Blockbuster IPOs Strike Again | Can A Wealth Tax Pay For Covid? | Billionaires’ State Havens

Plus: Trump Moved $2.7 Million Of Campaign-Donor Money Into His Business Before Election Day

Good morning.

Most of the news we’re covering today have a clear leitmotif: billionaires—the newly minted ones, the philanthropists, the political donors, those residing in states charging no income tax, and more...  

In The News Today

France’s data privacy regulator CNIL has slapped Google and Amazon with fines of $121 million and $42 million respectively for their use of web cookies to track user activities without seeking proper consent.

The U.S. Covid-19 death toll on Wednesday was higher than that of the 9/11 terror attacks—the highest number of deaths reported in a single day during the pandemic so far in any country across the world.

Top Take-Aways

In the final weeks of the presidential election campaign, these billionaires and their spouses made six-figure donations to the Trump Victory joint fundraising committee—some donated even after Election Day.

There are nine U.S. states that don’t collect income tax. The country’s currently top three richest people reside in two of them. Yes, the trio still includes Elon Musk even after Tesla shares fell following a bearish outlook from JPMorgan analysts.

Can a wealth tax fix the damage Covid-19 inflicted on the U.K.’s economy? A group of 50 tax experts in the U.K. have called for a "one-off" wealth tax lasting five years that would raise a total $349 billion.

Some billionaires are already focusing on giving back. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced an additional $250 million towards the fight to end the coronavirus pandemic. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has his own plan to support efforts to test a guaranteed basic income program in 29 U.S. cities.

Sometimes, it pays to be wrong. This is what billionaire Tom Siebel, who predicted a Covid-triggered meltdown in June, must be thinking as shares of his software business C3.ai soared more than 140% in the company’s initial minutes trading on Wednesday.

Wall Street’s frenzy for DoorDash has made billionaires out of CEO Tony Xu and two of his cofounders in what was the third-largest American IPO this year. But For all of its massive growth, DoorDash has yet to turn a profit.

Barely nine months since its creation, cybersecurity company Wiz has landed $100 million in funding from some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent investors, in one of the larger first-year funding rounds for a startup in 2020.

Today's Must Read

In Case You Missed It

In a difficult year for many startups, female founders have disproportionately borne the brunt of tightened investor dollars, new research suggests. This new setback for women comes amid a turbulent pandemic economy that has produced what some are calling a “she-cession”—55% of the 20.5 million jobs lost in April were held by women.

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