• Prince Harry and Meghan Markle gave a speech at a JP Morgan summit, according to multiple reports.
• They are reported to have been at the banks Alternative Investment Summit in Miami, Florida.
• It isn't clear whether they were paid — but speaking gigs like this are widely expected to provide them with an income.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have followed in the footsteps of big-money celebrity speakers, making an appearance at a JP Morgan conference.

The royal couple, who last month stepped down as senior working royals, have said they want to use their newfound freedom to earn their own money.

It is not clear whether they were paid for this particular engagement. Spokespeople from JP Morgan, Harry and Meghan, and Buckingham Palace all declined to comment.

It would certainly not be unusual for JP Morgan to handsomely rewards high-profile speakers at its event, a practice common for Wall Street banks.

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and to a lesser extent 2020 candidate Andrew Yang, have both been criticized for carrying out paid gigs for JP Morgan.

According to Page Six, which first reported the news, Meghan and Harry spoke at JP Morgan's Alternative Investment Summit at the 1 Hotel in Miami, Florida.

This Instagram photo shows part of the hotel, including a pool which backs onto the beach:

Other outlets including Reuters and the BBC also reported that the royal couple attended the event.

DailyMail.com reported that the appearance could have earned them between $500,000 and $1 million, though it did not specify its source for the figures.

According to a second Page Six report, Meghan's role in the speech was to introduce Harry, who spoke about his mental health struggles after the death of his mother, Princess Diana.

The shape of Harry and Meghan's career after leaving royal life behind is still unclear.

For the time being, the couple are still being funded by Harry's father, Prince Charles. They are not due to stop using their "Royal Highness" titles — the formal signifier that they are senior royals  — until the spring of this year.

According to Business Insider's Taylor Nicole Rogers and Darcy Schild, book deals and speaking engagements are their most obvious potential sources of income.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: WeWork went from a $47 billion valuation to a failed IPO. Here's how the company makes money.

• Mark Yusko, the CEO and CIO at Morgan Creek Capital Management, has a stark warning for stock-market investors over the next decade.
• He cites an unsustainable environment of aging demographics, increasing entitlements, huge budget deficits, ballooning debt, and bank weakness as causes for a perpetual quantitative easing program.
• Yusko says these central-bank policies are creating a growing disparity between those who hold assets and those that do not.
• He thinks that markets may need to correct as much as 60% in order to get back to what he deems fair value.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Mark Yusko — CEO and chief investment officer at Morgan Creek Capital Management— thinks US markets are in a sticky situation.

"Here we are 11 years into an economic expansion and we're still using tools as if we're in the depths of the global financial crisis," he said on the investing-focused "Jelly Donut Podcast." "That's because the banks are fragile and there's too much debt in the system."

Yusko thinks that US markets are in something he refers to as QE4. But when he says that, he doesn't mean the fourth iteration of quantitative easing, he means QE four-ever. 

"When you issue massive amounts of debt, you only have a couple choices: You can either pay it back, you can default on it, or you can inflate it away or devalue your currency away," he said.

To Yusko, the only real choice is the third: inflate/devalue. Aging demographics, increasing entitlements, massive budget deficits and burgeoning amounts of debt will force the Federal Reserve and other central banks to keep printing presses running hot. In his mind, the first two options (pay it back or default) aren't likely.

Today, he's seeing this same scenario play out in Japan and Europe. Both countries' central banks have slashed rates and implemented stimulus programs.

"Everybody knows that if we actually raise interest rates the government can't afford to service the debt — and individuals can't afford to service the debt — corporations can't afford to service the debt, and the Ponzi unwinds," Yusko said.

He added: "We're definitely in a bubble."

An artificially propped market

Yusko notes how quickly the Fed reversed course in late 2018 after a series of rate hikes resulted in an almost 20% drawdown in the S&P 500 within a few short months.

To him, this was just a normal reaction to a market being artificially propped up by policy. But the more meaningful takeaway is that the market is bound to reject a similar action (rising rates) in a similar manner (sell-off) — and that leaves central banks with limited choices moving forward. 

"One hundred percent of the gain in stocks last year was multiple expansion. Earnings were actually down." he said. "Multiples went up because people thought they could pay more for future earnings because interest rates were falling."

He continued: "The fallacy of that logic is if interest rates are falling, that means future growth is going to be lower, future profits will be lower. You should actually pay a lower multiple. But nobody thinks like that." 

Yusko thinks this kind of behavior is clearly irrational — and he says that all of this stimulus is causing a disparaging amount of wealth inequality. Those who own assets are reaping the rewards, while those who don't are being left behind.

"Eventually, these governments will essentially devalue the currency — destroy the currency — and so the average person gets totally screwed," he said. "The people at the top of the pyramid love this because the value of assets — scarce assets; real estate, collectible cars, art, wine, stocks — those things go ballistic."

With all of that under consideration, Yusko relays a stark warning for stock investors over the next decade.

"We're at this point where the future return for equities is likely to be close to zero," he concluded. "My feeling is we'll probably have a correction back to fair value — that could be 40, 50, as much as 60% down — and then a rally on the second half."

He concluded: "So kinda like a bad first half, good second half to the decade, but over the whole decade you don't make any money."

SEE ALSO: A hedge-fund chief explains why bitcoin will top $100,000 by 2021 and grow to $500,000 over 10 years — and shares why it's 'better than gold'

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A big-money investor in juggernauts like Facebook and Netflix breaks down the '3rd wave' firms that are leading the next round of tech disruption

• Elon Musk made a $6 billion error when he used Tesla stock to buy SolarCity in 2016.
• The shares were worth $2.6 billion at the time, but have soared 320% since then.
• Musk effectively paid $8.4 billion for SolarCity, more than triple what he planned to spend.
• Warren Buffett made the same error when he used shares to buy Dexter Shoe in 1993.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

  ---

When Elon Musk acquired SolarCity in the fall of 2016, he paid for it using Tesla stock worth $2.6 billion at the time. Those shares are worth $8.4 billion today.

Tesla's CEO gave 0.110 Tesla shares to SolarCity stockholders for every share they owned in the solar-energy company. Based on the electric-car maker's $230 stock price in late July 2016, the deal valued each SolarCity share at $25.36 at the time.

However, Tesla's stock has surged roughly 320% to about $745 since then, and briefly passed $960 this week. Based on its current price, Musk paid over $80 per SolarCity share — more than triple what he planned to spend.

Musk is already fending off claims that he overpaid for SolarCity and bailed out a nearly bankrupt business. The facts that his cousins started SolarCity, and he was the company's chairman and biggest shareholder when Tesla acquired it, have also led some investors to question his motives in buying it.

As a SolarCity investor, Musk received Tesla shares from the takeover, meaning he didn't lose out from the transaction as much as other Tesla investors.

Musk repeated one of Warren Buffett's biggest errors

Musk used one of Warren Buffett's analogies to downplay the significance of Tesla's stock price last year. However, he seems to have missed the famed investor's warning about his "most gruesome mistake."

Buffett bought Dexter Shoe in 1993 and paid for it with 25,203 Class-A shares in his Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, worth $433 million at the time. The Maine shoemaker collapsed years later. The Berkshire shares used to purchase it are worth over $8.6 billion today.

"I gave away 1.6% of a wonderful business ... to buy a worthless business," Buffett wrote in his 2007 letter to shareholders.

Now that Musk has personally seen the downside of stock deals, he may be wary of paying with Tesla shares going forward.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A big-money investor in juggernauts like Facebook and Netflix breaks down the '3rd wave' firms that are leading the next round of tech disruption

This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here. Current subscribers can read the report here.

Small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are vital creators of wealth, income, and jobs in the global economy. For example, they make up 99.9% of all private sector businesses in both the US and the UK, and they employ 60% and 48% of all workers in those countries, respectively. 

The income and assets of these businesses make them an irreplaceable customer base for financial institutions. However, incumbent financial institutions are falling short of SMBs' lending wants and needs.

Fintechs — including alt lenders, payment providers, and lending platforms — are changing the SMB lending space by filling that gap and capturing an increasingly large sliver of the SMB lending market. For example, alternative financial providers only accounted for 2%, or £11.5 billion ($14.7 billion), of the UK SMB lending market in 2018. However, their share is projected to surge to 9.1%, worth £52.6 billion ($67.4 billion), by 2021.

In the SMB Lending Report, Business Insider Intelligence will examine the key players in the SMB lending space, determine the advantages of each player, and discuss how incumbents can improve their offerings to better serve SMBs and stave off the growing competition from alt lenders in the space. Additionally, we will look at what the future of SMB lending will hold.

The companies mentioned in this report are: NatWest, BNP Paribas, Esme Loans, OnDeck, ING, Kabbage, Funding Circle, Lending Club, PayPal, Square, Lendio, ING, Funding Options, INTRUST Bank, Behalf, Lending Express, and Fundbox, among others.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• SMBs are underserved by conventional lenders, so fintechs are increasingly offering digital services tailored to meet SMBs' wants and needs.
• Some incumbents have already woken up to the opportunity of better serving SMBs and leveraging this revenue stream, but the majority are still unaware.
• This has given fintechs the opportunity to grow their market share among SMBs. If incumbents don't fight back with their own digital services, they will like lose further share to fintechs. 
• There are three main ways incumbents can revamp their SMB lending products, each of which requires a different level of effort: partnering with fintechs, developing tech-enabled solutions in-house, or launching their own challenger products. 

 In full, the report:

• Outlines the current state of the SMB lending space.
• Details the different players that are involved in SMB lending.
• Explains three ways in which incumbents can up their SMB lending game and fight off competition.
• Highlights the benefits and hurdles that come with each of those strategies.
• Discusses what the future of the SMB lending space will hold.

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

1. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >>Purchase & Download Now
2. Subscribe to a Premium pass to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you've given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of SMB lending.

Join the conversation about this story »

• According to Zillow, the number of for-sale homes in the US in December 2019 was 1,489,417— 120,009 less than the previous year.
• It is the steepest decline Zillow has seen since it started recording data in 2013.
• In December, Zillow also found that the median home value in the US increased 3.75% increase from the previous year to $244,054.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In December 2019, real-estate listing platform Zillow found that there were 1,489,417 homes listed for sale in the US — 120,009 less than at the same time the previous year.

The roughly 7.5% drop was the steepest decline Zillow has seen since the platform started recording inventory data back in 2013.

In addition, according to the US Zillow Home Value Index, the median home value in December 2019 was $244,054, marking a 3.75% increase from the previous year.

Zillow points out that at the end of 2018, fears of a potential market slump pushed on-the-fence sellers to list homes while hesitant buyers remained on the sidelines. This likely resulted in the inventory gains at the end of 2018 and beginning of 2019.

However, as these fears diminished in 2019 and buyers started scooping up more homes, inventory dropped. Zillow anticipates that in 2020, financially healthy buyers and low inventory will continue to spark home value growth.

On a more local level, the future state of some markets are more promising than others as we kick off the new decade. In November 2019, with the help of Zillow, Business Insider rounded up 13 US markets that are losing value the quickest along with their projected decrease in value over the next year. Of the markets on the list, five are located in California. 

The market forecasted to see the biggest drop in value is North College Park in Seattle, Washington. In November, the median home value in North College Park was $599,100. According to the list, the market's year-over-year value is forecasted to drop 6.98%.

