future problem, like robots and automation. In my conversations with lawmakers for this article, most said the most important thing Congress can do right now is to acquire information and collect more data to tackle the problem someday.

“Right now, we’re still trying to go through the stage where we are trying to better understand this transition,” said Senator Todd Young, a Republican from Indiana and member of the Senate subcommittee that oversees labor issues. Young co-authored a letter last year asking the DOL to request money to run its contingent worker survey annually. “This is why data collection is so important,” he said.

“We need policies that are up-to-date today, let alone forward looking, and we are behind,” said Representative Suzan DelBene, a Democrat from Washington who has co-authored legislation with Warner on the issue. She said she’s asked the GAO for a report on the impact of automation on the economy. “We first have to define the problem.”

They’re not wrong; Washington is woefully behind on collecting information. And if that seems like a bit of a cop-out—well, it’s also puzzlingly difficult to figure out what to do. Policymakers are just beginning to really consider how to reform the 20th-century social contract to fit the labor market of the 21st century. One idea, popular on both sides of the aisle, is known as portable benefits—allowing multiple companies to put money toward a worker’s health insurance, 401(k) or paid leave that is accessible even if the worker changes employers. In New Jersey and Washington, state lawmakers have introduced legislation to create portable benefits for independent contractors; neither has passed, but thanks to Democratic victories in both states this past November, there could be action on the bills this year.




Illustration by Chris Gash

Earlier last spring, Warner and DelBene introduced national legislation to create a $20 million grant program for states or nonprofits to pilot portable benefit plans. Young co-sponsored the Senate bill, giving it bipartisan support, but the legislation has yet to receive a vote in either house and, if it passes, it remains just a first step toward a broader portable-benefit regime.

“We can all agree that we need to do something there,” said Representative Bradley Byrne, an Alabama Republican who chairs the House subcommittee that oversees workforce protections. “But when you get down to details, that’s where it gets a lot more difficult.”

The one real effort in recent years to extend workplace benefits to independent contractors was also the most controversial American law in a decade: the Affordable Care Act, which enabled independent contractors, even those with expensive pre-existing conditions, to buy health insurance through the individual market. Viewed through the lens of labor policy, the ACA was a big win for independent contractors and other people without traditional employer benefits, effectively using a federal tax credit to level the playing field—though not fully—with people getting insurance through employer plans. GOP efforts to repeal the law would generally continue to offer Americans who don’t receive employer-sponsored health insurance a tax credit to buy insurance, although those credits would be less generous for many working-age Americans.


***

If the workplace is changing so much, would it be possible to invent a new kind of worker? One solution that has begun to arise among labor experts is to create a third, hybrid worker classification—something between an employee and a contractor, offering protections to people, like Uber drivers, who might not be “employees” but work chiefly for one company. But this argument has already started to break down along partisan lines. Republicans tend to support it as overdue acknowledgment that many workers in the modern workplace don’t fit neatly into the employee or contractor box. Democrats are wary of creating a category that might let employers shift even more employees into less-stable work arrangements.

On the Democratic side, the push has been more to strengthen enforcement of current laws, cracking down on misclassification, and raising labor standards for all employees. Brown, the Ohio senator, has released one such proposal, a 77-page plan published last year that called for more resources to investigate misclassification and a $15 minimum wage, among many labor provisions—policies that have little appeal among Republicans who believe they would hurt growth and lead to lower wage growth.

“The key positive is that [contingent workers] still have a job,” said Alex Passantino, who was acting head of the Wage and Hour Division during the Bush administration and now represents companies in federal labor law disputes. “I don’t want to be too blunt, but the economics are driven by this ancient law and ancient legal structure. They are causing those types of decisions.”

Congress, however, hasn’t shown much interest in providing extra resources for enforcement, and some on the left are skeptical it ever will. In the meantime, business moves faster than Congress can keep up, and the fissuring continues apace—leaving workers like Diana Borland in its wake. At UPMC, according to the hospital, new voice-recognition technology reduced the need for transcriptionists, and led to outsourcing to avoid “significant reductions” in staff. When the change came for Borland, she and her colleagues were never reclassified as independent contractors; she was just passed from one employer to another. She wasn’t fired, or replaced. But the change still led to a huge cut in her paycheck and, after she quit, a two-year period of instability in her life, creating real financial challenges for her four kids. And hers is something of a best-case scenario.

