The Washington Post - 22.08.2019

A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, AUGUST 22 , 2019

THE MARKETS

6 Monitor your investments at washingtonpost.com/markets Data and graphics by

Note: Bank prime is from 10 major banks. Federal Funds rate is the market rate, which can vary from the federal

target rate. LIBOR is the London Interbank Offered Rate. Consumer rates are from Bankrate. All figures as of

4:30 p.m. New York time.

1.

1.

1.

1.

10-year note

Yield:

5-year note

Yield:

2-year note

Yield:

6-month bill

Yield:

Treasury Performance Over Past Three Months

8020.21 +0.9 +20.

2924.43 +0.8 +16.

26,202.73 +0.9 +12.

Daily Stock Market Performance

Daily

Index Close % Chg

YTD

% Chg

Nasdaq Composite Index

Dow Jones Industrial Average

S&P 500 Index

3100

2850

2600

2350

A AJJMAMFJDNOS

8400

7800

7200

6600

6000

27,

26,

24,

23,

21,

Industry Group

Daily

% Chg

Daily

% Chg –9.0%^0 +9.0%

Multiline Retail 8.

Specialty Retail 2.

Textiles & Apparel 2.

Construction & Engineerng 2.

Communications Equipment 1.

Water Utilities –0.

Industrial Conglomerates –0.

Energy Equipment & Svcs –0.

Diversified Consumer Svcs –0.

Wireless Telecomm Svcs –0.

S&P 500 Industry Group Snapshot

Bank Prime

Federal Funds

LIBOR 3-Month

30-Year fixed mortgage

15-Year fixed mortgage

1-Year ARM

2.15%

2.25%

5.25%

3.48%

3.10%

3.69%

Money market funds

6-Month CDs

1-Year CDs

5-Year CDs

New car loan

Home-equity loan

Consumer Rates

0.

0.

1.

1.

4.

6.

Interest Rates

Index Close Daily % Chg YTD % Chg

DJ Total Stock Market Index 29,988.22 0.8 16.

Russell 2000 1509.85 0.8 12.

Post-Bloomberg DC Area Index 617.46 0.5 31.

CBOE Volatility (VIX) 15.80 –9.7 –37.

Other Measures

Europe

Americas

Asia Pacific

Brazil (Bovespa)

Canada (S&P/TSX Comp.)

Mexico (Bolsa)

Eurozone (DJ Stoxx 600)

France (CAC 40)

Germany (DAX)

U.K. (FTSE 100)

Australia (ASX 200)

China (CSI 300)

Hong Kong (Hang Seng)

Japan (Nikkei)

Close

Daily

% Chg

YTD % Chg

–30% 0% +30%

101,201.90 2.

16,309.23 0.

40,111.88 1.

375.80 1.

5435.48 1.

11,802.85 1.

7203.97 1.

6483.27 –0.

3781.76 –0.

26,270.04 0.

20,618.57 –0.

International Stock Markets

Daily

Close% Chg

Daily

Gainers Losers Close% Chg

Target Corp $103.00 20.

Assertio Therpt $1.53 15.

Tile Shop Holdings $2.62 12.

Lowe's $108.00 10.

Dean Foods $1.06 8.

Chemours Co $14.11 8.

Tailored Brands Inc $4.66 7.

Urban Outfitters $22.36 6.

Express Inc $2.06 6.

PA REIT $4.64 6.

Lumber Liquidators $8.95 6.

LSC Communications $1.42 6.

Abercrombie & Fitch $16.59 5.

Alliance Data Sys $138.07 5.

Nordstrom Inc $26.54 5.

Progenics Pharma $3.86 5.

Buckle Inc $17.92 5.

Kohl's Corp $47.06 4.

Five Below Inc $117.24 4.

Ingevity Corp $79.13 4.

Cree Inc $49.01 –15.

Covetrus Inc $13.80 –7.

Aflac Inc $48.98 –5.

HIan Holding $24.10 –5.

Tegna Inc $14.77 –4.

Kirkland's Inc $1.20 –4.

Bonanza Creek Enrgy $22.41 –4.

National Beverage $41.33 –4.

Owens & Minor $4.70 –4.

Toll Brothers Inc $35.26 –4.

Coca-Cola Bottling $349.60 –4.

Nabors Industries $1.96 –4.

Geospace Tech $12.83 –4.

Range Resources $4.11 –4.

