Business

On a busy street in downtown San Francisco sits the former headquarters of Fast, a maker of checkout software for online merchants. The offices look quiet; a for-let sign hangs above one of the windows. That is a departure from its management’s flashy habits. Last year at an event announcing Tampa as its East Coast hub, the firm splurged on backflipping jetski riders and pickup trucks straight from the nascar race track. Fast had set investors’ pulses racing, too. It raised $125m between 2019 and 2021, including from some of Silicon Valley’s most astute venture capitalists at firms like Kleiner Perkins and Index Ventures. Then, in April, having burned through its cash and being starved of fresh capital, Fast went bust. Fast’s demise is a sign that the startup boom of the past few years is going through a sharp correction in Silicon Valley and beyond. Rising interest rates, soaring consumer prices, pandemic-induced supply-chain chaos in China and the war in Ukraine are causing a wave of uncertainty to wash over the global economy. It is buffeting young tech firms particularly hard because much of their value is derived from the prospect of profits far in the future, whose present value is being eroded by rising interest rates. “It’s like a stun grenade has hit the market,” says one Silicon Valley veteran. And the shock is rippling through the vc industry, which bets on innovative upstarts and tries to nurture them into the next Google. The startup slump is only just beginning to run its course. Investors are warning their portfolio companies not to expect fresh funding rounds for a while—and to keep enough money in the bank to last until 2025. Many firms will fail to do this and go the way of Fast. Others will hang on. Some may even prosper, as founders learn to go easy on the fripperies and double down on their core business. When the dust settles, the global startup scene will look different, and possibly healthier. The looming lean period comes after several fat years in vc-dom. Non-traditional investors piled into speculative startups: venture arms of large companies from Salesforce to ExxonMobil, New York hedge funds such as Coatue and Tiger Global, Wall Street buy-out barons and other “tourists”, as they are derisively known in vc’s Silicon Valley heartland. New tech hubs mushroomed around the world, from Beijing to Bangalore. No year was fatter than 2021. According to cb Insights, a research firm, global tech startups raised $621bn in 2021. That is twice as much as the year before and ten times more than in 2012. Then the techno music stopped. First to feel it were publicly traded tech firms. The nasdaq Composite, a tech-heavy index, has fallen by 30% since its peak last November. According to PitchBook, a data provider, more than 140 vc-backed firms that went public in America since 2020 have market capitalisations lower than the total amount of venture funding they raised over their lifetimes. Faraday Future, American maker of electric vehicles, is now valued at just $710m after raising more than $3bn. Grab, a Singapore-based delivery app, raised $14bn before its going public at a valuation of around $40bn. Now it is worth $10bn. The beatlessness is now spreading to the private markets. Fundraising has slowed sharply compared with the second half of 2021 (see chart 1). Between March and May the number of funding rounds was down by 7% in America, compared with the same period last year, according to PitchBook. In Asia it declined by 11% and in Europe by 19%. Things are almost certainly worse than those numbers suggest. A delay in reporting means they lag behind the reality on the ground by a few months. vc investors say that hardly any deals are being inked these days. Fewer startups are also “exiting”, vc lingo for being listed or sold on to other investors. Investors’ reticence is having an effect on valuations in private markets. Such drops usually only come to light during private funding rounds or public listings, when a firm raises capital in exchange for equity, or when a company changes hands. Less fundraising and fewer exits makes this harder to assess. ApeVue, a data provider, offers a hint of what is happening by tracking share prices in the secondary markets, where employees and venture capitalists can buy and sell shares of private firms. An equally-weighted index of the 50 most-traded startups has declined by 17% since its peak in January. Using ApeVue’s data, The Economist estimates that a basket of 12 big startups worth $1trn at the start of this year is now worth about $750bn (see chart 2). That list includes Stripe, a fintech star, which has seen its secondary-market share price collapse by 45% since January, and ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, the shares of which trade a quarter below their value six months ago. Secondary-market valuations of private firms have not yet dropped as far as public ones. ApeVue’s index is down by about ten percentage points less than the nasdaq composite so far this year (see chart 3). Comparing private firms with listed rivals reveals the same pattern. The share price of Impossible Foods, a private purveyor of meatless meat, has fallen by 17% since January, while that of Beyond Meat, a listed competitor, has slid by 61%. This could mean that startup valuations are more robust than market capitalisations of listed firms. Alternatively, they could have further to fall. The ultimate test will be the number of “down rounds”, where firms raise new capital at a lower valuation than before. Founders dislike these more than secondary-market slip-ups. Down rounds are a more definitive indication of falling value. They also hurt morale of employees, who are often compensated for their grinding hours with stock options. And they irk vc firms forced to mark down the value of their investments, which is not something that their limited partners want to hear. Only a few down rounds have been publicly reported. Last month, for example, the Wall Street Journal reported that Klarna, a Swedish fintech firm, was seeking fresh funds at a valuation two-thirds lower than its previous round a year ago. In March Instacart, a grocery-delivery firm, took the even more unusual step of valuing itself down from $39bn in March last year to $24bn, without raising fresh capital.Most investors do not expect a spate of down rounds in the near term. That is partly because last year’s flood of capital has left lots of firms with healthy bank balances. Consider the 70-odd biggest startups selling business software and services. According to Brex, a provider of corporate-banking services popular among startups, mature firms in this sector are burning through cash at the average rate of around $500,000 per month. At that pace, all but three of the 70 raised enough money in their last financing round to cover them into 2025. Even at a high burn rate of $4m a month, more than half of the cohort would have enough to tide them over for the next three years, even before factoring in cash left over from previous financing rounds and any profits they may have made.To avoid having to raise capital in a rush at a depressed valuation, founders are nevertheless busy trimming the fat. “Last year one dollar of growth was all the same, whether it cost 90 cents or or $1.5 to acquire it,” says Hilary Gosher of Insight Partners, a vc firm. Today the watchwords are capital-efficient growth. The average cash burn rate has fallen in the past year for all types of startup, from the youngest to the more mature, according to Brex’s data (see chart 4). One way startups are containing costs is by cutting staff. According to Layoffs.fyi, a website, around 800 startups have reduced their payrolls since mid-March. Getir, a Turkish delivery app, sacked over 4,000 people (or 14% of its workforce). Better.com, an online mortgage lender, laid off 3,000 (33%). Another common strategy is to spend less on marketing. SensorTower, a firm of analysts, tallies how much firms spend on digital marketing. The median of the world’s 50 biggest startups has reduced such expenditures in America by 43% since January. Some categories, such as instant-delivery firms, including Getir and GoPuff, an American rival, have made even more swingeing cuts.For some firms the cuts will not go far enough. Those most exposed to a Fast-like fate are early-stage companies. On average, their burn rate implies they have capital for about 20 months, less than the 30 months that most venture capitalists are warning founders to prepare for. Among more mature firms, three groups stand out as higher risk. One is firms in highly competitive businesses, such as cybersecurity, instant delivery and fintech. These areas suffer from an “oversupply of venture capital”, says Asheem Chandna of Greylock Partners, one more vc firm. “Anytime something starts working, vcs will go and fund ten of these,” he adds. The winners in those categories could do well. Middling firms may struggle to survive.A second higher-risk group are unlucky firms that did not raise money in 2021, when investors were generous and valuations sky-high. Around 60 of the world’s 500 biggest startups are in this camp. Most are smaller firms, such as Yuanfudao, a Chinese education-technology provider, and OrCam, an Israeli maker of devices for the visually impaired. A third category are firms that are most sensitive to consumer demand. Besides delivery apps this includes entertainment startups such as Epic Games, a video-game developer, and Bytedance. An index of such firms tracked by ApeVue has underperformed the average of highly traded firms of all sorts. Crypto firms, which benefited from Americans using their pandemic stimulus cheques to bet on bitcoin and its more exotic cousins, are also in trouble as the crypto-sphere is rocked by uncertainty. The price of shares in Blockchain.com, a big crypto platform, on the secondary markets is down by 56% since March. This group also includes many Indian and Latin American startups, which tend to be more consumer-focused. Mr Chandna detects greater “anxiety” among international startups than in America about the coming economic downturn. The money has not dried up altogether. Indeed, the total value of funding rounds has declined by less than their volume. In America fundraising has actually edged up slightly year-on-year in the past six months, according to PitchBook, despite 7% fewer deals. In Europe, with its deal count down by a fifth, their total value has risen by 13%. In other words, the average deal has got bigger—and bigger deals naturally involve larger, more mature firms. These well-capitalised companies smell opportunities. As the red-hot market for tech talent cools off, they will find it easier and cheaper to hire. And smaller rivals may be cheaper to buy. In the past few months the vc arms of established tech firms such as ibm, Intel and Salesforce have bought startups. So have industrial giants including Shell and Schneider Electric. On June 27th Bloomberg reported that ftx, a deep-pocketed crypto exchange, was in talks to buy Robinhood, a day-trading app. One investor recalls a recent deal he concluded at about a third of the price he had discussed with a founder at the end of last year. “The world has changed,” he notes. For many startups the change will be wrenching, and possibly fatal. For the startup scene as a whole, it will be salutary. ■ More

New vehicle quality declined by 11% this year amid parts shortages, shipping snarls and global trade disruption, according to J.D. Power’s 2022 Initial Quality Study.
Buick, Dodge and Chevrolet topped the list while Volvo, Chrysler and Polestar landed in the bottom three.
JD Power’s initial quality rankings are based on survey responses from new car buyers or lessees of current model-year vehicles who respond during their first 90 days of ownership.

Billboards at the Ziegler Cadillac, Buick and GMC Dealership in Lincolnwood, Illinois, the United States. U.S. General Motors Co.
Joel Lerner | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images

New vehicle quality declined by 11% this year amid parts shortages, shipping snarls and global trade disruptions, according to J.D. Power’s 2022 Initial Quality Study. Buick, Dodge and Chevrolet topped the list while Volvo, Chrysler and Polestar landed in the bottom three.
The 2022 Initial Quality Study found four times as many new models were worse than their segment averages. Disruptions such as a semiconductor chip shortage and personnel dislocations contributed to vehicle problems reaching a record high in the 36-year history of the study, J.D. Power said Tuesday.

“I knew we’d have challenges this year due to all the supply chain issues and everything else. I didn’t think it would be our worst year ever. We’ve never seen an 11% deterioration before,” David Amodeo, director of global automotive at J.D. Power, told CNBC.
“The worst we ever saw was 3% year over year. That’s just massive! I didn’t have an appreciation for all of the challenges that everybody was going through until we saw the data and synthesized it.”
J.D. Power’s initial quality rankings are based on survey responses from new car buyers or lessees of current model-year vehicles who respond during their first 90 days of ownership. The rankings consider long-term dependability, appeal of the cars’ features, and the sales or dealership experience in separate surveys.
This year, General Motors managed to improve the quality of many of its offerings, landing it in the top spot among all automotive companies on the list. The quality of GM’s Buick rose from 12th place last year to the top spot for initial quality in 2022.
Hyundai’s Genesis ranked highest among premium vehicles. Only nine of 33 ranked brands improved in vehicle quality year over year.

Across the board, infotainment systems and mobile apps remain a pain point for most automakers. The greatest number of problems reported involved Google’s Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, which are designed to mirror smartphone apps such as Maps to a vehicle’s infotainment screen.
With the exception of Tesla, mainstream automakers generally integrate Android and Apple systems that allow customers to mirror their phones in their vehicle’s central display. Tesla uses its own browser.
For Tesla, which ranked 7th from the bottom this year, with the same initial quality score as Mitsubishi, panel alignment and poor paint quality were more common problems than customer issues with the company’s mobile app or infotainment.
“When we think about what Tesla talks about, that they’re a software company that happens to build vehicles, that plays out in what we see in terms of their problem areas,” Amodeo said during a media briefing Tuesday.
Electric vehicles on average had more problems than cars and trucks with traditional internal combustion engines, according to the survey. Amodeo expects that to change “rather rapidly” as production increases and customer acceptance grows. Tesla’s vehicles on average had less problems than EVs of other automakers, the study found.
Elon Musk’s electric car venture improved its initial quality standing slightly and was included in the list officially for the first time this year. JD Power previously surveyed Tesla owners but did not consider their score official.
Electric vehicle newcomer Polestar ranked last on the list with 328 problems reported per 100 newly sold or leased vehicles.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Rocket Lab launched a small spacecraft bound for the moon from its New Zealand facility early on Tuesday, a mission that represents firsts for both the company and NASA.
The company’s Electron rocket carried a special version of its Photon satellite platform, which itself is carrying the microwave oven-sized CAPSTONE spacecraft.
With a price tag just shy of $30 million, NASA hopes the mission will verify that a specific type of moon orbit is suitable for a space station that the agency aims to launch later this decade.

The company’s Electron rocket carrying the CAPSTONE mission lifts off from New Zealand on June 28, 2022.
Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab launched a small spacecraft bound for the moon from its New Zealand facility early Tuesday, a mission that represents firsts for both the company and NASA.
The company’s Electron rocket carried a special version of its Photon satellite platform, which is carrying a 55-pound, microwave oven-sized spacecraft called CAPSTONE.

“Perfect Electron launch!” Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck tweeted Tuesday.
CAPSTONE, an acronym for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, is a low-cost mission that represents the first launch under NASA’s Artemis lunar program.
With a price tag just shy of $30 million, NASA hopes the mission will verify that a specific type of moon orbit is suitable for the lunar Gateway space station that the agency aims to launch later this decade.
Gateway’s success does not depend on this data, NASA’s Christopher Baker, executive of the small spacecraft technology program, explained to CNBC before the launch. But he added that CAPSTONE does allow the agency to ground its orbital calculations “in actual data” and give “operational experience in the near-rectilinear Halo orbit.”
Currently in orbit around the Earth, Photon will next fire its engine multiple times over the coming days before sending the CAPSTONE spacecraft on a trajectory that will take about four months to reach the moon. Once there, CAPSTONE will stay in orbit around the moon for at least six months to collect data.

The CAPSTONE spacecraft mounted on top of the company’s lunar Photon spacecraft.
Rocket Lab

CAPSTONE also represents the first Rocket Lab mission going into deep space, or venturing beyond the company’s typical target of low Earth orbit.
NASA turned to a small cohort of companies to make CAPSTONE happen. In addition to Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket and Photon spacecraft, Colorado-based Advanced Space developed and will operate CAPSTONE, while two California companies built the small spacecraft and provided its propulsion system — Terran Orbital and Stellar Exploration, respectively.
“Every major component here is actually coming from a company that has within the last 10 years received a small business award from the government to develop the technology that is being used for this mission,” Baker said.
“We’re very interested in how we can support and leverage U.S. commercial capabilities to advance what is capable — and one of the things we’ve really been pushing for over the years has been how we extend the reach of small spacecraft beyond low Earth orbit to challenging new destinations,” Baker added.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Chinese EV maker Li Auto said it will raise $2 billion via an “at-the-market” offering of stock to U.S. investors.
The company competes with rivals like Nio and XPeng in China’s hot “smart vehicle” market.
Li Auto will use the funds to develop new models and new tech including more advanced driver-assist systems.

The Li One electric car from Li Auto is displayed at the Moonstar Global Harbor shopping mall in Shanghai, China, May 10, 2021.
Costfoto | Barcroft Media | Getty Images