Nuance, her contract employer, declined to answer questions on Borland’s situation. Eric Tinch, vice president of global services for Nuance Healthcare Solutions, said in a statement that the company offers “a highly competitive benefit package to full-time and progressive part-time employees who work more than 32 hours per week.”

When Borland visited Allegheny hospital for a job interview in 2015, a supervisor asked her why she had left her previous job at UPMC. It would’ve been easy to disparage her former employer, but Borland simply answered that she had retired. “I don’t care where you go,” she explained. “You don’t burn bridges.”

A few decades ago, that answer—the refusal to criticize a former employer—may have been considered part of the implicit social pact between workers and companies, in which both sides had responsibilities to each other. For Borland, the entire episode has left her asking bigger questions, wondering about the future of the country and the ability of the economy to continue delivering widespread benefits and protections to working Americans. “I would like to know where the American dream is for our children, for my 13-year-old, for my two granddaughters who are 2 years and 4 years,” she said. “We made UPMC what it is. I can tell you, I missed one day of work in 13 years. I never called off—ever. Where is the American dream?”

Google frente a Microsoft y Apple: a la conquista de las escuelas


Ambas luchan por recuperar el nicho educativo


Steve Jobs le vendió una computadora al Rey emérito, Juan Carlos I. Es una de las anécdotas preferidas de Silicon Valley, lo que te suelen contestar cuando dices de dónde eres o cuando se quiere remarcar la capacidad persuasiva del creador de Apple. Los que cuentan la anécdota saben poco más de la monarquía, pero sí lo que significó la visión de Jobs para la informática doméstica. Él hizo que la industria pensara en las personas y en el uso cotidiano que darían a esas máquinas. Él supo encontrar utilidad a su potencia. Le puso ratón, un sistema de ventanas que después clonó Windows e hizo que crear fuese cuestión de arrastrar, soltar, teclear y hacer unos cuantos clics...

Nadie como Steve Jobs era capaz de explicar todo lo que se podía hacer con uno de sus ordenadores. Desde guardar las recetas de cocina a llevar la contabilidad de casa o imprimir los deberes. Esto último ha sido uno de los grandes graneros de Apple, la escuela.

En los peores tiempos de Apple hubo dos nichos que se mantuvieron fieles a la manzana: el mundo educativo y los diseñadores. Resulta lógico. Una de sus señas de identidad era y es el cuidado por el detalle, la facilidad para presentar algo bien y, sobre todo, la sencillez de uso. Ningún aparato de Apple viene con manual. Consideran que es tan simple que no hace falta explicarlo.

El Rey computerizado Steve Jobs presenta Next


Walter Isaacson, el biógrafo de Steve Jobs, lo detalla en su libro de 2011. En octubre del año 1987, los Reyes fueron invitados a la mansión de los Getty. Ross Perot ya había vendido EDS y acababa de apostar por NeXT, la segunda aventura de Jobs tras su salida de Apple. Invirtió 20 millones de dólares a cambio del 16% de la empresa. Perot los presentó y surgió, en sus propias palabras, una conversación eléctrica que terminó con un papel firmado por el monarca para que uno de sus aparatos llegase a La Zarzuela. El visionario acaba de volver a hacerlo.

Entrar en la escuela es, para cualquier marca, para cualquier sistema operativo, una conquista rentable. Fideliza a usuarios, adapta a una forma de pensar y permite vender complementos como pocas líneas de negocio.

El martes, Microsoft desveló una nueva versión de Windows 10, pensada para usar en el ámbito educativo. La intención de los de Seattle es competir con los Chromebooks, la joya inesperada de Google que, de manera sigilosa, ha entrado de los colegios más modestos de Estados Unidos y en gran parte del sistema educativo en Asia.

