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October 5 · Issue #30 · View online
A weekly summary of the latest news in our world of finance, design, and technology.
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âWe have to recognize that weâre in a transition [regarding climate action]â Mike Corbat, CEO Citigroup Inc In January, Jan Erik Kjerpeseth, CEO of Sparebanken Vest,  stated that banksâ climate requirements would increase in the future . This is a trend that weâre seeing more and more of. Sparebanken Vest is open to reducing the interest rate for companies reaching their emission targets and excluding companies that donât have plans for cutting emissions. However, they havenât announced anything official yet.
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This week the Norwegian CEO of the saving-app Dreams, Ăystein Høie, broke the news that he will join the startup Fauna.  Fauna is currently developing a bonus-program to act more environmentally friendly , with an app packed with gamification and incentives. They want to be a guide to good climate choices with a proven effect. Something many are interested in considering a recent survey from Opinion showing that 8 out of 10 Norwegians want to be more environmentally friendly, but that they do not know how to proceed.
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The Financial Times pegs the value of Deltaâs loyalty program at a whopping $26 billion, American Airlines at $24 billion, and United at $20 billion. All of these valuations are comfortably above the market capitalization of the airlines themselves â Delta is worth $19 billion, American $6 billion, and United $10 billion. In other words, if you take away the loyalty program, Deltaâs real-world airline operation â with hundreds of planes, a world-beating maintenance operation, landing rights, brand recognition, and experienced executives â is worth roughly negative $7 billion. But the economics of the loyalty program doesnât work without a robust airline operation.
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A lot of companies are taking a hard stance on environmental issues (and other political issues). This week Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase,  took another stance , stating that, from now on, his company would be what he calls âmission-focused.â With that, he means that Coinbase will devote all of its attention to achieving the goal of creating the âinfrastructure for the crypto economy,â but will refrain from any activism, and wonât take a stand on policy or societal issues that go beyond their mission. Later, Armstrong also announced that  Coinbase would offer severance packages to employees who were dissatisfied with the updated mission statement. Maybe this can make Coinbase keep their blinds on,  considering the vast environmental impact of cryptocurrency? đ¤
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A month ago, we talked about Vipps going international. We mentioned that selling a mobile wallet in Europe will be an uphill battle for Vipps when their main competitors are Apple and Google, which create the devices users are paying with. This week, Rune Garborg, CEO of Vipps, replied to Lucas Weldeghebrielâs  original article on Vipps going international. Rune Garborg acknowledges itâs going to be an uphill battle but states that the genuinely unique thing about Vippsâ success in Norway is not the technology or the marketing - it is the cooperation between the banks. It now remains to be seen whether Vipps can cooperate with European banks, considering no one has earned any money from Vipps yet.
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