Read the full report at Zillow »

SEE ALSO: Here's the most realistic retirement age for the typical worker in every US state

DON'T MISS: 11 places in the US that are offering new residents big incentives to move there

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 62 new emoji and emoji variations were just finalized, including a bubble tea emoji and a transgender flag. Here's how everyday people submit their own emoji.

• Rebekah and Adam Neumann cofounded WeWork. After the startup's downfall last summer, and Adam's departure as CEO, the pair moved to Israel to escape media scrutiny.
• Rebekah Neumann has been described as a powerful influence on both WeWork and her husband.  
• Despite genuinely wanting to do good for mankind, Rebekah lavished in the billionaire lifestyle, even flying her hairdresser to WeWork's London Summer Camp one year.
• Rebekah's parents gifted her $1 million when she married Adam to buy a home; instead, she used the money to invest in WeWork.
• She was the driving force behind the company's controversial S-1 documents and obsessed with how she and Adam could brand themselves via WeWork's IPO.
• Sources say Rebekah and Adam aren't done yet and negotiated use of the penthouse at the 430 Park Avenue WeWork for their family office.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

First they were rumored to be hiding out in the Hamptons. Then it was St. Barths. In mid-December the New York Post reported that they were bouncing around the world on private jets, cavorting in South Africa and Israel with an entourage of family, nannies, a housekeeper, and security.

Now a close friend of Adam and Rebekah Neumann confirms that the couple, who cofounded WeWork with Miguel McKelvey, has made a temporary move to Israel.

"It was all too much for them," said Mandie Erickson of Adam and Rebekah's unceremonious ousting from the office-sharing startup in September. The New York-based publicist had met the couple at the Kabbalah Centre in midtown Manhattan in 2008.

"I just think it was too much mishegoss," she said, using the Yiddish word for "craziness." "Adam is from Israel. It's all over the media and a hot topic here. There, it's not such a big deal. It became so much of a media sensation, they just wanted to get out, so they went back to his home. It was a change of atmosphere."

A source close to the Neumanns confirmed the family is currently residing in Tel Aviv, where their children are enrolled full-time in school there. "They are coming back to New York in a few months," said the Neumann source.

It's no surprise that Adam, 40, and Rebekah, 41, may be looking for a fresh start. Ever since founding WeWork in 2010, Adam reigned as the golden boy of New York's tech scene. This time last year, the company was valued at $47 billion and the Neumanns were living the high life, bopping among their impressive $90 million inventory of homes, including a San Francisco mansion with a guitar-shaped living room.

But about five months ago, everything changed when Adam and Rebekah were pushed out of WeWork amid reports of his rampant partying, questionable leadership, and an IPO that was deteriorating in real time.

While Adam became synonymous with WeWork's downfall, less has been written about his wife of eleven years and equally ambitious business partner, the 5-foot-9, thin-pin, dark-maned Rebekah Neumann.

A onetime actress with family ties to Hollywood royalty and a spiritual bent, Rebekah was, according to some insiders, an unpredictable and unmistakable presence in the organization.

Even as she served as her husband's "strategic thought partner," as dubbed in the company's S-1 documents — tempering his wildest personal and professional urges and quietly working to keep him out of trouble — Rebekah also steered WeWork into risky ventures like a $40,000-a-year for-profit private school that pushed the company well beyond its depths.

By many accounts, Rebekah was driven by a genuine desire to be a positive force in business. But, for some sources with whom Business Insider spoke, the message seems to have been distorted by an obsession with an image and lifestyle that struck many of her associates as out of touch. In the months leading up to WeWork's planned public offering, Rebekah emerged as a Lady Macbeth-type character, pulling strings behind the scenes to make sure she and Adam came out of the IPO branded as socially conscious eco-warriors who happened to be billionaires, a script that now lies in tatters.

Business Insider spoke with 20 people close to the Neumanns and WeWork, many of whom asked to remain anonymous for professional and personal reasons, to better understand the intriguing other half of the husband-and-wife team who transformed a simple office-subleasing concept into a global phenomenon.

"Rebekah and Adam were a package deal," a former WeWork executive said.

While Adam founded the company with McKelvey, Rebekah's influence was omnipresent.

"She spotted the potential in Adam and channeled it in a way that made him incredibly successful," the former executive said. "Adam was sort of wayward before, a failed entrepreneur slash party boy. Whatever it was she saw in him was incredibly productive. Arguably, she harnessed it to such a degree that it went too far."

Business, Buddhism, and the Paltrow connection

Before WeWork went big, Adam Neumann had a number of startup flops, including a collapsible-heel shoe and a line of baby clothes with kneepads called Krawlers. When Adam finally appeared to have his first hit with WeWork, Rebekah, with whom Adam has five children, was still trying to find her place professionally.

A New York native who grew up in Bedford and Great Neck, Rebekah attended the elite Horace Mann prep school and graduated from Cornell University, where she studied business and Buddhism. That combination led to stints as a trader at the Wall Street firm Salomon Smith Barney, a yoga instructor, and an actor (she once appeared on an episode of the MTV prank show "Punk'd").

Raphael Sacks, an actor who played Rebekah's lover in a 2010 performance of Anton Chekhov's "Three Sisters," said Rebekah was very focused onstage.

"I remember there was a real dark edge to the way that we played this sort of affair story," Sacks said of his role alongside Rebekah. "She brought a lot of raw emotion to the process."

Acting may have come naturally to Rebekah, who, until her 2008 marriage, was Rebekah Paltrow, a first cousin of the actress Gwyneth Paltrow. A college source said Rebekah was quick to tout the connection.

During the sorority-rush period, the college source said that within two minutes of meeting her Delta Gamma sister, Rebekah "sort of waved her hand and said, 'Yes, Gwyneth is my cousin. Yes, I know Brad. Yes, we are close. And I am going to the wedding. Next!' That's a direct quote. My sorority sister was aghast."

Authenticity and flying hairdressers

Rebekah, known as "Rebby" to close friends, was, according to the same college source, eventually blacklisted from Cornell's top sororities after several houses — which "she deemed not worthy of her time" — accused her of hiding in the bathroom during the introduction portion of the visits.

"This had never happened before," the college source said. "There was a special meeting to discuss it." The source added that Rebekah eventually got tapped by Kappa Kappa Gamma, which had open spots at the end of rush.

Despite the controversy, Rebekah had a "magnetic effect," said the college source, especially when it came to the popular men on campus. She dated Brian Hallisay, who's now married to the actress Jennifer Love Hewitt.

"She could be captivating and had the capacity to be very sweet and funny when she wanted to be," the college source said. "You were either someone she thought was worth her time or someone she didn't. And if she deemed you worthy, she could be a lot of fun."

The Neumann source disputes this characterization, stating that, "Rebecca is an empathetic person and she will connect with every person who tries to connect with her and will make you feel as comfortable as she can."

Yet, years later at WeWork, Rebekah's perceived double-sided personality remained a defining trait to some.

"There's a lot of authenticity to Rebekah," said one WeWork insider who worked closely with Adam. "She's very intuitive and very real. She really wanted to raise the world's consciousness. But at the same time, she had a bunch of nannies and [admirers] and a private jet and billions of dollars, and it got to her."

The former executive said that despite Rebekah's plans to save the rainforest, she lavished in the billionaire lifestyle, hobnobbing with celebrities such as Lucy Liu, Jessica Seinfeld, and Karlie Kloss, and even flying her hairdresser to London for the company's 2018 summer camp.

"She makes her hairdresser go out to the Hamptons for a quick trim," added the former executive. "Kosher chefs and security go everywhere with them."

'Helping men manifest their calling'

Rebekah's effect on Adam Neumann was noticeable from the moment they were introduced in 2007 by Rebekah's Cornell friend, Andrew Finkelstein, now a Hollywood power agent. Adam, a onetime chain smoker, credits Rebekah with getting him to quit and devoting himself to pursuing passions before riches.

In an interview with Business Insider in May 2019, Adam said that within 30 days of meeting Rebekah she told him: "You don't get it. You don't get the game of life."

"She told me she thought success was being surrounded by people who you care for and who care for you, actually creating an impact on this planet, enjoying the ride, and really enjoy every moment of it," Adam said. "Otherwise it's not worth doing." He married Rebekah at designer Donna Karan's Urban Zen Center in New York's Greenwich Village.

Rebekah is not shy about the influence she's had on her husband. "A big part of being a woman is to help men manifest their calling in life," she said at WeWork's summer camp in 2018.

But to those at WeWork in the early days, Rebekah's involvement in the company was not obvious.

"We saw her infrequently in the first few offices, and only as Adam's wife," said a former community manager. "I don't think anyone even knew she invested in it."

(A source close to Rebekah told Business Insider that Rebekah's parents gifted each of their children $1 million to buy a home once married; she opted to invest the money in WeWork instead.)

Sacks said they even used an unrenovated portion of WeWork SoHo as a a "warehouse/performance/rehearsal space" for their play, "Three Sisters."

"She was always starting little micro things," said the  former community manager. 

The Neumann source says Rebekah was a huge part of the company from the very beginning: "She was doing whatever was needed. There weren't official positions early on."

An obsession with details, and Wi-Fi

It was only once the company became more successful that Rebekah's profile rose. She collected a variety of titles, including chief brand and impact officer, CEO of the WeGrow school, and, in 2019, to the surprise of some employees, WeWork cofounder.

A former colleague credits Rebekah with creating the voice and vision of WeWork, whose mantra is, "Do What You Love."

"Those slogans and the font and all those things that were really the trademark of WeWork, that was all her," said the former colleague.

While she might have been content behind the scenes at one point, a media source who worked with the Neumanns before the IPO said Rebekah was "very focused" on what her title would be in the offering prospectus, or S-1 documents, and it "being deserved and appropriate."

"She wanted to make sure other people would not dispel that," the media source said, adding that Rebekah saw the IPO as an opportunity to brand herself and her family.

"There was an air to both of them, a little bit of the born-again religious thing, and they viewed the S-1 almost on the messianic scale, that they were on a mission to save the world," the media source said.

According to the source, marketing consultant Jonathan Mildenhall created a presentation tied to the IPO highlighting "what type of personalities Rebekah and Adam are."

"It was so bizarre," the media source said, noting that it was "very touchy feely."

"This was a serious business and the language they were trying to use was very mystical and it didn't jive with the tone and character you'd expect in a business environment."

Rebekah's style and eccentricities grated on some of those who worked with her. Because of preference for all-white technology, for example, staffers disassembled the landline phone on her desk, painted it white, and rebuilt it, as Business Insider reported.

"She would be tyrannical in the sense of making extraordinary demands," according to the former executive, who said Rebekah was preoccupied with looking good on Instagram. "She was super obsessed with details and design, and she would blow up at people if it was wrong," the WeWork insider added.

WeWork staffers were often pressed into service to troubleshoot or install tech products at the Neumanns' homes, a task exacerbated by what one former assistant described as Rebekah's fear of electromagnetic emissions from Wi-Fi and other wireless technology.

A phone antenna outside the couple's Gramercy townhouse was a particular source of concern to her, the former executive said. "She wanted it removed because of phone tapping and brain cancer and all this shit," the former executive said. "She sent some members of her team to get it removed through political channels."

High-ranking colleagues told The Wall Street Journal that Rebekah let her gut guide her, to the extreme. She has "ordered multiple employees fired after meeting them for just minutes, telling staff she didn't like their energy," the paper reported in September.

The WeWork insider added that Rebekah truly believed her superhero power to be her intuition, even declaring it so on an older version of the WeGrow site.

