Women who work in Utah's Silicon Slopes share its dark side

iStock; Rebecca Zisser/Insider

During an interview for an engineering job at a Utah tech company, Trina Limpert was told she was a "risky hire."

Although she got the job, Limpert still feels frustrated remembering her first day. As a network engineer, she had to prove herself by showing she could put together computer hardware. The male hires were given no such test and instead received shiny new desktops.

"When I got in and met everyone else I was working with, I was just as skilled. I was just as qualified," said Limpert, now the CEO of RizeNext, a Utah-based leadership-training consultancy she founded. She believes the only reason she was told she was a "risky hire" was because she's a woman.

It wasn't the only time she felt like she was being treated differently than male colleagues in Silicon Slopes, Utah's term for its tech industry. Limpert said she'd been passed over for promotions because people assumed a husband was providing for her, while she watched men get promotions because people assumed they were the primary breadwinners.

"Sexism exists everywhere," Limpert said. "There's an extra layer here. That's why I chose not to work at startups in Utah. Stereotypes of gender norms are extremely heavy here. There's the expectation you should be at home."

Utah has a unique atmosphere in the tech industry. It is ranked highest in job growth in the US, and it's projected to be the top state for tech job growth for the next decade, according to data from The Computing Technology Industry Association.

Many people are attracted to Utah because of its job opportunities, reasonable housing prices, abundant natural beauty, and its family-friendly reputation.

But unlike many other states with plentiful tech jobs, it ranks abysmally low on women's equality data points, according to multiple research reports.

Tech-worker transplants have moved to Utah only to be shocked by the culture there, multiple people said. Insider spoke to 22 women who previously or currently work at Utah tech companies told Insider. Some asked for anonymity so they could speak freely and to avoid retribution. Their identities are known to Insider.

Nearly all of these women said they experienced unequal treatment at their jobs or witnessed it for other women. Several women reported traumatic work experiences and shared personal stories about facing discrimination and sexual harassment.

"Traditionally, it has been a very conservative state, where women's labor-force participation has been low," Claudia Geist, an associate professor of sociology and gender studies at the University of Utah, told Insider. "There's the expectation that women are primary caregivers. Changing those ingrained perspectives is just difficult."

Fast-paced tech meets family-values conservatism

It's true that statistics and individual experiences can never fully capture a culture, and many Utah tech companies are making efforts to hire and promote more women, as well as offer family-friendly benefits that benefit both men and women.

It's also true that women experience similar issues in Silicon Valley and the tech industry at large. Women, for instance, are far less likely to receive venture-capital funding, while major companies including Google, Uber, Microsoft, and Meta have faced complaints or lawsuits from female employees alleging sexism and unequal pay.

But in Utah, these tech-industry tendencies can be more intense, according to the women who spoke to Insider.

Silicon Slopes, named for Utah's world-class ski slopes, is headquarters for tech companies like Ancestry, Domo, Entrata, Pluralsight, Qualtrics, and hosts outposts for others like Adobe and a Meta data-center. It has a burgeoning startup community fueled by talent from Brigham Young University and the University of Utah.

Unlike other states that are havens for tech jobs, such as California, Washington, and New York, Utah has a decidedly politically conservative bent, with four times more registered Republican voters than registered Democrats.

Utah is also the home base of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; over 60% of the state's population are members of the church. Mormons, who are heavily represented in Utah's tech scene, also tend to lean conservative both socially and politically, which influences the state's tech culture. For example, a member of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke at the Silicon Slopes Summit conference held last month.

Multiple research reports have ranked the state poorly in areas of women's equality. Utah has the third worst gender pay gap among US states, according to a report by the US Chamber of Commerce, with the median income for men about 37% higher than it is for women. That's a slightly bigger gap than Washington, home to Seattle's tech hub, but significantly worse than California and New York, where the gap is about 14%.

The American Community Survey found that 9.2% of women in Utah and 13.5% of men earn a college degree above a bachelor's, a wider gap in educational attainment than in any other state.

People in Utah also tend to have larger families, with 28% of the population under the age of 18. Because women often shoulder more childcare duties, particularly in socially conservative societies, 62% of women in Utah with children under 6 participate in the labor force, compared to 72% of US women overall.

All of these factors influence women's experiences in Silicon Slopes, keeping them from reaching leadership positions while contributing to difficult work experiences, the women Insider spoke to said.

"Utah is not in a very strong position when it comes to women in business in general, whether you're more in the tech corporate sector or whether you are a woman in small business and entrepreneurship," said Robyn Cohen, the founder and CEO of the W Collective, which focuses on supporting women in tech and venture capital.

The male-bonding boys' club

Michelle Kuo, the head of talent acquisition at JumpSearch, said she experienced culture shock when she relocated to Silicon Slopes. Kuo previously lived in Southern California, where she worked with more women and people of color.

"Women in general don't get as much opportunity to move up as often unless the company is open-minded and diverse," Kuo said. "For the longest time, culturally, women tend to stay at home. They're basically raised to be a homemaker."

Many women — both Mormon and not — described their Utah tech companies as a Mormon boys' clubs.

Tech companies commonly recruit talent after they complete their two-year missions for the church. The experience of spreading the word about their faith is seen as valuable work experience, particularly for sales teams, some of the women said.

"If you can sell religion, you can sell anything. That's the joke around why there's so many sales teams based here," one woman said.

Sales teams are often dominated by men and "male bonding" outside work is common, which means fewer women participate in out-of-office conversations. "It's really a big boys' club at the end of the day," one woman said.

Having been warned for decades by church leaders not to be alone with women other than their wives, many Mormon men won't meet with women one-on-one for lunch or coffee, multiple women said. Such attitudes may be slowly changing but are, for some, still deeply ingrained, The Salt Lake City Tribune reported in 2017.

"There's a feeling of discomfort among men and women working together," said Robbyn Scribner, a cofounder of Tech-Moms, a group that helps women move into the tech industry. "The Mike Pence rule is still alive and well. This comes back to the church. I am a member of the church, but I'm a feminist active member of my church. There's a long-standing policy that men and women should not be alone together if they're not married."

Women described instances of not being invited to golf outings, volleyball games, or the gym during lunch. One woman said she was asked to surpass her sales quota, while men on her team hit the gym during lunch once they hit their quotas.

"The people who got the best territories, these had been guys who had weight-lifting buddies. There was this kind of sense that if you wanted to get ahead, you had to do weight lifting and hunting and boy stuff with the guys," another woman said. "I just felt sort of left behind because I didn't do all that even though my performance was still really high."

This salesperson said she started getting fewer sales leads and felt she was getting pushed out after her boss learned she was pregnant. She wanted to move to a different team but was offered entry-level pay for the role.

"I was so insulted by that, I was like, I'm out of here," she said. "If it was a guy, they would have paid top dollar. They were just looking at me as a way to push me out."

One cybersecurity analyst recounted how she had to advocate for maternity leave when she got pregnant at her previous Utah employer. She argued that three months of maternity leave was necessary and had to compare it to how a field worker would need time off to recover from knee surgery.

"They can't imagine putting kids in day care let alone having a successful woman in the family, being a breadwinner," she said.

And there's not much legal help in the state for families seeking childcare help so both parents can work. For instance, a 2020 bill that would provide tax breaks for employers offering childcare benefits has yet to gain traction in the state legislature.

"Laws to promote more opportunities for women have been diminished because of that focus on how women should focus more on families rather than careers," said Scribner.

Then there's "benevolent sexism." This is common everywhere, but especially in more conservative and religious societies where there's more of a divide in gender roles, said Susan Madsen, a Utah State University business professor who has led studies on women's equality in Utah.

Men may make well-meaning comments like, "Oh, you take more time with your kids, you don't need to go to this event this evening," she said, which leaves women with fewer opportunities for advancement. "It's very subtle but has been shown to impact a woman's advancement and career."