El Chromebook apareció en 2011 como una máquina de bajo coste, apenas poco más de 200 dólares en su versión más modesta, con un solo programa, el navegador Chrome. Así es como Google entendía el ordenador de los nuevos tiempos. El móvil o la tableta eran más sofisticados, con su cámara, su GPS, sus programas dedicados a diferentes tareas. El ordenador no era más que un teclado, apenas una ampliación de memoria de almacenamiento y la pantalla (táctil solo en su gama alta). La clave estaba en eso, en que todo comenzaba y terminaba en Google: búsquedas, correo con Gmail y creación de documentos con Google Docs sin tener que pagar más. La jugada maestra se completaba con la creación del perfil. Cada máquina tiene asociada una cuenta de Google, una cuenta que al estar hecha en el entorno educativo ofrece espacio de almacenamiento adicional, es gratis y, lo más importante, no cuestiona que quien está accediendo por primera vez al universo del buscador con un patrón de comportamiento que se seguirá de manera fiel durante el resto de la vida activa de la cuenta es menor de edad.

Según Futuresource Consulting, en 2016, el 58% de los ordenadores de los centros de educación primaria y secundaria de Estados Unidos usan el sistema operativo Chrome. En 2013, Apple presumía de que el 50% de los portátiles o tabletas en ese mismo segmento llevaban una manzana. El ordenador más barato de este línea cuesta 149 dólares. Es casi la mitad que el más modesto de los iPads, la tableta de Apple, que promociona como el mejor compañero para los estudiantes por 299 dólares.
El último Surface de Microsoft para volver a la escuela.


Mientras que Microsoft y Apple ofrecían sus modelos de una gama anterior con precio rebajado a las escuelas, Google trajo un soplo de aire fresco. Era un concepto nuevo, en el que no hacía falta instalar software adicional ni complejos sistemas de permisos. Todo estaba al alcance del maestro y solo hacía falta conexión a internet.

El Chromebook, a su vez, le ha servido a Google para hacer amigos. No solo se benefician ellos, con la explotación publicitaria de los perfiles, sino los que fabrican sus aparatos. Como Samsung o Acer.

Microsoft acaba de mover ficha con un modelo de Surface, cuyo precio comienza en 189 dólares, en el que han metido un caballo de Troya para ganarse la confianza de los chavales, Minecraft, un juego de construcción que promueve la creatividad, una auténtica adicción.

Google no parece preocupado por el mercado interior, donde domina. Piensa ya en replicar esta estrategia más allá de sus fronteras, donde un 23% del mercado móvil y portátil combinado, sumando Android y Chrome, representa el 23% del total, según Futuresource.

No les hace falta cerrar grandes acuerdos con distribuidores ni con centros escolares, comunidades o políticos. Les bastan los números, por el precio y la escasa obsolescencia del producto, y lo que tanto ha servido a Apple para ser quien es, facilidad de uso: solo un navegador. Ni más ni menos.

Hoy las marcas tienen muchas oportunidades y mucho margen para jugársela más


La industria de la moda online atraviesa una etapa de profundos cambios que representan un factor clave para el mercado argentino: este año, por ejemplo, el e-commerce en el país creció, en términos de facturación, un 60% respecto del 2017. Por un lado, Las marcas comienzan a observar con mayor atención esta variable y los consumidores cuentan con la posibilidad de identificar las últimas tendencias de la moda, conocer nuevas marcas emergentes en el mercado y realizar comprar fácil, rápidas y seguras. “No solamente es una forma de comprar, es una experiencia”, cuenta Andrés Dorfman, director de la Comisión de Moda de la Cámara Argentina de Comercio Electrónico (CACE) y fundador de Glamit, en la antesala del eRetail Week, evento se llevará a cabo del 3 al 7 de diciembre en el Alvear Icon Hotel para mostrar cómo tener mejores prácticas para aumentar la rentabilidad de una tienda online.

¿Qué lugar ocupa la industria de la moda online dentro del mercado argentino?