LSB Industries Inc $4.33 –3.

ScanSource Inc $30.14 –3.

EQT Corp $11.86 –3.

Surmodics Inc $44.74 –3.

Avanos Medical Inc $34.50 –3.

Amcor PLC $9.65 –3.

Gainers and Losers from the S&P 1500 Index

Daily

% Chg

YTD

Company Close % Chg

Daily

% Chg

YTD

Company Close % Chg

3M Co 161.15 0.1 –15.

AmExp 122.50 0.9 28.

Apple Inc 212.64 1.1 34.

Boeing 339.99 2.5 5.

Caterpillar 117.68 0.9 –7.

Chevron Corp 117.88 1.5 8.

Cisco Systems 48.77 1.8 12.

Coca-Cola 54.10 0.4 14.

Dow Inc 43.28 0.

Exxon Mobil 69.72 1.0 2.

GoldmnSchs 200.68 0.4 20.

Home Depot 220.40 1.5 28.

IBM 134.25 0.9 18.

Intel Corp 47.15 1.2 0.

J&J 131.53 0.7 1.

JPMorg Ch 107.61 0.3 10.

McDonald's 220.71 1.0 24.

Merck 86.91 1.5 13.

Microsoft 138.79 1.1 36.

Nike 82.74 2.7 11.

P&G Co 119.20 0.3 29.

Pfizer Inc 34.87 0.8 –20.

Travelers 147.04 0.4 22.

United Tech 127.33 0.5 19.

UnitedHealth 240.35 0.1 –3.

Verizon 56.59 0.6 0.

Visa Inc 180.94 0.9 37.

Walgreen 50.90 0.5 –25.

WalMart 112.02 0.0 20.

Walt Disney 135.76 0.5 23.

Dow Jones 30 Industrials

Brazil R$ per

EU €per

Japan ¥ per

US $ per

Canada $ per

Mexico $ per

Britain £ per

US $ EU € Japan ¥ Britain £ Brazil R$ Canada $ Mexico $

1.1085 0.0093 1.2123 0.2481 0.7526 0.

0.9021 0.0085 1.0937 0.2238 0.6789 0.

106.6100 118.1700 129.2330 26.4500 80.2190 5.

0.8248 0.9142 0.0077 0.2047 0.6208 0.

4.0309 4.4679 0.0378 4.8867 3.0339 0.

1.3288 1.4728 0.0124 1.6110 0.3297 0.

19.7032 21.8389 0.1850 23.8868 4.8890 14.

Cross Currency Rates

Exchange-Traded (Ticker) $

Daily

% Chg

Value of $1000 invested for the past: day month

$800 $

Coffee (COFF.L) 2.

Copper (COPA.L) 0.

Corn (CORN.L) –0.

Cotton (COTN.L) 0.

Crude Oil (CRUD.L) 1.

Gasoline (UGAS.L) 2.

Gold (BULL.L) 0.

Natural Gas (NGAS.L) –2.

Silver (SLVR.L) 0.

Futures

Daily

Close % Chg

Daily

Close % Chg

Copper $2.5920 +0.

Corn $3.7025 +0.

Crude Oil $55.68 –0.

Gold $1,515.70 0.

Natural Gas $2.17 –2.

Orange Juice $1.0045 +2.

Silver $17.29 0.

Soybeans $8.7300 +0.

Sugar $0.1139 –0.

Wheat $4.6800 +0.

Commodities

BY JENA MCGREGOR

The Business Roundtable
packed a lot into its headline-
grabbing 300-word statement
Monday, listing the various stake-
holders chief executives should
commit to serving, acknowledg-
ing Americans deserve “a life of
meaning and dignity” and ditch-
ing more than two decades of
dogma that shareholders should
always come before everything
else.
But the statement also offered
sparse detail on how those com-
mitments would change behavior
in the future, what shifts in policy
or practices the public should now
expect or how success in a stake-
holder-driven approach to capi-
talism might be measured.
Presidential candidates, com-
mentators and others all called on
CEOs to explain how they would
meet the commitments of the
statement, in which the group
representing nearly 200 chief ex-
ecutives of large companies up-
dated how it views the purpose of
a corporation.
“I’m pleased, but I’m also like,
okay, this was a long time coming,”
said Raj Sisodia, a professor at
Babson College and co-author,
with Whole Foods Market co-
founder John Mackey, of the book
“Conscious Capitalism.” Such
statements of purpose, he said,
have to go “beyond nice words.
How do we implement this in
practice?”
Socially responsible invest-
ment firms, academics who study
corporate leadership and labor

economists from left-leaning

think tanks all said they would be

looking for varying signs that

would help answer that question

— and reassure them the new

statement would be backed up by

more change.