HR policy: Confront the boss who harasses you

Other women described experiences that crossed the line from sexism to harassment.

One woman said she often got propositioned by married men who would invite her to hotels. Another said male colleagues would touch her without permission, putting their arms around her back or their hands on her waist.

"After a while, I learned there was somebody who got kicked out of the company because he did the same thing to another female employee," she said of one of the men who had harassed her. She said she stayed "quiet at the time because I was traumatized. I don't know how to handle it that well."

She said most of her colleagues were white, male, and Mormon.

"Their wives are at home. In the engineering department, it's mostly all male," she continued. "When there's a female, it makes them a target for that because there's not a lot of women they interact with daily."

Other women who said they experienced sexual harassment came up against problems when they reported incidents. One woman said she reported sexual harassment, and the company's policy was that she had to confront her harasser, who was a higher-level leader.

While she did confront him about it, she received no follow-up from her company until a year and a half later. She had to re-explain to HR what happened and send proof of her previous communications.

During that time, her harasser had gotten promoted and was also accused of harassing someone else, she said. He was finally let go more than two years after the incident.

"I've stayed with the company because I did want to make it work," the woman said. "It's been really frustrating."

How things are changing

John Richards, a managing partner at Startup Ignition Ventures, moved to Utah from Seattle 20 years ago. He said the difference between when he arrived and now is like "night and day." Today, more women are working in tech, and men's attitudes toward women have evolved.

Still, he said that Utah's tech industry still has a long way to go, including in closing the pay gap.

While Richards said his firm works to recruit women for its entrepreneurship boot camp, women in Utah often leave the workforce to stay home to raise children. And those who don't stay home are still doing the lion's share of domestic work.

"It's not fair for a lot of women who still do most of the domestic chores at home even if they're working," Richards said. "Working at a tech company in a high-pressure job, and then you also gotta go home and carry a huge burden of domestic responsibilities. That's all changing, but it's changing gradually. Women are under a lot of pressure."

Of course, there are some women working in Silicon Slopes who do view their companies as equitable workplaces and see positive role models around them.

"I feel like I'm pretty fortunate," Emily Perkins, a content research manager for Ancestry, said. "I do work with a lot of women, and I do have a manager that's a woman and a CEO that's a woman and a vice president of our company that is a woman. I feel pretty lucky in that regard."

Ancestry, one of Utah's most established tech companies, hired former Facebook executive Deborah Liu as CEO in 2021.

Liu, known for championing diversity in technology, is the cocreator of the Women in Product nonprofit. Ancestry's chief product officer is Heather Friedland, who previously worked at Glassdoor.

Ancestry says that 38% of its leadership roles are held by people from diverse communities, which includes women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, veterans, and people with disabilities. The company didn't break out statistics on women in its first diversity report, released last year.

"We are proud of the female tech leadership at Ancestry, but we know there is still more to do," Ashlee Davis, Ancestry's global head of DEI, said in a statement. "We remain committed to fostering an inclusive workforce that is reflective of our diverse world, and we're proud to partner with other Utah companies that share that commitment."

More change may happen for Silicon Slopes because the lack of female representation is having a measurable impact. Limpert said she's gotten calls from executives at Utah companies hoping to go public who've told her that NASDAQ won't work with them because their leadership is made up entirely of white men.

"The labor market in Utah is extremely tight," Scribner said. "We have to import a lot of talent from other states. A lot of women getting recruited from other areas, other states, look at a company that's all white, Mormon men, and say, 'I don't want to move my life and my family.'"

As the state looks to recruit more tech workers, there's a growing awareness that damaging attitudes toward female talent must change.

"Even though we're the worst state for women's equality, we're not passively looking at it," Madsen, the Utah State University business professor, said. "We're saying, 'No, we need to change.' We want to be really well known for how good we become for girls and women."

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Seeking nominations for Insider's 2023 Oracles of Wall Street list highlighting this year's most outstanding forecasters

Stock trader Peter Tuchman looks at a clipboard on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the closing bell on December 30, 2022 in New York.

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• Insider is seeking nominations for its 2023 Oracles of Wall Street list.
• Nominees can be strategists, economists, or analysts with calls that are published and verifiable.
• The deadline for submissions is November 7, 2023.

Like most years, 2023 has been full of milestones and surprises in financial markets. 

Many forecasters have eaten humble pie, thanks to the much-anticipated recession that did not arrive, the jump in interest rates, the stock market's resilience, and other narrative-defying events.

But do you know an analyst, strategist, or economist who's nailed their forecasts in 2023? We'd like to hear from you.

Insider is seeking nominations for our 2023 Oracles of Wall Street list, which will highlight this year's top financial and economic visionaries.

Nominations can be made through this form and below.

Nominees can be financial professionals from firms of any size. Their calls from early 2023 or late 2022 must be verifiable through published documents or media coverage.

Some examples of the types of calls we're looking for include: how the S&P 500 has performed; where 10-year Treasury yields have gone; how inflation has trended; how the labor market has performed; where national home prices have gone; the performance of a single stock; a major M&A transaction; how the economy has fared this year; and more. 

The deadline for submissions is November 7, 2023. Please direct any questions to William Edwards at wedwards@insider.com.

 

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Tesla is under investigation by the Justice Department over its driving range claims, and reportedly over plans to build a glass house for Elon Musk

Elon Musk's EV firm is being investigated by the Department of Justice.

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• Tesla disclosed in its quarterly report that it had been subpoenaed by the Department of Justice.
• The company said it was asked for information on personal benefits and vehicle range, among others.
• In July, Reuters reported that Tesla set up a secret team to cancel appointments related to driving-range complaints.

Tesla is being investigated over its cars' driving range and perks for executives, the company disclosed on Monday.

In its quarterly report to investors, Tesla said it had been subpoenaed by the Department of Justice "regarding certain matters associated with personal benefits, related parties, vehicle range and personnel decisions."

The driving range of Tesla vehicles was at the centre of a Reuters report in July, in which some drivers said their cars couldn't drive as far as was advertised.

A Model 3 owner told Reuters that his car was sometimes getting less than half the advertised 353-mile range. And when he booked a service appointment to check this out, it was canceled after Tesla said "remote diagnostics" determined the battery was fine, per Reuters.

According to Reuters, Tesla had created a "Diversion Team" to cancel range-related appointments after it was inundated by owners who expected better driving ranges based on advertised estimates.

In August, three Tesla owners brought a class-action lawsuit against the company, accusing it of "false advertising of its electric vehicles' range."

According to The Wall Street Journal, Tesla's disclosure of an investigation related to "personal benefits" pertains to a secret project which involved building a glass house for Elon Musk.

The Journal previously reported in August that the DoJ and Securities and Exchange Commission were looking into the project, known internally as "Project 42," and that Tesla board members had investigated whether company resources were misused for it.

In Monday's filing, Tesla said: "To our knowledge no government agency in any ongoing investigation has concluded that any wrongdoing occurred."

Tesla did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

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The sad, lonely secret behind America's never-ending wave of Marvel movies and Disney reboots

Media companies are in the business of selling nostalgia — and it's because Americans are lonely.

Joanne Joo for Insider

In 2010, the Walt Disney Company remade "Alice in Wonderland," kicking off a run of 14 live-action remakes of their animated classics that would gross the company $3.2 billion at the domestic box office over the following decade. That same year, eyeing the coming conclusion of their "Harry Potter" film franchise, Warner Bros. struck a deal to have an entire section of Universal's Orlando resort built out into The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, beginning a brisk, decade-long trade of selling millennials plastic wands and color-coded apparel and homewares. One year later, Sony would reboot the "Spider-Man" franchise, Fox would reboot the "X-Men" franchise, and two years after that DC would reboot the "Superman" franchise. 

This wave of reboots and revivals was not a coincidence. 