"She is very 'Steve Jobs' in that she can see how this person is not right for the company and get rid of them," said the WeWork insider. "It was a very scary thing."

'The voice of reason'

In an email to Business Insider, Mildenhall expressed concerns that Rebekah's influence was too easily dismissed.

"Her balance to Adam is both powerful and valuable," Mildenhall wrote. "That said, today's ongoing gender biases mean that she is rarely given credit for her independent contribution and vision."

A number of sources agreed that Rebekah was "the voice of reason," as the WeWork insider noted, when it came to mitigating her husband's most outlandish ideas, which at one point reportedly included creating a WeWork Mars.

"She definitely had the power to stop Adam from executing some ideas and stopping and feeling [what's in] his heart," said Dechen Karl Thurman, Rebekah's Jivamukti hot-yoga teacher and friend, who was flown out on a private plane to accompany her at WeWork's 2016 summer camp in the Adirondacks.

A former employee says she would often veto Adam's more far-fetched ideas. "Also when you needed to get things to him or were having a tough time getting him to focus, she could get it done," said the former employee. "She was his gatekeeper."

And given Adam's penchant for partying — it was reported he shattered the glass wall to his office during a late-night celebration — Rebekah's protective instincts could sometimes run to extremes, according to sources.

"Rebekah wanted to protect Adam," the WeWork insider said. "When you're married to someone like him, you need to make sure he's not in situations that you will later regret."

The idea was 'ill-conceived, and she was ill-prepared to do it'

At times, it was Rebekah's actions that caused the problems.

Rebekah, who hasn't eaten meat since she was twelve, was behind the now-infamous companywide meat ban, according to the former executive.

"Rebekah was in Israel [with the team]...and suddenly the next day meat was banned. In the grand scheme of things it wasn't a stupid idea. There was an element of it that was pushing the envelope in a good way," said the former executive.

But the well-intended move sparked an internal crisis as upset staffers retaliated by expensing Michelin-starred vegetarian meals. Adam himself was spotted eating meat after the announcement.

In another blunder, a former engineer recalls the collective raised eyebrow after Rebekah announced she was launching WeGrow in 2017 because she couldn't find suitable education options for her five children.

"Rebekah came onstage and started talking about how public schools were — in so many words — ruining children," the engineer said. "She said WeGrow would cost $35,000 to $40,000 per student. You're announcing this in a room where most of your employees would not be able to afford a school like that ... it caused a big ruckus in the company."

Originally, Rebekah envisioned WeGrow, described as a "conscious entrepreneurial school" for children ages 2 to 11, as an offshoot of the Chabad home school her own children attended. "But then more money came in, and Adam got wowed by the whole thing and really wanted to go all in," the former executive said.

"The idea of it initially was ill-conceived, and she was ill-prepared to do it. To her credit, she isn't a dummy. She got smart people around her to help her get there," the former executive said, adding that staffers had to temper Rebekah's desire to go global with WeGrow immediately after launching the Chelsea school.

Niva Benzino, who currently has two children at WeGrow, says a number of parents were angered when Rebekah mandated that nannies doing pick-up were not allowed to linger in the school's luxe lounge, complete with flavored water and surfer Laird Hamilton's organic coffee.

"Could you imagine building a school with this beautiful lounge and all of a sudden all the caretakers are hanging out there for hours?" asked Benzino. "You have to know the limitations and unfortunately, Rebekah had to put them in place and she herself was probably surprised it was something she had to mention: 'Hey, don't wait an hour and a half [in the lounge] for your next kid to come out.'"

"Some of the parents thought she was discriminating against the nannies," said Benzino, who said she asked her own nanny to wait at the public library next door. "But it was ridiculous."

Despite the splattering of bad press, former WeGrow teacher, Moira Fahima, says the school was a selfless endeavor for Rebekah, who was highly involved and in constant communication with the staff.

"The students would grow the vegetables and sell them and then donate the money somewhere. I thought WeGrow was a dream and when I met Rebekah, I realized how real it was and how she really meant what she was saying," said Fahima.

"I never saw a school put so much into mindfulness with children and teachers," she added, pointing to the daily 30 minute meditation sessions in which teachers partook before meeting with their students.  

The Neumann source adds that WeGrow was about to become profitable next year and that the operating costs of the school were very low. 

Still, as investors looked over WeWork's financials in the lead-up to the IPO in late 2019, the school stood out as a key example of the company's lack of focus and tendency to indulge in passion projects.

"A lot of people thought it was a distraction [from the greater company's goals]," said the former employee.

In October, WeWork announced that WeGrow would shut down the following June.

A genuine mission clouded by entitlement

A number of people Business Insider spoke with maintained that Rebekah sought to use WeWork to do good in the world.

"When she wanted crazy things, they were crazy, but they had some sort of philanthropic, positive aspect to them," a top WeWork employee who recently left the company said. "When Adam wanted crazy things, it was sometimes just because it would be fun."

The WeWork insider insists that, despite what was seen by many as a preoccupation with Instagram and maintaining a certain image, Rebekah's spirituality was not merely show. She meditated and did yoga several hours a day. Thurman recalls talking Rebekah out of naming one of her children Tibet.

Ultimately, her zen-like state didn't calm the company's state of unrest.

"She lived in a utopian bubble," the WeWork insider said. "She grew up wealthy, and then found all this wealth and was super high on her own supply, and maybe failed to [account for] the regular common day-to-day people."

Since the WeWork implosion, the couple's net worth has gone from $4 billion to $600 million, according to Forbes.

But Rebekah and Adam may not be ready to toss in the towel just yet.  A real-estate source says that amid their departure, the Neumanns negotiated to keep the penthouse of the new WeWork at 430 Park Avenue as a family office.

'They are for sure going to build something else," the WeWork insider speculated, adding that the move to Israel is not a sign of defeat. "They are people who are not just entrepreneurs but they really want to make a difference."

SEE ALSO: Sex, tequila, and a tiger: Employees inside Adam Neumann's WeWork talk about the nonstop party to attain a $100 billion dream and the messy reality that tanked it

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How groundhogs became the animal that predicted the weather

• Mike Whitmire's company, FloQast, just raised $40 million in Series C funding.
• Like most founders, he used a pitch deck to solicit investments, but he approached preparing his presentation in some unusual ways.
• Even though companies of the maturity of FloQast are expected to disclose their key numbers in their pitches, Whitmire intentionally left numbers out.
• He also treated it as a work-in-progress, revising it along the way
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Mike Whitmire thinks the conventional wisdom about pitch decks is all wrong, particularly when it comes to later-stage startups.

When companies of that maturity level go out seeking funding, the thinking is typically that their presentations need to be chalk full of numbers — their key performance indicators, or KPIs, such as their customer acquisition costs and their number of monthly active users, and their financial figures, such as their revenue and gross profit.

But when Whitmire went out recently to raise a Series C round for FloQast, his Los Angeles-based accounting-software startup, he intentionally left out some of those numbers, even going so far as to cover over the spaces on charts where the numbers would otherwise be. He treated his pitch deck as a supplement to an in-person presentation rather than a standalone informational report, he told Business Insider in an interview earlier this month.

"You and I can go through [the] deck right now ... and I can spit this thing out for you, but you have to hear me pitch it," said Whitmire, FloQast's cofounder and CEO. "And I think that's really important, because if you put too much information in here, an investor might read it and just not even want to talk to you."

Whitmire treated his pitch deck as a work-in-progress

Whitmire's goal was to put enough information about FloQast and how the company was performing in the deck to pique investors' interest, but to leave enough questions unanswered in the presentation to spark questions about it.

"That's how you get more engagement from them," he said.

Besides withholding some numbers, he did something else that was unusual with his investor presentation. He treated it — again, intentionally — as a work-in-progress. After his first meeting with investors at one of the firms he pitched went well, he added in the numbers before having a follow-up meeting with a wider group of investors at the firm.

By then, "I knew that I already had buy-in from multiple partners at the firm, so ... [I] treated it more as like an informational deck, and included more robust appendices as well," he said. He continued: "So I started with a different deck than I ended with."

Whitmire's earlier investors weren't sure about his strategy, but it worked. Last month, FloQast announced it had secured $40 million in Series C financing in a round let by Norwest Ventures. The round pegged its valuation at $250 million, up from $135 million two years earlier, according to PitchBook.

He thinks other founders should follow his lead, treating their pitch decks almost like software, adding to or adjusting them as needed.

As entrepreneurs meet with investors, " you can sort of feel out what hits and what doesn't hit, what resonates and make tweaks along the way," he said. "You make a deck, it's not like that deck is static, and you have to use it forever. You can change it as you figure out what the market reacts to."

Got a tip about venture capital or startups? Contact this reporter via email at twolverton@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

• See more pitch-deck stories:
• LA startup FloQast raised $40 million with this pitch deck that shows how even accounting software can inspire passion
• San Francisco's Sysdig used this pitch deck to help investors focus on a giant cloud opportunity, and it wound up raising $70 million
• Iterable, a marketing automation startup taking on Salesforce and Oracle, wanted to be 'prepared for anything.' It made this pitch deck and raised $60 million.
• A VC invests in dozens of companies each year and helps them raise their next round of funding. Here's his top advice for creating a winning pitch deck.

SEE ALSO: This Silicon Valley founder is an expert in designing presentations. Here's what he thinks your startup needs to include in a pitch deck — and what you should leave out.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: I switched to Google Photos after using iCloud for 5 years and I'm never going back

• In the face of the coronavirus outbreak, the US medical community is bracing for a potential shortage in crucial equipment, including protective N95 respirator masks.
• Medical suppliers like Henry Schein and Medline told Business Insider that the coronavirus outbreak has already spiked demand for certain medical products.
• Henry Schein's website is currently running a notice about "disruptions to orders for certain infection products in various markets."
• Montefiore Medical System's infectious disease expert Dr. Theresa Madaline said that a run on certain crucial medical supplies could "mean that at some point we will not have enough for our health care workers."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The coronavirus crisis has fueled fears of a shortage of key protective medical devices, namely the specialized N95 respirator masks that are needed to protect health workers treating infectious patients.

Dr. Theresa Madaline, Montefiore Health System's healthcare epidemiologist and the assistant professor of infectious diseases at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told Business Insider that reports of a dearth of N95 masks are particularly concerning. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that medical employees working with coronavirus patients wear N95s, specifically.  

"N95 masks are specialized respirator masks that are meant for specific conditions," Madaline told Business Insider. "These are for infections where you have very teeny tiny particles that would not be captured via regular surgical mask."

Any disruptions in the distribution of supplies like the N95 — whether caused by increased demand on the part of hospitals and the public, or snags in the supply chain — could pose a risk to medical practitioners who rely on certain pieces of protective equipment. 

Medical experts say a number of factors could lead to a shortage of crucial medical equipment, including disruptions to the supply chain and product stockpiling by medical institutions and the public. And regardless of whether the coronavirus continues to spread, a lack of certain pieces of equipment could put doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers at risk. 

Madaline told Business Insider that she is concerned about reports of needless accumulation and even outright theft when it comes to key protective medical equipment.

"There is a finite supply, meaning the manufacturer can only make so many," Madaline said. "If people grab them faster than they can produce them, that will mean that at some point we will not have enough for our health care workers."

'Too soon to say what the long-term effects will be'

The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese officials, attempting to stop the spread of the disease, are snapping up medical masks from factories that supply global medical equipment firms, thinning out the number of products that are being shipped globally. 

Medical supplier Henry Schein's website now includes a notice for consumers in the United States saying that, "Due to the coronavirus outbreak, we are experiencing higher than normal demand globally for infection control products such as masks, goggles, and face shields, among other items."

The alert said that the medical supplier is working with both its "manufacturing and supply chain partners, as well as global health organizations including the Pandemic Supply Chain Network, the World Health Organization, the Chinese Ministry of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, to address shortages as they occur." That being said, consumers should anticipate "disruptions to orders for certain infection products in various markets."

A Henry Schein spokesperson followed up with Business Insider saying that the company has "seen a spike in demand for personal protective equipment, such as masks and gowns, but that's limited by the tight supply of these products."

The spokesperson pointed to a LinkedIn post from Henry Schein CEO Stan Bergman, who wrote about his hopes for the medical community's response to the coronavirus.

"It's too soon to say what the long-term effects will be on business from the outbreak. Henry Schein reports our Q4 financial results later this month, and we'll have a better sense by then of the impact of the outbreak," the spokesperson said.

A Medline spokesperson told Business Insider that China's "numerous efforts" to contain the virus were resulting in "some impact on manufacturing operations in that country."

"We may see a potential reduction in capacity or delayed shipments for personal protective equipment (PPE) throughout the industry," the Medline spokesperson told Business Insider. "Our top priority is to ensure current Medline customers have the essential supplies they need to protect both patients and staff.  We are actively working on options to increase production in other areas of our global supply chain, while diligently monitoring the situation in China."

'Healthcare workers are at risk'

Dr. Jon Mark Hirshon, a professor of emergency medicine and epidemiology at University of Maryland School of Medicine and Medical Center, told Business Insider that healthcare employees are always especially at risk during a pandemic. 

"It's critically important that we protect our healthcare workers," Hirshon, who is also a board member of the American College of Emergency Physicians advocacy group, said. "Our healthcare workers are at risk from many things, including violence from patients, exposure to diseases, stuff like that. So we have to pay attention to that and make sure that we protect the people who are the frontline providers for many patients."

Madaline said that the coronavirus outbreak has spread anxiety among both the public and the medical community.

"There is a lot of fear about this virus of both in the community, but also a lot of chatter within healthcare that people are buying or in many cases taking large stock of the masks," Madaline said.

The knowledge that a shortage could jeopardize health workers on the frontlines of a pandemic has prompted many medical institutions to take steps to ensure that they will not be caught unprepared.

Dr. Kathleen Jordan, an infectious disease specialist who serves as the chief medical officer at San Francisco's Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, spoke to Business Insider about the reaction of the medical community during the Ebola outbreak. She said that during the outbreak from 2014 to 2016, she wasn't aware of any hospitals that hadn't "stocked up on personal protective equipment," although she "can't speak for everyone."

"It definitely made us improve our stockpiling of personal protective equipment," Jordan said, speaking about the Ebola outbreak. "At the time there were shortages of personal protective equipment. So manufacturing caught up. So everybody sort of stockpiled."

Amy Compton-Phillips, the chief clinical officer at the Providence network of hospitals and clinics, told Business Insider that they have "not noticed any impediment to getting the supplies that we need." But that doesn't mean they aren't "surge planning" for the months ahead.

A Providence hospital near Seattle took on the first reported coronavirus patient in the United States.

"We're doing things like making sure we have the supplies available," Compton-Phillips said. "A lot of the personal protective equipment is manufactured in China. And so if we have disruptions in our supply chain, will we be able to have the masks and the gowns and the face shields that we need to keep people healthy? And so we're working with our suppliers to ensure the supply."

"We'd much rather be ready and waste time planning than we would to scramble after the fact," she added.

'You don't need to run out and get your face mask'

But it's not just institutions like hospitals and clinics that appear keen to buy up protective gear in the face of the outbreak. Online searches indicate that members of the public, alarmed by media reports about the coronavirus, may be getting in on the act as well.

Data provider M Science found that online sales of "dust, medical, and respirator masks" spiked through January 29, 2020, surpassing such sales during the avian flu crisis of 2017 and the flu season of 2018.

The problem with that is, according to medical experts, the public neither has the need for specialized protective gear like N95s, nor the ability to use it effectively. For the untrained, it's not as simple as slapping on a N95 mask. Madaline said that such a mask must be "fit-tested," meaning fitted to a person's face and secured by a trained individual, to ensure that "no particles are getting through." 

In other words, hoarding N95s is one thing, but actually being able to use them in an effective manner outside of a specialized medical environment is another thing entirely. And these specific masks aren't just necessary for treating coronavirus patients; medical providers also must wear these now in-demand devices when treating tuberculosis. 

What's more, individuals concerned about the coronavirus in the United States truly have a more statistically deadly disease to contend with in their own backyards.

"What's more of a danger to people in the United States is the flu right now," Dr. Jennifer Lighter, assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases and hospital epidemiology at NYU Langone Health, told Business Insider. "Only half of the population is vaccinated. You don't need to run out and get your face mask but you should run out and get your flu vaccine."

Morgan McFall-Johnsen contributed reporting.

SEE ALSO: Major fast-food chains and retailers in China are shutting their doors as the deadly coronavirus continues to spread. Here's a list of closures.

ALSO READ: I was traveling in South Korea as the coronavirus struck, and I was amazed at how the country sprang into action

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here are all the germs, diseases, and bacteria that live on our phones

• In the largest securities-brokerage deal on record, Charles Schwab is expected to close on its $26 billion acquisition of one-time rival TD Ameritrade during the second half of this year.
• The firms' executives have said they are set to combine branches, though it's not yet clear where the changes will take effect.
• Business Insider has mapped out each firm's US branches to illustrate regions where the two firms' branches overlap. Scroll down for an interactive version of both US branch networks. 
• Visit BI Prime for more wealth management stories.

The Charles Schwab-TD Ameritrade tie-up is set to shatter records for its size, remake the brokerage and custodian industries, and usher in a wave of branch closures and job cuts.

Schwab had already announced plans to cut 600 jobs, or 3% of its workforce, last year amid what its finance chief called a "more challenging environment." That was before the TD Ameritrade deal came to light, but after Schwab announced a $1.8 billion acquisition of USAA's brokerage business also set to close in 2020. 

The roughly $26 billion deal for TD Ameritrade, which is the largest securities-brokerage deal on record, according to Dealogic data, is expected to close during the second half of 2020. The firms' executives have said they are set to combine branches, though it's not yet clear where the changes will take effect.

Business Insider has mapped out each of the two firms' 600-plus branches, utilizing their official lists of branch locations, to illustrate regions where the two firms' branches overlap. Schwab's network is around double that of TD Ameritrade's. 

"There are some elements like branch consolidations and real estate decisions that we expect will be decided and achieved relatively quickly," Peter Crawford, Schwab's chief finance officer, said on a call with analysts in November to discuss the deal.

Schwab expects to save around $1.8 billion to $2 billion with the acquisition, some of which will come from getting rid of overlapping roles, the firm and TD Ameritrade said in a joint statement about the acquisition. 

Charles Schwab execs also gave a 4-1/2-hour business update this week. One slide from COO Joe Martinetto laid out where Schwab will find savings — and flagged "geographic footprint rationalization" and "workforce overlap."

The two firms disclosed in filings in late January that the Department of Justice's antitrust division had requested more information about the deal, which they called customary and will now extend the DoJ's review period. 

TD Ameritrade and Schwab have significant overlap in states like California, where Schwab is headquartered, and in Texas, where the firms said they will take their new combined headquarters.

Meanwhile there are some states where TD Ameritrade has a presence, like in West Virginia, where Schwab does not; and in Wyoming, South Dakota, and Puerto Rico, Charles Schwab has branches, where TD Ameritrade does not.

Read more: Charles Schwab on Charles Schwab: The founder explains why the firm just axed commissions as broker wars reach a fever pitch

Read more: Charles Schwab's $26 billion deal for TD Ameritrade is an aggressive play for size that was set in motion before brokers started slashing commissions

SEE ALSO: Charles Schwab execs explained why the firm is now having to make 'distasteful' cash offers to investors just to compete in the cut-throat brokerage industry

SEE ALSO: Meet the Schwab exec in charge of carrying out a $26 billion TD Ameritrade deal that's an aggressive play for size and cost-cuts

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: WeWork went from a $47 billion valuation to a failed IPO. Here's how the company makes money.

• This is a preview of THE HEALTHCARE PAYMENTS REPORT from Business Insider Intelligence.
• Business Insider Intelligence offers even more healthcare coverage with Digital Health Pro. Subscribe today to receive industry-changing digital health news and analysis to your inbox.

The US healthcare payments market is enormous: Healthcare expenditure hit $3.65 trillion in 2018, per projections from CMS, and this spending is only expected to accelerate.

But the industry is at a tipping point. Better-informed and more critical customers, along with a push to combat the complex and opaque medical billing process, are creating demand for innovation in the healthcare payments space.

Despite a titanic market size and room for innovation, digital transformation is occurring incrementally at best. In fact, 90% of healthcare providers still leverage paper and manual processes for collections, according to data from a report commissioned by InstaMed and compiled by Qualtrics.

And even when healthcare providers offer digital solutions like online portals to customers (which 60% do), they seem to be falling short: While the majority of consumers claim they want to make appointments (68%), fill out registration forms (68%), and pay healthcare bills (61%) online, the share of consumers who actually do so hovers around 30% for those use cases. Discrepancies like these make healthcare payments a greenfield for lucrative digital innovation.

In The Healthcare Payments Report, Business Insider Intelligence looks at the healthcare payments process, including the types of healthcare payments, the stakeholders making them, where those payments are going, and what's driving change in the market. We then examine payments companies' innovations from the past year that address healthcare payments' most pressing challenges, analyze why they're lucrative, and discuss how other payments companies can learn from the innovations to furnish their own solutions.

The companies mentioned in this report are: InstaMed, JPMorgan, Liquid Payments, Patientco, Waystar

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• The US healthcare payments market is massive: Total US healthcare expenditure hit $3.65 trillion in 2018, per projections from The Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. For reference, consumers spent slightly less on retail purchases — $3.63 trillion — in 2018, per Internet Retailer.
• But healthcare payments innovation has failed to keep up with consumer demands due to providers' reliance on legacy processes, and this may be hurting providers' bottom lines. 
• Healthcare payments are complicated by the different stakeholders — providers, payers, and patients — that have a role in each transaction. These stakeholders' needs are shifting as the market changes: Consumers are taking a more active role in paying for their healthcare while states are pivoting toward a model that compensates providers based on the quality of their services rendered rather than the quantity.
• Some payments firms are successfully adapting to the shifting market by creating digital solutions that balance the evolving needs of the entire healthcare payment value chain. 

In full, the report:

• Outlines the structure of the current healthcare payments market.
• Analyzes the forces and stakeholders driving change in the market.
• Highlights companies that are implementing innovative solutions in the healthcare payments space, and offers key takeaways that other players can apply to their own approaches.

Interested in getting the full report? Here are three ways to access it:

1. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now
2. Subscribe to a Premium pass to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >>Learn More Now
3. Current subscribers can log in and read the report here.

Join the conversation about this story »

Reporting on big names coming and going is always a huge part of covering Wall Street. And this week, the news was mostly about exits. 

Dakin Campbell was busy breaking news on fresh Goldman Sachs departures. Sumit Rajpal and Andrew Wolff, two of three coheads of a merged alternative-investing unit created by CEO David Solomon last year, are retiring. Rajpal and Wolff were slated to be lead investors for Goldman's eighth private-equity fund, which will kick off fundraising next week. Here's the memo Goldman's top brass sent to staff on Friday about the exits. 

Adam Korn, a chief architect of Goldman's Marquee institutional trading platform, is retiring after nine years as a partner. You can read the full memo about his departure here. And Rana Yared, a Goldman partner overseeing more than $2 billion in principal investments, is heading to a leading European VC firm that was an early backer of digital bank Revolut. 

As Alex Morrell and Trista Kelly reported, Credit Suisse is overhauling bonuses for investment banking and capital markets. The firm on Wednesday finalized a new comp plan, including requiring the cash portion of bonuses to be paid in the form of an "upfront cash award" with stiff clawback provisions. And that was right before the bombshell announcement that CEO Tidjane Thiam is out following a spying scandal. 

If you aren't yet a subscriber to Wall Street Insider, you can sign up here.

Charles Schwab execs gave a 4-1/2-hour business update, and Rebecca Ungarino broke out they key takeaways, including how the discount broker is prepping for its planned mega-buy of TD Ameritrade, and why it's making "distasteful" cash offers to win clients. One slide from COO Joe Martinetto laid out where Schwab will find up to $2 billion in savings — and flagged "geographic footprint rationalization" and "workforce overlap." That sounds a lot like shuttering branches and cutting jobs, and we already happened to be mapping the overlap for the two firms  — you can take a look at the brand-new graphic here. 

We also like to hear from insiders about what it takes to be successful in the beats we cover. Alex Nicoll talked to real estate experts to compile a list of 15 podcasts they listen to for practical advice and incisive commentary on the industry. 

Rebecca put together the ultimate guide to FA development programs at Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Merrill Lynch, including how their interview process works and what to expect from the intense multi-year programs once you join. 

And as Bradley Saacks reported, billionaire Citadel founder Ken Griffin thinks that corporate culture is not pushing people hard enough these days. Leaders "don't happen because you work 9-to-5 and then have a great weekend," he said in a chat with Goldman President John Waldron at the Economic Club of New York.

Still, you don't need to join the three-comma club to enjoy life's finer things. Shannen Balogh rounded up 14 startups that are rethinking the buying mentality by offering rentals on everything from boats to Cartier jewelry, and the VCs betting that you're perfectly happy renting.

Long reads to follow, as well as a roundup of other must-know headlines. 

Have a great weekend!

Meredith

WeWork's board shakeup sees 3 longtime directors depart. Another is leaving in April, and the company is adding its first female board member.

WeWork's board of directors is seeing a major shakeup that includes three departures and the appointment of the first female member.

SoftBank's Ron Fisher, Rhône Group's Steve Langman, and former Goldman Sachs vice chairman Mark Schwartz are all off the board, a source with knowledge of the changes said. Former Coach chairman and CEO Lew Frankfurt plans to leave when SoftBank's tender offer is complete, which is set for the beginning of April. 

The board changes come as part of a planned board director refresh stemming from SoftBank's October deal to rescue WeWork.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Two Sigma's private-equity arm is building out a data team run by a former Google engineer — it's a big move that shows how PE is finally turning to data and AI to boost returns

Two Sigma's private-equity arm has plans to hire to build out its data capabilities, recruiting engineers, and data scientists to help provide insights to investment professionals and portfolio companies, Business Insider has learned. 

Private-equity executives are increasingly considering artificial intelligence and alternative data in their investment decisions, according to a recent report from Ernst & Young.

In May, Two Sigma hired Patrick Leung, a former top Google engineer, who is a leader driving the private-equity data charge.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

UBS is restricting employees' travel in China and implementing a work-from-home policy as the coronavirus has spread

UBS is restricting employees' non-essential travel to, from, and within China amid the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, according to a person familiar with the firm's policy.

The Swiss bank has also implemented a work-from-home policy for any staff globally who have traveled to Hubei Province, where Wuhan is located, the person said. UBS is requesting that staffers who have traveled there, or have been in contact with someone who has the virus, to work from home for two weeks from their return date.

UBS has a sizeable presence across the Asia Pacific. In its flagship wealth management business, some 1,000 of its 10,000 financial advisers are based in the wider Asia Pacific region. 

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Payments giants like PayPal and Amex are helping transform how we shop with bets on startups like Klarna, Rent the Runway, and Instacart. Here's what they're investing in and why.

Financial services corporate venture capital (CVC) funding has been on the rise, with 2017's total $3 billion in funding tripling to more than $9 billion in 2019, according to CB Insights.

And big payments companies have been busy making bets on fintech unicorns like Stripe and Plaid (which Visa now plans to buy for $5.3 billion.)

We talked to execs at the corporate venture arms of payments companies Amex, Mastercard, PayPal, and Visa to learn more about their investing strategies.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Wall Street's battle for data-science talent has gone next-level as Silicon Valley makes more East Coast hires and other industries get hip to data — here's how firms are fighting back

With WeWork's high-profile meltdown in 2019 and sagging share prices for companies like Uber and Lyft, we were curious if things had gotten any easier when it comes to the battle for recruiting and keeping tech talent. 

Turns out, hedge funds are still feeling pressure from Silicon Valley darlings, which are growing their presence on the East Coast, as well as other industries who are beginning to realize the value of crunching their own data.

At some funds, like Point72, data scientists are so in-demand that some even have longer non-compete periods than the portfolio managers making the investments. 

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

A memo from Goldman Sachs' co-CIO laid out plans for a global financial cloud for customers that could be 'transformational to the firm's business for decades to come'

Marco Argenti, Goldman Sachs' co-chief information officer, sent a memo seen by Business Insider detailing the opportunity he sees for the bank to create a financial cloud.

Argenti, who spent six years at Amazon Web Services before joining Goldman in October, believes building out a cloud specifically for financial companies could be "transformational to the firm's business for decades to come."

IBM announced similar intentions in November with the launch of its own public cloud focused on Wall Street.

READ THE FULL MEMO HERE

Investors paying hefty fees are frustrated that some big-name hedge funds are just sitting on piles of cash instead of making bets

Hedge-fund investors looking for diversification and uncorrelated returns are frustrated by the large piles of cash not being put to use.

Seth Klarman said in his annual letter that, in accordance with his strict value investing ethos, he sold out of "situations where the price has come to more fully reflect underlying value," to bring his portfolio's cash holdings to 31% at the end of the year. And last year, Canyon Partners told investors it had shifted nearly a fifth of the portfolio into cash despite holding no cash 12 month prior. 

"We have a limited tolerance for managers that don't run sufficient risk," said Jens Foehrenbach, CIO of Man FRM, the fund-of-funds run by Man Group. 

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Wealth and investing

• Billionaire Citadel founder Ken Griffin says the US has a 'false sense of security' about being the world's tech powerhouse and that the ban on China's Huawei will be a 'real setback'
• Ally Financial is 'looking closely' at adding human wealth advice for its digital bank's richer customers
• Billionaire Bill Ackman's Pershing Square just exited its positions in Starbucks and ADP with big gains, a new investor presentation reveals
• Carlson Capital's stock-picking fund drops more than 20% in a disastrous January
• Greg Fleming's Rockefeller Capital is building up its Washington presence by luring junior talent and veteran advisers from the biggest wealth managers
• Billionaire Avenue Capital founder Marc Lasry says the decision to pay hundreds of millions to buy the Milwaukee Bucks 6 years ago was 'the best investment I've ever made'
• Billionaire hedge-fund founder Lee Ainslie is worried his generation is going to be remembered as 'the generation of greed'
• Up-and-coming financial advisers explain how to use your network to land clients as a newbie and stand out in a fiercely competitive field
• The CEO of one of the biggest US office-space owners answered a rapid-fire Q&A with a prediction that Bloomberg will be president

Fintech and proptech

• $5.3 billion fintech Plaid is in the middle of a high-stakes fight over customer data. Its CEO told us why the startup wants to give users control.
• The cofounder of SoftBank-backed Kabbage explains how the small business lending startup is using payments data to get into short-term loans
• A startup aimed at disrupting payments and taking on Square and Stripe just raised a $35 million Series B led by Sequoia Capital
• Goldman Sachs is making it easier to plug its services into other tech platforms like Amazon or Apple's iPhone — here's why one expert thinks that's a 'fundamental change' in retail banking
• We watched 5 early-stage startups demo their next big ideas for blending tech and real estate, and it shows where the buzzy space is heading
• We talked to the execs behind Bloomberg's new data partnership with Goldman Sachs. Here's why they think it's a sign of Wall Street's future.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: WeWork went from a $47 billion valuation to a failed IPO. Here's how the company makes money.

• The deadly and fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak is slated to hurt the global economy, according to the Federal Reserve.
• But that doesn't mean that the disease poses the same amount of risk to all companies and categories.
• Luxury goods like high-end fashion lines and alcohol are particularly exposed, according to financial analysts.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The coronavirus outbreak in China will be felt around the world, both in terms of the tragic and deadly spread of the disease and its economic fallout.

The Federal Reserve predicted that the disease has "presented a new risk to the outlook" of the entire global economy. And retailers across the board have shut down their stores to avoid getting swept up in the outbreak. But some companies and product categories are more at risk than others.

Here's a look at five companies and product categories that could take a big hit from the coronavirus outbreak, according to analysts. None of the companies named by analysts returned Business Insider's requests for comment. 

SEE ALSO: Panicked shoppers in Hong Kong snapped up supplies like masks and toilet paper amid coronavirus fears and rumors about shipment cut-offs

DON'T MISS: Major fast-food chains and retailers in China are shutting their doors as the deadly coronavirus continues to spread. Here's a list of closures.

SEE ALSO: Burberry's CEO says the coronavirus outbreak is having a 'material negative effect' on China demand

The entire beauty category

A UBS note from February 3 said that the coronavirus could pose a problem for the entire beauty business, given that it is one of the "largest dollar categories in travel retail" and therefore dependent on Chinese consumers.

The UBS analysts wrote that Estée Lauder in particular has "outsized exposure" to disruptions to travel retail, and that China contributes to half of the company's Asia-Pacific revenues.

Apple

Moody's analysts predicted in a January 30 note that the coronavirus outbreak "will temporarily slow down Apple's strong earnings momentum" by slowing down the brand's growth within China. 

That being said, it's not all bad news. The note also reported that Apple has signaled its ability to "use alternate suppliers"

"Apple has robust credit profile and is well positioned to manage through short term disruptions in China," Moody's analysts also wrote.

Luxury clothing

Luxury fashion brand Burberry — along with the rest of the high-end apparel business — sees it business in China particularly at risk as the coronavirus continues to spread.

Reuters reported that 24 of Burberry's 64 stores in mainland China temporarily shuttered due to the outbreak, prompting CEO Marco Gobbetti to say that the coronavirus "is having a material negative effect on luxury demand." 

In a February 3 note, UBS analysts also noted an impact on the "luxury" category.

The Walt Disney Company

According to Deadline, the Walt Disney Company will take a $175 million hit if its parks in Shanghai and Hong Kong remain closed for two months.

But that's not the only bad news for the House of Mouse.

Deadline also reported that J.P. Morgan analyst Alexia Quadrani released a report saying that The Walt Disney Studios could also be adversely affected due to the mass shutdown of Chinese movie theaters.

Liquor

One subset of luxury goods that seems set to endure some pain over the coronavirus outbreak is the alcohol category. 