“We’re thrilled these people are

saying these things, but we’ve re-

ceived a lot of questions about, ‘Is

this real, or is this PR?’ ” said John

Streur, president and CEO of

Calvert Research and Manage-

ment, a socially responsible in-

vestment subsidiary of Eaton

Vance that manages $17.1 billion

in assets. “Leadership is about

taking real action. We’d love to see

them follow through.”

The statement, which comes

amid rising income inequality,

shifting expectations from the

public regarding corporate be-

havior and a political climate that

is increasingly hostile to big busi-

ness, sparked questions over

where the statement left share-

holders. The Council of Institu-

tional Investors (CII), an associa-

tion of pension funds, endow-

ments and foundations, said it

“respectfully disagree[d]” with

the statement, suggesting it “un-

dercuts notions of managerial ac-

countability to shareholders,” and

that it’s the government’s job to

make decisions in society’s best

interest.

In response, the well-known

corporate lawyer Martin Lipton, a

founding partner of the law firm

Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz,

said that the CII’s view is “mis-

guided.” “Shareholder primacy

was ill-conceived in the first place

and has utterly failed to provide

for the needs of all stakeholders,”

Lipton wrote as part of a broader

statement. “The alternative is

state corporatism in the form of

legislation like Senator Warren’s

Accountable Capitalism Act. Not

many members of the CII would

prefer that.”

One concrete thing boards

should do, said Jonas Kron, direc-

tor of shareholder advocacy at

Trillium Asset Management, a so-

cially responsible investment

firm, would be to dramatically

increase how much of CEOs’ com-

pensation is tied to goals outside

of financial metrics.

While a growing number of

companies do consider things

such as worker safety, diversity or

“sustainability” in the formula for

executives’ pay, the weighting

they typically receive is “infinites-

imal” compared with the weight

given to financial metrics such as

total shareholder return or return

on invested capital, Kron said.

“It’s always a very small por-

tion, and there’s always an enor-

mous amount of discretion” in

how the board considers such en-

vironmental or social metrics.

Currently, “it’s not clear if CEOs

will suffer any measurable conse-

quences” in their pay if they don’t

account for other stakeholders,

Kron said.

Calvert’s Streur and several

others said they would be watch-

ing for companies to offer the

same level of rigorous data report-

ing and transparency they do with

financial metrics to other figures,

such as employee diversity, gen-

der pay data or greenhouse gas

reduction targets. While some

companies provide some of this

data — whether in sustainability

reports or following external pres-

sure — many others choose not to

release it, experts said.

“Imagine if you had regular fi-

nancial statements for a compa-

ny’s impact on the environment,

for its labor standards, audited by

external sources — and not being

truthful had the same penalties,”

said Neil Malhotra, a professor at

Stanford’s Graduate School of

Business who directs the school’s

Center for Social Innovation.

“This is only a meaningful state-

ment if it’s about a clear trade-off.”

Some companies already

choose to have such data moni-

tored by an outside party. Compa-

nies that want to be certified as a B

Corp, a certification given out by

the nonprofit B Lab to companies

such as Patagonia or New Belgium

Brewing that do well by various

stakeholders, must meet a list of

standards related to their social

and environmental performance,

accountability and transparency.

All companies that are B Corps

must also make changes to be-

come legally accountable to all

stakeholders in their corporate

governance documents, said An-

drew Kassoy, B Lab’s co-founder

and a former private equity part-

ner.

Kassoy thinks the Business

Roundtable’s statement will make

it easier for some companies to

consider becoming a B Corp, not-

ing that his organization has been

in discussions with several large

multinational public companies

about making the change. “Some

of those public companies could

say we’re going to put into action

what we’re saying by actually

changing our corporate govern-

ance,” he said.

Others will be watching for

how companies deal with their

employees, given the statement’s

commitment to compensating

and supporting workers. Law-

rence Mishel, a distinguished fel-

low at the Economic Policy Insti-

tute, a left-leaning think tank,

said he would be looking for a

shift in how big corporate CEOs

are willing to engage with unions

and work with employees toward

a new system of collective bar-

gaining.