La industria de la moda online crece continuamente, cada día representa más. Hoy casi todas las marcas tienen e-commerce y se realizan mejores propuestas. Todos los actores de la industria de la moda online deberían comprender que el momento es ahora para adquirir usuarios digitalmente. Ahora es más económico que más adelante. Este canal de comercialización tiene mucho menos riesgos que el tradicional, hay menos costos fijos, es todo medible y crece aún cuando hay bajas de consumo, como experimentamos en este momento.

¿Cuáles son los desafíos y las oportunidades del mercado nacional?

Hoy las marcas tienen muchas oportunidades y mucho margen para jugársela más. Para tener un mejor panorama: el share en Estados Unidos es diez veces mayor que acá, incluso crecen más en e-commerce qué en venta directa. En Argentina el principal desafío es comprender que hay que mejorar las propuestas y que hay que adquirir más usuarios para crecer. Hay que estar a la altura y dar respuesta en los tiempos de espera, packaging y entrega.


¿Cuál es la situación del e-commerce de moda en Argentina?

En el país se están realizando muchos avances para que mejore el contexto para emprender, aunque los vaivenes económicos afectan bastante. Hoy falta financiación y consumo. Además también es difícil tomar riesgos. Las startups hoy tienen menos oportunidades de hacer negocios con compañías del sector ya establecidas. Al poner el foco en en problemas macro de la economía, se pierde la oportunidad de centrarse en lo importante: hacer negocios. Esta desestabilización de prioridades es perjudicial. En la región hay emprendimientos de alto impacto, un ejemplo de ello es Brasil.

¿Cómo fue la experiencia de ustedes con Glamit & Dessit (Ndr: la empresa que fundó en el 2010 que brinda soluciones de e-Commerce 360º a las principales marcas de Argentina y América Latina)?

Nosotros sabíamos que emprender era el camino más complicado. Siempre miramos a largo plazo, las cosas en el corto se diluyen un poco, importan menos. En ocho años nos cambió la realidad: hoy tenemos socios mucho más poderosos que entienden esto.

¿Cuál es el futuro del ecommerce?

Aún resta en nuestro país avanzar en la logística. Hoy al e-commerce hay que entenderlo como un paso estratégico y natural: todos lo vamos a utilizar. Lo digital y lo físico son lo mismo, se precisa que haya mucho más ida y vuelta entre ambos. Hay que mejorarle la experiencia al usuario. Tienen que jugársela y pensar que la inversión no solo pasa por abrir locales. Hay que comprenderlo y darle espacio.

¿Cómo es la experiencia de trabajar con las principales marcas de indumentaria femenina del país?


A veces las marcas esperan que su e-commerce crezca solo. Es una realidad probada por nosotros que el mercado responde en función de lo que uno propone. No crece solo. Se suele pensar que la gente lo va a adoptar porque si. Si trabajamos mejor, se va a crecer más. Las empresas a veces flaquean en no comprender que esto depende de ellos. Todos los casos de éxito que nosotros conocemos son porque apostaron por el e-commerce. Además, los números son esperanzadores.

¿Por qué es importante un evento como el eRetail Week se realice en el país?

Que las marcas puedan estar al tanto de todo lo que ocurre, de todos los avances, es fundamental. De la única manera que se puede generar eso es que haya un circulo virtuoso en el que los jugadores se escuchen, reconozcan, aprendan de los demás. Es fundamental que todo el que tiene intenciones de vender online, puede dar perspectiva de largo plazo para tomar las decisiones correctas.También sirve a la hora de elegir tecnología y futuros proveedores.



¿Qué se podrá encontrar allí?

Van a encontrar capacitaciones para crecer o lanzar su e-commerce y conocer a la gente que esta detrás de experiencias exitosas. Le sugiero al que vaya que charle con todos los que pueda e intercambie experiencias. La idea del evento es que este dividido por industrias, con contenido específico para cada necesidad. Además se verán los avances en la industria: probadores virtuales, posibilidad de calcular talles, etc.

¿Cómo aumentar y profesionalizar la oferta de los negocios de moda online? ¿Cuáles son los principales desafíos para captar nuevos clientes?

Si uno quiere traer nuevos usuarios, a veces por como funciona internet, termina subiendo los costos de adquisición de los usuarios. Como ocurre esto, es el mejor negocio traerlos hoy que más adelante. Hoy las marcas venden porque ya tienen una estrategia de hacerse conocidas en los shoppings, son pocas las marcas que tienen el foco en atraer usuarios nuevos. Cuando lo quieran hacer va a ser mucho más caro. Hoy los costos de adquisición son más bajos que en otros mercados.

El miedo a la movilidad ascendente de la otredad

 Resultado de imagen para inmigrante argentina progreso conurbano  argentino
Por Rubén Weinsteiner

Gino Germani planteaba que el italiano del sur o el español que habian llegado en los 20 a la Argentina tenian muchas similitudes con el chaqueño, tucumano, santiagueño que habian llegado en el 46.

Los Italianos del norte  y los españoles con mayor formaciónemiraron a EE.UU., al sur vinieron los menos cultos, de pueblitos chiquietos, con el cura como máxima referencia.

Muchas similitudes entre el tano del sur de un pueblito chico y el catamerqueño; religiosidad, formatos relacionales familiares, tecnologia aliementaria, precariedad laboral, cultura, etc.

Sin embargo planteaba Germani, el tano y el gallego eran comerciantes o capataces y el chaqueño empleado.
Germani planteaba que esto ocurría porque cuando  el chqueño llegó en el 46, el tano ya era capataz. La ventaja, la construyó el tiempo, los 20 años antes.


Esa mayoría basal argentina, es amorfa y colonizable, preexiste al mainstream mediatico, y se retroalimenta con él. Es decir los medios amplifican y reproducen ese miedo, traducido en xenofobia, en mano dura, en un discurso anti igualitario. Luego los medios cuando compiten por ese público, sesgan el discurso, volviéndolo más extremista para captar más audiencia.

Esa mayoría nieta de inmigrantres amorfa puede votar de muchas maneras, pero "menemistas son todos".

El despliegue económico macrista molesta a esa mayoría amorfa, porque esta ve reducido su poder adquisitivo y su nivel de vida.
Como la molesta?
La mayoría amorfa está dispuesta a bajar en su nivel de vida siempre y cuando los "morochos" también bajen, y en lo posible más que ellos.

Las clases sociales no son solamente cuanto tengo yo, sino cuanto no tiene la otredad.
La distancia relativa debe quedar claro, mientras eso funcione, está todo bien, aunque esté todo mal.

"-Señora, de cuantas pulgadas es su esmar?
-Que?
-La televisión
-ah, 55
-el Ramón trajo una de 65, sabe que bien se ve
-ehhhh..."


La queja moral anticorrupción, de los sectores medios es una impostura. A los caceroleros no les molestaba la corrupción de De vido como tampoco les molesta la de Aranguren, lo que les molestaba es que "los negros" tengan aire acondicionado.

 "-Señora, vio que ahora dan créditos para comprar autos?
-ah si
-el Ramón está pensando en comprarse un 0 km de alta gama
-Pero no... Lily, le va a costar un montón de plata
-si, Ramón dice que la cuota es de 15 mil por mes
-y la nafta? y el seguro? no Lily, uds no pueden gastar esa plata en un auto"


La corrupción es solo una herramienta de marketing político para castigar a quien no te gusta, pero te preocupaa CERO cuando el corrupto es alguien que cae bien.

El problema  empieza para esa clase media amorfa, cuando la recesión los empieza a empujar hacia abajo y las diferencias con la base de la pirámide se hacen menos perceptibles. Porque las diferencias deben ser perceptibles, sino no funcionan como tales.
Esto antes o después va a suceder.


El nieto del tano y del gallego nunca se sacaron el miedo a que el morocho del conurbano, bisnieto del chaqueño lo iguale. Es que  la informacion atávica indica que no son diferentes, y que el del conurbano, podria llegar a igualarlo.
Esa es la madre de todos lo miedos para el nieto del tano que vive en Caballito, es que el bisnieto del chaqueño viva como él. En ese escenario quien es él?


Rubén Weinsteiner