UBS' February 3 note on the coronavirus found that the brands Brown-Forman, Diageo, Pernod Ricard and Rémy Martin are "most exposed" to a dip in travel retail. 

"We expect the coronavirus to compound recent weakness in Asia Duty Free that resulted from unrest in Hong Kong," the UBS analysts wrote.

Moody's analysts also wrote in a February 4 note that the spread of the disease will "curb Chinese consumption" of European packaged alcoholic beverages "in what is one of the world's largest markets." Compounding the negative impact is the fact that the virus started during the  Lunar New Year, which Moody's said was "one of the busiest periods for alcoholic beverage consumption" in China.

• Goldman Sachs has been going through some high-profile changes. The storied investment bank is seeing leadership shakeups under CEO David Solomon and a slew of partner departures. 
• The Wall Street bank has been moving away from high-risk businesses like trading and is making pushes into more stable areas like consumer lending. 
• There have been big cultural changes, too. Solomon is looking to create a more transparent workplace, while new tech execs are taking cues from Silicon Valley heavy-hitters. 
• At Business Insider, we are closely tracking the latest developments at Goldman. You can read all of our Goldman coverage on BI Prime.

Storied Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs is going through some massive shifts under CEO David Solomon.

Recently, it's taken big steps involving transparency and inclusion to change up its culture. Its tech execs are also embracing change by promoting APIs and putting Goldman's Marquee app on Amazon's cloud. It has seen a slew of partner departures — many in the securities division. And now it's beefing up recruiting exes to focus on lateral hiring. 

Here's everything we know about what's going on inside Goldman. 

The latest

• Read the full memo Goldman Sachs' top brass just sent to staff announcing 2 heads of the bank's private-investing arm are out as it's gearing up to raise billions
• 2 coheads of Goldman Sachs' private-investing business are retiring, in a blow to David Solomon's fundraising plans
• We talked to the execs behind Bloomberg's new data partnership with Goldman Sachs. Here's why they think it's a sign of Wall Street's future.
• A Goldman Sachs partner who just resigned is leaving behind a job overseeing $2 billion for a London VC with a leading stake in neobank Revolut
• Read the memo announcing the departure of Adam Korn, the Goldman Sachs exec who was 'instrumental in building and championing' innovations like the bank's Marquee platform
• Goldman Sachs has lost at least 49 partners since David Solomon became CEO. We're keeping a running list — and compiling details from insiders about how the exits are being celebrated.

Investor day 2020

• Inside Goldman Sachs' first investor day, where avocado toast and crab apples were served with tech talk, 3-year plans, and a surprising trading mea culpa
• Goldman Sachs just revealed a new wealth brand at its first-ever investor day. It shows how the bank is trying to reshape its strategy — and image.
• Goldman Sachs just unveiled hundreds of slides laying out the future of the company. Here are the 10 crucial slides that show how it plans to transform into a bank for everyone.
• Goldman Sachs is rethinking how it makes private-equity bets with its own money – and one analyst thinks that shift will be a big driver of its stock price

Culture and talent

• Goldman Sachs just hired 2 senior recruiting execs focused on luring top talent from other firms —and it's a huge departure from the firm's traditional promote-from-within mentality
• Read the full memo David Solomon just sent to 38,000 Goldman Sachs employees explaining why he's moving his management team out of stuffy offices and into open seating
• Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and his management team are ditching their stuffy offices and moving to an open floor plan closer to the people so they can feel the buzz of New York headquarters
• Goldman Sachs just unveiled a new gender pronouns initiative as part of a broader inclusion push at the Wall Street firm
• Read the memo Goldman Sachs just sent to its employees unveiling a new pronouns initiative

Consumer banking and wealth management

• Goldman Sachs is sending much less mail to potential Marcus customers. A senior exec lays out the reason why.
• A Goldman Sachs exec explains why the bank isn't sweating concerns over the Apple Card's profitability
• A Wall Street firm crunched the numbers around how much Apple will make from its new credit card with Goldman Sachs
• Here's why Goldman Sachs just did its biggest deal in nearly 20 years as part of a pivot to less wealthy clients
• Goldman Sachs execs are opening up about their plans for Marcus, and they think it can do to banking what iTunes did to the music industry
• Goldman Sachs' partnership with Apple could move it a step closer to being 'a bank branch in your pocket'
• Human resources is the next battleground for Wall Street wealth advisers as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs jockey over new turf
• Goldman Sachs has a novel method for predicting the next economic slump, and it's at the heart of its hot new business

Technology

• Goldman Sachs is putting its own Marquee app on Amazon's cloud in a pitch to lure more fintech developers
• Goldman Sachs is embracing open-source code and its chief data officer says it's part of a "new world" of software
• Read the memo the new Goldman tech chief sent to the firm's 9,000-plus engineers where he urges them to ditch presentations in favor of Amazon's famous narratives
• A new Goldman Sachs tech exec hired from Amazon is taking a page from the Jeff Bezos playbook by urging engineers to ditch PowerPoint and write memos
• Goldman Sachs' new CTO shares his strategy for attracting outside developers to work more closely with the bank, giving a glimpse into the future of how Wall Street will work
• A Verizon executive is joining Goldman Sachs as chief technology officer as the Wall Street bank reshuffles its ranks
• Marty Chavez is retiring from Goldman Sachs. We chatted with him about the bank's tech transformation, why now is the right time for him to step down, and what he's planning next.
• Goldman Sachs tech guru Marty Chavez is retiring from the bank
• Goldman Sachs' CEO just warned that the bank's big tech bets might not pay off as quickly as people hope
• Goldman Sachs is scrapping a homegrown email app it once touted — and it's a sign the bank is moving away from building tech in house
• Goldman Sachs is exploring plans to create a Netflix for data, and it marks a new frontier for Wall Street
• Goldman Sachs' internal idea factory hatched a plan for the Google of Wall Street, and it's now looking for the next big thing to disrupt the bank
• Goldman Sachs' big bet on the future of Wall Street had a rocky start. Here's the inside story of the bank's struggle to grow its next business and an exclusive look at its plans

Trading

• Goldman Sachs' massive quant business now rivals AQR and Two Sigma. We talked to the bank's top quant about asset growth, finding data sources, and why critics of computerized trading are wrong.
• Goldman Sachs' CEO tells us the bank is winning over quant clients. That helped it outpace rivals like JPMorgan last quarter.
• Goldman Sachs is cutting about 5% of sales and trading staff after senior equities leaders delivered a tough town-hall talk
• Goldman Sachs is moving away from a tool championed by its former CFO as it pushes its traders to see clients where they once saw quick wins
• Goldman Sachs is shuffling its top stock trading executives as the business tries to claw back market share from Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan
• Goldman Sachs's bond trading unit is still trying to find its way — and it represents a key challenge for new CEO David Solomon

Alternatives

• Goldman Sachs is making targeted hires for a 'storefront' for alternative investments that's modeled after firms like KKR and Blackstone
• Goldman Sachs' push into private equity is ruffling feathers at Blackstone — and it might be a sign of big client skirmishes to come
• Goldman Sachs execs are jockeying for control of the firm's lucrative private investing units after a plan to merge it — and the stakes couldn't be higher
• Meet the Goldman Sachs execs tasked with building the firms' new Blackstone-esque private-investing unit — and pumping up the bank's flagging stock price
• 'It's good to be Rich': Meet the Goldman Sachs banker who has built a private investing empire that goes head-to-head with Blackstone — and you've probably never heard of him
• Goldman Sachs is considering a shakeup of its alternative investing units as part of a plan to simplify the bank's strategy

Deals

• Goldman Sachs is assembling a team of senior bankers focused on middle-market private equity. Here are the key hires and the playbook they'll use to land new clients.
• Goldman Sachs unloaded some of its WeWork shares before its investment bankers pitched investors on what it once considered a $60 billion-plus IPO
• Goldman Sachs just revealed it sold part of its Uber stake to SoftBank and it helped boost a $4.5 billion business
• A senior Goldman Sachs fintech banker was about to join JPMorgan — but then got lured back —and it's another sign of the fierce battle for M&A talent
• Goldman just promoted a star tech banker close to Tesla and Microsoft to co-head one of its most profitable businesses, as incoming CEO Solomon makes his mark
• Goldman Sachs just announced a shakeup of its leadership — and it signals the rise of bankers over traders
• A tug-of-war between Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan over a top banker highlights Wall Street's $1 trillion battleground

Careers 

• Goldman Sachs lost at least 36 partners in 2019. Here's a list of all the names we know — and details from insiders about how the exits are being celebrated
• Another Goldman Sachs partner is out. HR chief Dane Holmes is the latest key player to leave the Wall Street bank in a matter of days.
• Goldman Sachs is offering buyouts to encourage partners to leave as CEO David Solomon works to shrink one of the most elite clubs on Wall Street
• Goldman Sachs is making renewable energy a big priority based on its hiring strategy. It's a sign that its ideas incubator is working.
• The David Solomon era at Goldman Sachs kicked off with 43 words Lloyd Blankfein would never say
• Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon shares his best leadership advice
• Goldman Sachs is shaking up the way it stocks one of the most elite clubs on Wall Street — and it shows how banks are back to making money again
• Goldman Sachs' 1MDB problems are eating into employee morale, and insiders worry the firm will use its legal woes as an excuse to scrimp on bonuses
• Goldman Sachs is about to move dozens of jobs out of pricey New York to Utah as Wall Street turns to cheaper cities

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: WeWork went from a $47 billion valuation to a failed IPO. Here's how the company makes money.

• A lot of people are intimidated by investing, but chances are it's easier than you think.
• A financial adviser can help you manage your investments for a fee, but there's some basic investing advice they dole out at no cost.
• In brief, the best way to start investing is through retirement accounts and the best strategy for success is keeping it simple, staying invested over the long term, and starting early.
• Need a little help getting started investing? SmartAsset's free tool can help find a financial planner near you »

In order to build wealth effectively, you need to get comfortable investing.

While you have to assume some level of risk with any stock market investment, you don't have to put everything on the line to be successful. In fact, the best strategies balance risk and reward — and it's probably easier to achieve than you think.

Here are a few pieces of advice from financial planners to help you invest wisely.

1. Start in your retirement accounts

The easiest way to start growing your money in the stock market is through an employer-sponsored retirement plan, certified financial planner Michael Anderson of Maranantha Financialpreviously told Business Insider.

"The reason I love utilizing a 401(k) plan as a vehicle to start investing is because money will be automatically taken out from your paycheck each pay period," Anderson said. "You don't have to think about it, it's automatic once you decide to participate, and you can adjust your contribution level at any time."

Your employer has already chosen a selection of safe bet investment options in your plan, he said, so all you have to do is decide where to invest your money based on your risk tolerance and time horizon. Plus, your employer may offer to match your contributions, which can be motivation to save even more.

2. Keep it simple and low cost

The average investor looking to build wealth over a long time doesn't need a complicated strategy to be successful, said Renee Kwok, a certified financial planner and the CEO of TFC Financial.

"Low-cost index mutual funds and ETFs (exchange-traded funds) from companies like Vanguard, BlackRock (iShares), Schwab, and Fidelity are an excellent option for young people investing their first few thousand dollars in the market," Kwok previously told Business Insider.

Index funds are particularly attractive for their low fees. These funds are not actively managed — you're not paying someone to buy and sell your shares in order to beat the market. Instead, each fund is designed to match the market, so total operating costs — otherwise known as an expense ratio — should be less than 0.50%.