“What would be really my most

hopeful moment would be if these

CEOs expressed a recognition of

the importance of worker voice

and their own workers to be able

to bargain collectively,” Mishel

said.

A spokeswoman for the Busi-

ness Roundtable said it expects to

continue recently added advocacy

efforts around policies on eco-

nomic opportunity, such as in-

creasing the federal minimum

wage. She said the new statement

was intended to reorient the

group’s language “in a way that’s

more consistent with how our

CEOs think companies should op-

erate. But there’s no way this state-

ment can address every issue.”

[email protected]

Group rewrites role of CEOs but o≠ers few prescriptions

BY CHRISTOPHER ROWLAND

Gilead Sciences took the un-
usual step of mounting a chal-
lenge to U.S. government pat-
ents on Wednesday, saying the
government’s claim to have in-
vented the use of the drug
Truvada for HIV prevention is
invalid.
The pharmaceutical compa-
ny filed a petition with the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office,
asking for a reexamination of
the government’s patents.
Gilead says medical profession-

als were widely discussing Tru-

vada, approved in 2004 for

treating people already infected

with HIV, for prevention of the

disease before the government

filed its patent claim in 2006.

“That was already known in

the public domain, and you

can’t take that back,’’ Gilead

patent lawyer Patricia Thayer

said in an interview Wednesday.

Gilead’s filing included reams of

documents the company says

prove that the concept of using

Truvada for prevention was

widely known several years be-

fore the government’s applica-

tion.

The Department of Health

and Human Services declined to

comment. “We do not comment

about matters in litigation,”

spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley

said.

Gilead’s battle over Truvada

for PREP, as the prevention

dose is known, has spawned a

broad controversy since The

Washington Post reported in

March on the government’s de-

cision not to seek enforcement

in the courts of its own patents.

Truvada for PREP is the

linchpin of public health strate-

gies to eradicate HIV and AIDS

by 2030, a goal adopted by

President Trump.

The U.S. Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention won its

Truvada for PREP patents in

2015 after a nine-year patent

application. The CDC said gov-

ernment scientists in govern-

ment labs, working with gov-

ernment primates, showed that

Truvada worked for prevention.

Using tens of millions of dollars

in federal and private founda-

tion grants, researchers later

proved it could work in hu-

mans.

The government has collect-

ed no royalties from Gilead for

its contributions. It has written

letters to Gilead asserting its

patent but stopped short of

going to court with an infringe-

ment case.

HIV/AIDS activists have

slammed Gilead for its $20,

annual price tag for Truvada for

PREP, saying its monopoly pric-

ing is curbing use of the lifesav-

ing drug.

Members of Congress say the

cost is a prime example of a

drug company profiteering on a

medical therapy developed with

taxpayer dollars.

The Justice Department

launched a review of the patents

in April, and Gilead said Wednes-

day it has not heard from Justice

Department lawyers.

The company said the patent

fight is distracting from efforts

to reduce stigma and more

widely distribute Truvada for

PREP.

“Our hope and our belief is

that taking this step is poten-

tially the most rapid path to

getting the issue resolved,’’ said

Amy Flood, Gilead’s senior vice

president for public affairs.

“The true barriers to access to

PREP don’t involve the patents

themselves. There’s a lot of

work to be done.’’

The Gilead filing Wednesday

includes a sworn statement by a

British researcher, Michael

Youle, who said he publicly

declared in 2002 that antiretro-

viral drugs could be used to

prevent HIV infection. His

lengthy affidavit describes the

various hypotheses in play

among providers and research-

ers before 2006.

But activists dismissed

Gilead’s assertions and said the

move was a sign that the compa-

ny is worried the government

will take action.

Gilead’s arguments in

Wednesday’s petition “point to

early speculation about the pos-

sibility of Truvada as PREP,’’

said Nick Faust of the advocacy

group PrEP4All. “Speculation is

not the same thing as invention.

The CDC invented PREP.’’

Gilead has agreed to provide

free Truvada for the govern-

ment’s efforts to eradicate HIV/

AIDS but has said the offer is

not related to its patent dispute

with the government.

[email protected]

Gilead challenges government patents on use of a drug for HIV prevention

Company asks for

review, says Truvada’s

potential was known

J. LAWLER DUGGAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase,

also chairs the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs.