Business

Sun Valleys Mogul Conference Is Back In Session – The New York Times

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If any beauty company was positioned for pandemic lockdowns, it might be Glossier, the digitally native purveyor of skin care and makeup for the internet set. The nearly seven-year-old company plans to announce today that it has raised $80 million in new capital (at what we hear was a $1.8 billion valuation). Its founder, Emily Weiss, told DealBook that the new capital would help finance a renewed push into physical retail stores.

Glossier is still all about e-commerce. Last March, the pandemic forced the company to shut its popular retail stores to refocus on its core online business. Sales grew double-digits overall, and all product categories saw gains. “Candidly, our customer is used to meeting us online,” she said. Roughly 80 percent of the company’s sales are currently from e-commerce.

But Glossier sees value in physical stores. Weiss announced last month that the company planned to reopen brick-and-mortar stores, starting in Seattle and Los Angeles, as well as in London — its first permanent international location.

  • The stores will have human resources professionals and a revamped training curriculum that will have some focus on diversity and inclusion, part of a continuing response to former employees accusing the company of racism and mistreatment.

New funding will help that re-expansion. Leading the round is Lone Pine Capital, along with existing investors like Forerunner Ventures, Index Ventures and Thrive Capital, as well as a financing line from JPMorgan Chase.

  • Weiss says bigger financial maneuvers, like going public, may come down the line as investors seek popular direct-to-consumer brands. “An I.P.O. is a likely path at some point,” she said, quickly adding, “but we do not have immediate plans.”

Regulators around the world are winding up reviews of the proposed $30 billion merger of Aon and Willis Towers Watson, with one major exception. The U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit to block the insurers’ combination, filed last month, is heading to court. Yesterday, after the parties fought in filings over timing, the judge set a trial date for November and warned that a case backlog may delay it further.

The court split the difference between dueling dates. Aon and Willis were eager to start the trial this summer, saying that a long delay would jeopardize the deal, which was first announced in March 2020. But the government was in no hurry, proposing that the trial start late next winter. It said that the companies slowed the process by asking to review divestments that ultimately didn’t satisfy antitrust concerns. In a rare show of bipartisan consistency, a merger initially held up by the Trump administration is now a vehicle for President Biden to demonstrate his trustbusting bona fides.

The U.S. is out of step with the rest of the world, Aon’s lawyers have implied, noting that the companies expect to “have the necessary clearances to close the transaction with every relevant antitrust authority” by late August. Taiwan approved the deal in May without any divestments. South Africa just recommended conditional approval after the companies divested parts of their reinsurance business. And the E.U. set an August deadline on whether to approve the deal, after the companies sold more than $3 billion in assets. An Aon spokesman said that the company expected the E.U. to approve the deal.

  • The U.S. case may complicate reviews in other countries, tempting regulators to wait and see what happens in Washington. Authorities around the world have shared information about the merger, according to the Justice Department, and they pay attention to one another’s moves.

Deals

  • Emergent, the biotech company behind millions of botched coronavirus vaccines, faces shareholder lawsuits accusing it of securities fraud. (NYT)

  • Reese Witherspoon’s media company is reportedly exploring a sale that could value it at $1 billion. (WSJ)

  • The British fintech app Wise has gone public via a direct listing in London, a rarity on that exchange. (Bloomberg)

Politics and policy

  • Inside the rush to spend $350 billion in federal pandemic relief funds. (NYT)

  • Biden called on employers to set up clinics at work and offer paid time off to help more Americans get vaccinated. (NYT)

Tech

Best of the rest

  • Iceland’s experiment with a shorter workweek (at the same pay) was deemed an “overwhelming success.” (CNBC)

  • Ursula Burns, the former Xerox C.E.O., was named chairwoman of the embattled P.R. firm Teneo. (WSJ)

  • The first teaser for the next season of “Succession” is out: “That sounds kind of, like, dramatic, Tom.” (HBO)

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