The major, connecting way that these financial entities are able to capitalize on our emotions — be it through movie remakes or toys or a Tasmanian Devil ashtray — is by appealing to nostalgia. It's a complex emotion, but attempts to harness (or exploit) nostalgia are one of the key drivers behind the vast business juggernaut that is the pop culture industry. 

The precise "why" of nostalgia is murky. But we know that, time and again, nostalgia drives people to spend unfathomable amounts of money on things they liked as a kid. What's the thinking behind spending thousands of dollars on a single animation cell from a show you liked when you were young? Why did an entire generation plow the affluence they came into in the '90s into household goods and apparel derived from shows they watched while munching cereal on Saturday mornings? Why, despite a college degree, despite a revulsion for nearly everything the former richest woman in England believes about gender, despite a good life and career and general satisfaction, why on earth does a real part of me still yearn for a personalized letter inviting me to Hogwarts?

The answer of why nostalgia is able to get its hooks so deep into younger generations may come down to another emotion: loneliness. Around the same time as the emergence of reboots, studies found that young people were reporting levels of loneliness that had not been seen in decades. As we became more disconnected from the people around us, we sought out comfort in other ways. If the key driver of reboots is nostalgia — then the key driver of nostalgia is loneliness. 

The lonely roots of nostalgia

A series of studies out of Southampton University published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2006 sought to understand nostalgia through a series of experiments. In one, drawing on a sample of 43 students, researchers tried to figure out if there was a link between loneliness and feelings of nostalgia. The subjects were asked to take a test to calculate their score on the UCLA Loneliness Scale, a quick assessment that asks people how often they feel disconnected from others, such as how often they feel alone, or starved for company, or find it difficult to make friends. Researchers then informed each participant of their score and whether it indicated things like a high or low degree of loneliness.

Next, participants took Batcho's Nostalgia Inventory, a psychological test developed by Krystine Batcho in 1995 to quantify how deeply people feel nostalgia at a given time. It's a questionnaire where respondents select a number between 1 and 9 (1 indicating "not at all," 9 meaning "very much") to describe how much they miss things from when they were younger. The topics are things like "family," "heroes or heroines," "things you did," "toys," "holidays," "the way society was," "your house," and "not knowing sad or evil things." Finally, the respondents were asked, as a means of confirmation, how lonely they felt on a scale of 1 to 5. 

But here's the trick. That first questionnaire, the loneliness one, was faked. The researchers pulled questions from the UCLA test but rigged it by tweaking the questions. Then they didn't actually score it, but randomized whether they told the person they had a high degree of loneliness (in the 62nd percentile of loneliness) or a low degree of loneliness (in the 12th percentile of loneliness). 

If the key driver of reboots is nostalgia — then the key driver of nostalgia is loneliness.

The goal wasn't actually to determine how lonely they were. It was to prime them, to make them think either that they were more lonely than the typical person or less lonely than average. It worked. That confirmation, asking them how lonely they felt. The group primed to feel less lonely — the people who were told they had low loneliness after the fake first test — reported an average loneliness of 1.3, whereas the group primed to believe they had high loneliness reported an average of 2.9 out of 5.

The results were consistent with a causal relationship between loneliness and nostalgia. They found that the group that was told they were lonelier scored higher on the nostalgia index (an average score of 3.01) than the group who believed they were less lonely (an average of 2.56). 

The ratings of nostalgia for "my family," "the way people were," "having someone to depend on," and "not having to worry" were significantly higher statistically among those primed for loneliness compared with those who were not. It corroborated the idea that there's a fundamental link between feelings of being alone and the psychological emergence of nostalgia. 

The loneliness epidemic

Although the rise of nostalgia in media is mostly anecdotal, there's repeated evidence that people — particularly younger people — are more lonely than before, and that things like social media can exacerbate those feelings of loneliness. American health insurer Cigna has conducted a large loneliness survey since 2018, with over ten thousand respondents in the sample annually. In 2020, 61% of those surveyed were lonely, up 7 percentage points since the survey was first conducted in 2018.