3. Don't micromanage

There's very little to be gained from micromanaging your own investments, according to San Diego financial planner Taylor Schulte.

When you're investing for the long-term — think: more than five years — you don't need to concern yourself with daily market fluctuations. You'll never give your strategy a chance to work properly if you're tinkering with your investments every time the market drops, Schulte told Business Insider. 

Even smart people can get thrown off course when the stock market goes haywire, but it's never a good idea to act on heightened emotions, certified financial planner Shelly-Ann Eweka wrote in an article for Business Insider.

"Avoid impulsively selling an underperforming investment and stay the course with a diversified portfolio that is able to withstand inevitable short-term rises and dips in the market," Eweka said.

And if you can't trust yourself to employ a hands-off approach, consider paying a financial adviser to manage your investments for you.

4. Diversify

The surest way to be successful in the stock market is to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket. In other words, diversify your investments.

"The importance of diversification is that when the markets work — and they work in cycles — certain asset classes or certain pieces of the world economy are going to be up when others are going to be down," Bob Gavlak, a certified financial planner and wealth adviser with Strategic Wealth Partners previously told Business Insider.

He continued: "The goal is to minimize your overall exposure to one asset class so if that asset class does not perform as well, there are others holding up the portfolio or keeping you more in line with your long-term investment goals."

Gavlak recommends investors ask themselves, "What do I need my investments to do for me in order to be successful?" 

And if you're not confident in your ability to diversify on your own, consult a financial adviser or invest in a fund that will do the bulk of the work for you. A target date fund, for example, automatically chooses a blend of investments based on your age and rebalances itself to become more conservative over time.

5. Just start

Investing— and money in general — is an emotional puzzle. Many of us grow up with preconceived notions about the stock market, and it holds us back from taking necessary risks. But Erika Safran, certified financial planner and principal at Safran Wealth Advisors, said in order to make it work, you have to overcome hesitation.

"It's all about beginning with whatever you begin with — just start," Safran previously told Business Insider. "Analyzing your options is not the entire step. You have to move beyond that. Take the risk of taking action."

Whether it's $100 a month or $1,000, the beauty of investing is that it favors those who simply start. Compound growth will take the lead. "Whatever amount you pick, you can change it. It's not finite. No one gets this right at the beginning," she said.

SmartAsset's free tool can help find a financial planner to create an investment strategy for you »

• More personal finance coverage
• 4 reasons to open a high-yield savings account while interest rates are down
• It took less than 10 minutes to open a high-yield cash account with Wealthfront and earn more on my savings
• How to buy a house with no money down
• When to save money in high-yield savings
• Best rewards credit cards
• 7 reasons you may need life insurance, even if you think you don't

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to escape a flooding vehicle

• I never pay for things with a debit card because I prefer to use my credit card, where I'm always getting the equivalent of 2% back or more on my purchases.
• Credit cards also offer better protections, less liability in case of fraud, and more leverage with merchants.
• As far as I'm concerned, there's rarely ever a reason to pay with debit.
• See Business Insider's picks for the best rewards credit cards »

Nothing makes me cringe more than going to to stores and restaurants with my friends and watching them pay with cash or a debit card. Or worse, when the occasional person still pulls out a checkbook and writes a personal check, carefully noting their purchases in the register while the line stacks up behind them. Luckily, many businesses don't take checks anymore, but all of them still take debit cards (and even offer cash back sometimes).

To me, using a debit card is a violation of Being A Savvy Consumer 101. Here are the top five reasons why you should never pay for things with a debit card:

1. You bear more fraud liability

If the merchant's card terminal is hacked, it could result in your entire bank account being drained, taking weeks or months to straighten out. In the meantime, you won't have cash to pay for rent, bills, and other necessities. Meanwhile, if fraudulent activity occurs on your credit card, your liability is limited to $50 by law (and most card issuers waive this, taking your liability to zero).

2. You won't get any credit card protections on your purchases

With the exception of Citi cards (Citi has removed most purchase and travel protections from its cards), the majority of premium credit cards offer some form of additional protection on purchases. These can include extended warranty protection, protection against damage or theft, and more. The specifics of these protections will vary depending on the specific card product, so review your card benefits statement for details.

3. You're leaving money on the table

For everyday purchases, you should be getting a minimum of 2% back, because you can get 2% cash back on a card with no annual fee (like the Citi DoubleCash Card or Fidelity Rewards Visa Signature Card). With premium travel credit cards offering rewards points when spending in bonus categories, it's not unusual to earn far more.

I earn an effective minimum 4.5% cash back (or more) on travel and dining purchases with the Chase Sapphire Reserve, since I spend the points on travel. In some states, that's roughly the same percentage as the sales tax! 

4. You lose leverage with the merchant

If you have a problem with a credit card purchase and the merchant refuses to work with you, you can charge back the purchase with the credit card issuer. Simply the threat of doing this will give you substantial leverage with the merchant, because they risk losing their merchant account if it happens too often, and they will be charged large fees by their merchant processor if you follow through.

Most of the time, if you have a legitimate dispute, the bank will side with you over the merchant, and your purchase will be refunded (you won't have to make payments on the amount in dispute while the resolution process is underway).

5. You don't get an interest-free grace period

On most cards, if you're starting with a zero balance, you'll get up to a month before you need to pay a credit card balance off without incurring interest. That's an extra month that your money is available to earn interest in a high-yield savings account or otherwise work for you. Credit cards are a great way to help even out your expenses with your cash flow without paying any interest for the privilege.

Hopefully I've convinced you: Using your debit card to make purchases is an amateur move. Does it ever still make sense? Yes, it can. Some merchants (such as marijuana dispensaries) don't accept credit cards, but do accept cash and debit cards. In this case, you won't have much of a choice. You might also be offered a discount to use a debit card versus a credit card, such as at some gas stations. If you are willing to risk it, the savings might add up. And of course, you might need cash at some point, and make a small purchase with a debit card in order to get cash back. 

Paying with a debit card should be the exception rather than the rule, though. A rare exception. Using a credit card is nearly always better.

• More credit card coverage
• What's the best airline credit card?
• The best cash-back credit cards
• Southwest credit card review
• Best rewards credit cards

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How to find water when you're stuck in the desert

• This is a preview of THE ONLINE MORTGAGE LENDING REPORT from Business Insider Intelligence.
• 14-Day Risk Free Trial: Get full access to this and all Fintech industry research reports.

Despite the mortgage space representing the largest US lending market — with debt sitting at $9.2 trillion — it's been the slowest to digitize, and incumbents have had little incentive to remove friction from the customer application process.

The customer experience has been hampered by a time-consuming process that requires spending hours filling out an application and gathering documents, a lack of transparency about the status of the process, and uncertainty about what outstanding documentation could be requested later. And with no viable challengers to the status quo, incumbent lenders had little reason to overhaul this process.

But Quicken Loans turned the mortgage industry on its head with the introduction of Rocket Mortgage, an online mortgage application that takes less than 10 minutes to complete, in November 2015. Its product simplified the mortgage process by offering a clean and quick online application form, allowing online information verification, and providing conditional preapproval within minutes. And in Q4 2017, Quicken became the largest US residential mortgage originator by volume, surpassing Wells Fargo for the first time.

Rocket Mortgage helped validate the digital mortgage sector and bring a number of other alternative online mortgage lenders to the fore. We've seen players like Lenda (now Reali Loans) move into mortgage purchases around the time Rocket Mortgage was introduced and better.com launch its online mortgage offering early in 2016, for instance.

And while big banks have seen their share of the market shrink since the 2008 financial crisis, they can now unlock the potential of advanced mortgage tech to act against the threat of nonbanks and alt lenders and claw back some of that lost market share.

And some large FIs, including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America (BofA), SunTrust, and TD Bank, have already unveiled their own digital mortgage lending platforms that help them enhance the customer experience, shave down costs — by cutting labor expenses or reducing the possibility of fraud, for example — and drive a more significant opportunity in residential mortgages.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence will examine the current state of the mortgage lending landscape and how technology has enabled alt lenders to transform the home loan process from application to closing. We will then explore how legacy banks are responding to the threat of digitally advanced competitors by unveiling their own online mortgage solutions and offer recommendations for FIs looking to enhance their mortgage offerings.

The companies mentioned in this report are: Ally, Bank of America, Chase, better.com, Black Knight, blend, eOriginal, Loan Depot, Quicken Loans, Reali Loans, Roostify, SoFi, SunTrust, TD Bank, US Bank, Wells Fargo

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• Technology has enabled digitally advanced nonbanks and alt lenders to disrupt the mortgage process, transforming the application process and, to an extent, digitizing and automating underwriting and closing.
• Banks are responding to the threat of fintechs by launching their own digital solutions, often in partnership with mortgage software and service providers.
• Other FIs looking to enhance their mortgage offerings could leverage technology and partner with providers to tap into consumers' growing appetite for digital mortgage solutions and avoid ceding market share to the competition.  

In full, the report:

• Examines the current state of the mortgage lending landscape.
• Details how fintechs have transformed the home loan market.
• Highlights technology's impact across the various stages of the mortgage lending process, including application, underwriting, and closing.
• Examines how legacy players are responding to the threat of digitally advanced nonbanks and alt lenders.
• Outlines what banks should do to enhance their mortgage offerings and look for new revenue growth opportunities in the space. 

Interested in getting the full report? Here are three ways to access it:

1. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now
2. Subscribe to a Premium pass to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >>Learn More Now
3. Current subscribers can read the report here.

Join the conversation about this story »

It's a fascinating time for fintech.

What was once a disruptive force in the financial world has become standard practice for many industry leaders. 

Fintech industry funding has already reached new highs globally in 2018, with overall funding hitting $32.6 billion at the end of Q3.

Some new regions, including South America and Africa, are emerging on the scene.

And some fintech companies, including a number of insurtechs, have dipped into new markets to escape heightened competition.

Now that fintech has become mainstream, the next focus is on the rising stars in the industry. To that end, Business Insider Intelligence has put together a list of 10 Up and Coming Fintechs for 2019.

Coconut

Total raised:   £1.9 million ($2.5 million)

What it does: Coconut is a UK-based current account and accounting platform for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Why it's hot in 2019: Next week, Coconut will launch its first subscription service, dubbed Grow, which will bundle unlimited invoicing and end of year tax reports, for £5 ($6.51) a month. This will make it a very attractive option for SMBs, that conventionally don't have a lot of time on their hands to handle their accounting.

Brex

Total raised: $282 million

What it does: Brex is a US-based corporate credit card provider, which initially focused on serving startups.

Why it's hot in 2019: The startup gained unicorn status in 2018, only months after it launched its first product. Now, after receiving debt financing worth $100 million, Brex wants to target larger enterprises with its topic — opening it up to a whole new set of customers and helping bring the company to the next level.

Want to get the full list?

There's plenty more to learn about the future of fintech, payments, and the financial services industry. Business Insider Intelligence has outlined the road ahead in a FREE report, 10 Up and Coming Fintechs for 2019. 

>> Download the report now

Join the conversation about this story »

• A Robinhood trader said he turned $5,000 into more than $130,000 thanks to Tesla's wild stock rally.
• A Reddit user with the name Kronos_415 said he netted the twenty-six-fold return in under a month by trading call options.
• He argued that an $800 stock price was fair given Tesla's innovations and aggressive expansion.
• "Anything beyond $900 for Tesla is purely speculative, as their financials can't legitimately back a valuation that high yet," he said.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A Robinhood user said he turned $5,000 into more than $130,000 thanks to Tesla's remarkable stock rally this year.