Chinese electric vehicle maker Li Auto said Tuesday that it plans to raise $2 billion from U.S. investors through an “at-the-market” stock offering, in which share prices are determined at the time they’re sold.
The funds will be spent to develop new technologies, including for autonomous driving, and for the development of future models, the Beijing-based company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A company raising funds via an at-the-market offering will generally sell a designated amount of stock over time through investment banks at prevailing market prices. Li Auto said that Goldman Sachs, UBS Securities, Barclays Capital, and the Hong Kong unit of China International Capital Corporation will be its agents for the new stock offering.
Li Auto is one of several Chinese electric vehicle companies to have drawn attention from U.S. investors in the last several years, along with rivals including Nio and XPeng. Founded in 2015, the company specializes in upscale electric SUVs with so-called “range extenders”, which are internal-combustion engines that act as generators to recharge vehicles’ batteries while driving.
While more electric vehicles are sold in China than in any other country, there are still parts of China where EV chargers are relatively scarce. A range extender can offer reassurance for customers in those regions and for drivers elsewhere who aren’t quite ready to go 100% electric.
Li’s two SUV models, the midsize ONE and flagship L9, offer 188 km (about 117 miles) and 180 km (about 112 miles) of electric-only range, respectively.
Li’s U.S.-listed shares were down about 3.3% in early trading following the announcement.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Prices rose 20.4% nationally in April compared with the same month a year ago, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index.
In March, home prices grew 20.6%. The last slight deceleration was in November of last year.
In a change from the last five months, when most of the 20 cities saw month-to-month price gains, only nine cities saw prices rise faster in April than they had done in March.

People walk into a house for sale in Floral Park, Nassau County, New York.
Wang Ying | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images

Home price increases slowed ever so slightly in April, but it is the first potential sign of a cooling in prices.
Prices rose 20.4% nationally in April compared with the same month a year ago, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index. In March, home prices grew 20.6%. The last slight deceleration was in November of last year.

The 10-city composite annual increase was 19.7%, up from 19.5% in March. The 20-city composite posted a 21.2% annual gain, up from 21.1% in the previous month.
In a change from the last five months, when most of the 20 cities saw month-to-month price gains, only nine cities saw prices rise faster in April than they had done in March. Cities in the South continued to see the strongest monthly gains, including Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Miami, and Tampa.
“April 2022 showed initial (although inconsistent) signs of a deceleration in the growth rate of U.S. home prices,” Craig Lazzara, managing director at S&P DJI, wrote in a release. “We continue to observe very broad strength in the housing market, as all 20 cities notched double -digit price increases for the 12 months ended in April. April’s price increase ranked in the top quintile of historical experience for every city, and in the top decile for 19 of them.”
Tampa, Miami and Phoenix continued to lead the pack with the strongest price gains. Tampa home prices were up with a stunning 35.8% year-over-year price increase, followed by Miami with a 33.3% increase, and Phoenix with a 31.3% increase. Nine of the 20 cities reported higher price increases in the year ending April 2022 versus the year ending March 2022.
Cities with the smallest gains, although still in double digits, were Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

It is important to note that not only are these price gains for April, but the index is a three-month moving average. The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage just crossed the 5% mark in April after rising from around 3% in January. By June it had crossed 6%.
“We noted last month that mortgage financing has become more expensive as the Federal Reserve ratchets up interest rates, a process that had only just begun when April data were gathered. A more challenging macroeconomic environment may not support extraordinary home price growth for much longer,” said Lazzara.
The housing market is already cooling, with slower sales and reports of price drops among some sellers. The supply of homes for sale has also increased steadily, as more listings come on the market and homes already on sit longer. Active inventory last week was 21% higher than it was the same week one year ago, according to Realtor.com.
“For buyers and sellers, the road ahead will require more flexibility in pricing, brushing up on negotiation skills, and acknowledging that market conditions today are different than even six months ago,” said George Ratiu, senior economist at Realtor.com.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Retailers are already gearing up for a holiday shopping season where inflation could influence how much people on spend on gifts.
Shoppers will pay more attention to value and get an earlier than usual start to beat price hikes, according to a new report by Salesforce.
Amazon Prime Day and back-to-school sales will offer clues about people’s appetite for spending and the type of products they want.

Pedestrians view the holiday windows at a store in New York, on Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021.
Christopher Occhicone | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Summer vacation season is just getting started, but retailers are already gearing up for the holidays.
In coming weeks, companies will get early clues about how the all-important holiday shopping season will shape up as Amazon hosts its Prime Day on July 12 and 13 and rival retailers including Target hold competing sales. That will be followed by the busy back-to-school shopping period, another indicator of how the holidays could play out.

The trends retailers detect starting next month could signal how much people might be willing to spend during the holidays, as well as the type of products they’ll want, said Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of retail for Salesforce, a software company that also tracks shopping trends for retailers.
Complicating sales forecasts for this year’s holiday season are surging prices for gas, groceries and other household needs that are whittling away at how much people might spend on gifts.
To anticipate how those factors will sway shopping behavior, Salesforce made predictions for the upcoming holiday season based on two of its reports. Its quarterly shopping index analyzes the online activity of more than 1 million people in dozens of countries, with a focus on 12 key markets including the U.S. Its other report is consumer sentiment index based on a May survey of more than 3,000 people in nine countries.
Here are three of Salesforce’s predictions, according to a report released Tuesday:

Shoppers at the King of Prussia mall in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021.
Hannah Beier | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Christmas in July?

Expect the under-the-bed stash of holiday gifts to start earlier.

Over the past two years, people starting shopping before Black Friday because of worries about shipping delays and depleted shelves. This year, people will be looking to stock up on discounts and beat price hikes, according to Salesforce.
Forty-two percent more shoppers worldwide and 37% more in the U.S. said they plan to start buying gifts earlier as a way to get better deals — the biggest inflation-related behavior change that Salesforce noticed in its research.
For some, that could mean Christmas shopping will start in July as people jump on deals during Amazon Prime Day and competing sales. Others might try to load up on presents as retailers including Target and Gap discount items to unload the unwanted inventory they stocked up during the pandemic.

Christmas week shoppers walk past signs offering sales at a Montebello shopping mall in Montebello, California on December 22, 2016.
Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images

Price trumps all

Cooped-up shoppers splurged from their couches during the past two holiday seasons. Now they’ll be taking a harder look at price tags − and going elsewhere if they don’t like what they see.
Value is expected to trump loyalty and convenience this holiday shopping, Garf said.
Half of shoppers are expected to switch brands to save money, according to Salesforce. That translates to 2.5 billion shoppers across the globe who might decide against a product for one that better fits their budget.
To avoid having to compete on low prices alone, Garf said retailers should generate buzz by offering exclusive or limited-quantity items, or play up trendy features, such as a product’s sustainability.
Otherwise, he said, retailers’ profits could take a huge hit if they discount too early and too often. Already, he said their profits are beings squeezed by higher costs for fuel, labor and other items.

An NFT advertisement during the CoinDesk 2022 Consensus Festival in Austin, Texas, US, on Thursday, June 9, 2022. The festival showcases all sides of the blockchain, crypto, NFT, and Web 3 ecosystems, and their wide-reaching effect on commerce, culture, and communities.
Jordan Vonderhaar | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Dear Santa, I’d like an NFT

One of this holiday season’s hot gift items won’t go in stockings or under Christmas trees.
Non-fungible tokens, or unique digital assets that are stored using blockchain technology, will be on the list for more people this year, according to Salesforce. Forty-six percent of shoppers told Salesforce they would consider gifting a virtual version of a physical item or a digital collectible.
About half a million NFTs are expected to be purchased from retailers between November and December, translating to a total market value of $54 million, according to Salesforce. Though NFTs have become more popular in recent years, some experts are still skeptical they’re a good investment.
Still, Garf compared NFTs to the popularity of savings bonds in the 1980s, with people giving bonds with the intention that they’d grow in value over the years. Think of NFTs as a high-tech spin on that, he said.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Empowered Investor

Nearly 9 in 10 women believe money is a tool to achieve their “purpose,” according to a survey from UBS.
Almost 95% of the women polled have donated financial resources or time over the past 12 months, the findings show.
However, half of married women still defer to spouses on investing and long-term financial decisions, a trend that has continued over the past five years.

Getty Images

Over the past couple of years, the effects of Covid-19, social activism and economic uncertainty have profoundly impacted women’s attitudes about their finances, according to a UBS survey.
Nearly 9 in 10 women believe money is a tool to achieve their personal “purpose,” the report uncovered, polling 1,400 women investors in January and February 2022.