The trader, who has the username Kronos_415 on Reddit, said he netted the twenty-six-fold return in under a month. He told Business Insider that he's a 28-year-old business analyst in Washington, DC, who began investing six months ago. He declined to share his name.

The amateur investor and member of the WallStreetBets subreddit first bought Tesla options on Robinhood's stock-trading app on January 3. He made the decision after reading a slew of good news about the company, including the opening of its new Gigafactory in Shanghai and the first deliveries of its Model 3 cars in China.

The electric-car maker's stock surged more than 50% last month, to about $650 from $430. As a result, Kronos_415 was able to turn his "meager" $5,000 into $51,000, he said.

Next, he spent nearly $27,500 of his earnings on seven Tesla calls on February 3. Each of the options granted him the right to buy the stock at $700 until February 21. After the stock surged, he sold each call — worth $3,925 when he bought them — for $17,025, more than quadrupling his money.

Read more: An investor crushing 98% of his peers told us why Tesla's meteoric rise echoes the dot-com bubble era — and warns it's super-dangerous to buy now

Kronos_415 said his Tesla windfall totaled almost $131,000. A screenshot that he shared in the WallStreetBets subreddit backed up his story.

Tesla surged nearly 30% over Monday and Tuesday, prompting numerous skeptics to warn that its gains weren't sustainable. Indeed, the stock closed 17% lower on Wednesday, at $735.

However, Kronos_415 argued that the run-up was warranted.

"I feel that the rally this week is well deserved," he told Business Insider. "The strides Tesla is making in terms of battery technology combined with their aggressive rollout of vehicles and factories in emerging markets shows that they are hungry.

"I think a fair market price is $800," he continued. "When I saw it reach $900 to $950, I expected the pullback. Anything beyond $900 for Tesla is purely speculative, as their financials can't legitimately back a valuation that high yet."

Kronos added that he wouldn't be surprised if Tesla stock more than doubled to $2,000 in the next few years. In the meantime, he said he planned to grow his profits in an "aggressively managed" brokerage account, potentially leaving $5,000 to continue trading options on Robinhood.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A big-money investor in juggernauts like Facebook and Netflix breaks down the '3rd wave' firms that are leading the next round of tech disruption

• "Twin bubbles" in financial markets are poised to peak in the second quarter, according to Michael Hartnett, the chief investment strategist of Bank of America.
• He explains the factors that could end these displays of "irrational exuberance," and shares his investing strategy for right now.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

The Federal Reserve has played an outsized role in simultaneously securing the longest equity bull market and economic expansion in history.

At every juncture since the Great Recession, the Fed has intervened with a lifeline. Most recently, it pumped billions of dollars into short-term lending markets last September when a cash crunch set in, and continues to provide liquidity. 

But there are unintended outcomes of these stimulative measures, according to Michael Hartnett, the chief investment strategist of Bank of America.

In a note Friday, he pinpointed two broad areas where "excess liquidity" is brewing bubbles. And he provided multiple examples of their manifestations. 

The first bubble is in scarce yield assets.

Sovereign bonds take the cake in this category. Bank of America data shows a record $481 billion flowed into bond funds in 2019 even as the value of negative-yielding debt soared to a record exceeding $16 trillion.

This misnomer — investors chasing assets with sub-zero yields — was so prevalent last year that another strategist concluded he was seeing "the greatest bubble ever."  

While Hartnett does not size the trend as such, it is clearly a bubble in his book. 

The second bubble he flagged is in scarcegrowth assets.

For this one, Hartnett was armed with multiple examples of investments that have caught on like wildfire because of their prospective returns. 

Unsurprisingly, Tesla was his first example of present-day "irrational exuberance."

Bulls like the company because it is a trailblazer in the electric-vehicle industry. But the past few weeks have been head-scratching: shares soared 141% and then fell 29% within just 25 trading days on no groundbreaking news. Many market watchers cited a combo of short sellers being squeezed out of their bearish bets and a contagious fear of missing out.

Besides the Tesla phenomenon, Hartnett cited the boom of exchange-traded funds as another example of irrational behavior. Despite all the cost and diversification benefits of ETFs, he noted that a whopping 2,712 of them have been created over the past two years.

Yet another sign of growth excess that Hartnett cites is the private equity industry's bid to offload $1.5 trillion in unspent capital by lurching into shadow banking. According to PitchBook, the five-largest PE closes in 2019 were for buyout funds.

How the bubbles burst

Given the trends outlined above, the big question is when and how it all ends.

Hartnett pins the timing of a "big top" to the second quarter, at which point he says he will turn "rationally bearish." 

As for the triggers, one that already gives Hartnett cause for concern is that the S&P 500 is soaring to all-time highs even though new capital goods orders, a forward-looking gauge of business sentiment, remains flat.  

A more distant catalyst is a reversal of the Fed stimulus that has helped markets stay afloat. Hartnett envisions a scenario where investors' optimism about the election fuels animal spirits and prompts the Fed to scale back its liquidity support.  

An additional trigger Hartnett envisions is that investors completely underprice the biggest risks they have placed on the back burner for now, namely an economic recession, inflation, and credit defaults. 

Until these scenarios play out, Hartnett is staying "irrationally bullish" on risk assets during the first quarter. He sees the S&P 500 rising to 3,498 — a 5% rally from current levels that would mark the stock market's longest and largest bull market in history.

But once these records are in the books, all bets are off. 

SEE ALSO: Famed economist David Rosenberg explains why he puts the odds of a recession at 80%. He says the Fed is squarely to blame.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A big-money investor in juggernauts like Facebook and Netflix breaks down the '3rd wave' firms that are leading the next round of tech disruption

• Casper's IPO could spell bad news for other startups looking to go public this year.
• The company went public at a market capitalization that was less than half the $1.1 billion valuation venture investors gave it a year ago, and it raised far less money than it initial expected.
• Casper was likely hurt by the fact that it's losing substantial amounts of money and that it tried to portray itself as a tech firm when it really wasn't one, business experts told Business Insider.
• Startups that are losing money or don't have real claims to being tech companies could see similar pushback if they try to go IPO anytime soon, they said.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Casper's initial public offering may well give nightmares to the backers of other startups that are hoping to go public this year.

A year ago, the venture backers of the online mattress company valued it at $1.1 billion. But in the IPO, public investors said Casper wasn't even worth half that amount. Perhaps worse, the offering yielded far less cash for Casper than it initially hoped for — an important consideration for a company that's been rapidly burning through its stash.

The company's disappointing IPO should worry other unicorns — venture-backed startups with valuations of $1 billion or more — business and financial experts told Business Insider. Many of those companies are losing money, despite being in business for years, and many of them have only weak claims to being tech companies.

Casper's IPO "really bodes poorly for those companies who aren't making money yet, regardless of what sector they're in," Phillip Braun, a finance professor at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, said. "So, I think the market is being more risk averse towards these unicorns than they have in the past."

Even before it went public on Wednesday, Casper indicated that it expected public investors to be more skeptical of its value than its venture backers were. It initially said that it planned to offer is shares at between $17 and $19 a share. That would have given it a market capitalization of less than $800 million, a significant discount from its valuation last February, when it completed its last venture funding round.

Investors are skeptical of unicorns

But things got worse from there. The company decreased its pricing range to between $12 and $13 on Wednesday and then priced its shares at $12, giving it an initial market capitalization of around $490 million. Although the company's stock popped in its first day of trading on Thursday, rising as high as $15.85 a share, it sold off on Friday. By the close of trading, its stock was at $11.05 a share, putting its shares under their IPO price and giving the company a market capitalization of just $450 million.

In one sense, Casper's IPO was a success, in that it actually went public, unlike WeWork, which aborted its own offering in the face of investor resistance last fall. Some business experts were dubious that Casper would be able to pull it off.

But the fact that it could only do so at such a reduced valuation — and then saw its stock drop below its IPO process on its second day of trading is an indication of just how tough the road is for startups of Casper's ilk right now, the experts said.

"It's a healthy sign that people are skeptical," said Robert Hendershott, an associate finance professor at Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business.

Casper was hurt by its red ink

Part of what likely hurt Casper's IPO is that it's losing money, the expert said. The company expects to post a loss of between $91 million and $96 million for 2019, it said in its public-offering paperwork. That's about the same as in 2018, even though it projected that its sales had grown by 23% over the same period to as much as $441 million. Meanwhile, the company burned through about $73 million in cash from its operations and capital expenditures in just the first nine months of last year.

Subscribe to Trending, Business Insider's weekly newsletter that delves into the tech industry's most important developments

Over the last year, public investors have become increasingly skeptical of more mature startups that are losing substantial amounts of money. WeWork, which was burning through billions of dollars, wasn't even able to go public. Uber, Lyft, and Slack all saw their stock fall well below their initial prices. Casper is only the latest to see its losses under the microscope.

Unless and until it can turn itself around and show that it has a sustainable business, "I expect that Casper's stock is going to struggle," Hendershott said.

Investors aren't likely to shed their wariness of money-losing startups anytime soon, he said. Indeed, things could get worse in the future, if a high-profile company such as Casper or Uber were to fail after it went public, he said. After Pets.com infamously went bankrupt less than a year after it went public in 2000, investors largely kept their distance from similar companies, he said.

"It's too early to say if in 2020 we've reached a new equilibrium or whether we're going to see an additional level of scrutiny" of loss-making companies, Hendershott said.

Investors recognized that Casper's not a tech company

Casper was also likely hurt by its attempts to masquerade as a tech company, he and other business experts said.

In its IPO documents Casper attempted to portray itself as being on the forefront of sleep technology and pioneering a whole new market — in its case, "the sleep economy." Its pitch was similar to WeWork, which similarly touted its tech investments and called itself a "space-as-a-service" company rather than one that was operating in commercial real estate.

Venture investors may have bought into that hype, but in both cases, public investors saw through it. WeWork abandoned its IPO in the face of investor resistance, even after offering to dramatically slash its valuation. Meanwhile, Casper had to accept a valuation that was much closer to those of other mattress vendors, at least on price-to-sales basis, than that typically seen by tech firms.

"I view it as the market being smart, realizing that Casper's not a tech company and doesn't deserve a high multiple," Braun said.

Startups like Casper or WeWork that operate in old-line industries such as selling consumer goods or offering real estate are on notice that investors will recognize that, despite whatever efforts they may take to disguise that fact, Bruan and other experts said. And the market will value them accordingly.

"People aren't going to put up with marketing bullshit," said Rob Siegel, a lecturer in management at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He continued: "You're a real company or you're not."

Got a tip about Casper or another startup? Contact this reporter via email at twolverton@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

• Read more about Casper's public offering:
• Casper prices its IPO at $12 a share, giving it a valuation of $490 million, confirming that it's no longer a unicorn
• Buzzy mattress maker Casper is pitching itself as a tech company, just like WeWork did. Here why business experts are dubious.
• Casper, the buzzy mattress seller adored by millennials, has a costly returns problem that could be a nightmare for its IPO
• Casper's money-losing mattress business will face a tough IPO path, and some observers think the IPO might even get scrapped

SEE ALSO: Stunned venture capital investors say the government's move to kill the $1.4 billion acquisition of shaving upstart Harry's is a 'wakeup call' that could leave some types of startups unviable

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 8 weird robots NASA wants to send to space