“Many women have a deeper commitment than ever before to leading more purposeful, intentional lives and making a positive difference in the world,” said Carey Shuffman, head of the women’s segment for UBS. 

More from Empowered Investor:

Here are more stories touching on divorce, widowhood, earnings equality and other issues related to women’s investment habits and retirement needs.

“And we saw that women wanted to do that through a variety of different ways, many of which came back down to financial engagement and wielding financial power,” Shuffman said.
Indeed, nearly 95% of the women polled have donated financial resources or time over the past 12 months, according to the findings, and almost three-quarters have made purchases linked with their values. 
What’s more, most women want portfolios reflecting their values, the survey found, with 79% saying they’d like assets focused on positive environmental, social and governance impact, known as ESG. 

There’s a very clear correlation between wanting to use money to affect positive change, and then investing your money to align with those values.

Carey Shuffman
Head of the women’s segment for UBS

“There’s a very clear correlation between wanting to use money to effect positive change, and then investing your money to align with those values,” Shuffman said.

These findings are similar to a poll by Cerulli Associates showing roughly 52% of women prefer to invest in companies with a positive social or environmental impact, compared to 44% of men.
However, despite high levels of interest, adoption has been lower, with only 47% of women owning ESG investments, the UBS survey found.

Women still defer to spouses for money decisions

While most recognize the power of financial engagement, half of married women are still deferring to spouses when it comes to investing and long-term money decisions.
It’s a trend that has continued over the past five years, spanning across generations, backgrounds, race, ethnicity and profession, Shuffman said.
However, among the women who rely on their spouse for money decisions, some 90% have actively engaged in their household’s charitable giving, the survey found.  
“We really see this as a potential onramp and entry point to greater engagement,” Shuffman said.
As of 2020, U.S. women controlled nearly $11 trillion, which may reach $30 trillion by 2030, a potential wealth transfer close to the gross domestic product of the U.S., according to research from McKinsey and Company. More

Overseas travelers will only need to quarantine at a centralized facility, such as a hotel, for seven days upon arrival in mainland China, the National Health Commission announced Tuesday.
Previously, overseas arrivals in China typically had to spend 14 to 21 days in centralized quarantine, depending on the city of entry and destination within the country.
Tuesday’s announcement also said that within China, close contacts of confirmed Covid cases would likewise only need to spend seven days in centralized quarantine, followed by three days of health monitoring at home.

For more than two years, overseas travelers have had to quarantine upon arrival in China because of Covid restrictions. Pictured here at Beijing International Airport on June 18, 2022, are passengers waiting to be taken to quarantine-designated destinations.
Leo Ramirez | Afp | Getty Images

BEIJING — China cut the quarantine period for international travelers on Tuesday, a big step toward loosening Covid controls that have persisted for more than two years.
Overseas travelers will only need to quarantine at a centralized facility, such as a hotel, for seven days upon arrival in mainland China, the National Health Commission announced Tuesday. Travelers will need to spend three additional days at home before they can venture out, the commission said.

Previously, overseas arrivals in China typically had to spend 14 to 21 days in centralized quarantine, depending on the city of entry and destination within the country.
Tuesday’s announcement also said that within China, close contacts of confirmed Covid cases would likewise only need to spend seven days in centralized quarantine, followed by three days of health monitoring at home.
Previously, Covid-related isolation requirements tended to last for at least 14 days.
Mainland China reported for Monday one confirmed Covid case with symptoms — in the southern province of Guangdong — and 21 cases with no symptoms. The cities of Beijing and Shanghai reported none in either category.

Read more about China from CNBC Pro

In the last few months, some cities began to reduce the length of mandatory isolation.

The capital city of Beijing in early May had required 10 days in centralized quarantine and seven days at home, down from 14 days of centralized quarantine.
China began to tighten its borders in late March 2020 as Covid-19 started to come under control domestically while spreading rapidly overseas. Covid-19 first emerged in late 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More