Time and again, polling illustrates that Americans of all ages are experiencing serious loneliness, which was exacerbated significantly by a pandemic. A September 2022 Pew Research Center survey found that 41% of respondents felt lonely in at least one or two of the past seven days. In some cases, the loneliness is extreme: A Pew Research survey from this summer found that 8% of Americans said they have no close friends. A Gallup survey from February 2023 asked if respondents experienced loneliness a lot of the day yesterday, and 17% said yes. That's down from the pandemic high of 25%, but still means that one in six people felt lonely yesterday. 

While the expectation might be that elderly people are more likely to feel lonely, the opposite is true: It was people aged 18 to 29 with the highest percentages of loneliness, hitting 24% compared to just 13% among those 65 and up. It's young people — the primary demographic targeted for mainstream pop culture — who are feeling lonely.

Things have not always been this way. An analysis of 345 studies of loneliness published between 1976 and 2019 that covered 124,855 participants between the ages of 18 and 29 found that there was a steady increase in reported levels of loneliness over time through about 2012, at which point the increase leveled off and has held steady. This would appear to align with the mainstream introduction of smartphones, certainly, but it also aligns with another thing: the utter dominance of reboot and nostalgia-based entertainment.  

Cash cows

Nostalgia-driven media has become a behemoth. The first legacy reboots — films that attempted to introduce new characters following in the footsteps of the main characters of films produced a generation ago — truly kicked off with "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" in 2008, followed by "TRON: Legacy" in 2010. The levee quickly broke, and by 2015, "Jurassic World," "Terminator Genisys," and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" were throwing gasoline on that fire. Since then, standalone films like "Independence Day," "Trainspotting," "Blade Runner," "The Incredibles," "The Shining," "Ghostbusters" and "Coming to America" have all seen a legacy sequel cash-in attempt. 

Heather Jones (art), Walt Hickey (data)

And this business strategy works. The top movie this year is about a childhood toy, the top three movies of 2022 worldwide were "Top Gun," "Avatar," and "Jurassic Park" sequels. The top two video games of this year are the latest game from a 37-year-old "Legend of Zelda" franchise and "Hogwarts Legacy," an elaborate and immersive cash-in that allows players to finally get that letter inviting them to Hogwarts. 

Much of the industry is out with the new, and in with the old. And it's happening everywhere. For years, book sales used to be evenly balanced between backlist (books released over a year ago) and frontlist (books released within the past year); in 2021, backlist was up to 68% of sales, meaning people were reading older books twice as often as they were buying new ones. People don't subscribe to streaming services to watch new originals — the top shows in the second quarter of this year were "SpongeBob," the CW's "The Flash," and "South Park," with older shows like "The Simpsons," "Game of Thrones," and "Breaking Bad" all remaining firmly in the top 20. Before they lost the rights, the five most popular shows on Netflix in 2018 were "The Office," "Friends," "Parks and Recreation," "Grey's Anatomy" and "New Girl." Those shows alone accounted for 17% of the time spent on Netflix. 

It's even seen on the merchandise side. Take Funko, the bobblehead company, which owns a license to pretty much everything in pop culture. According to their most recent annual earnings, 64% of Funko sales are from "evergreen" properties, or movies and television that aren't new. 

We know there is a compelling link between loneliness and nostalgia. We also know that nostalgia sells incredibly well, that people want the things that brought them comfort as kids when they feel alone. With few indications that the loneliness crisis will abate any time soon, it's unclear if there's any motivation to dial back the retreads: Indeed, reboots of "Percy Jackson and the Olympians," "TRON," "Ghostbusters," "Beetlejuice," "Gladiator," and even "The Passion of the Christ" are in the Hollywood pipeline. As long as there's demand, the studios are happy to supply it. And right now, consumers are demanding nostalgia comfort food.

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Walt Hickey is deputy editor of data and analysis at Insider. He is also the author of You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything.

Excerpted and adapted from "You Are What You Watch." (Workman) by Walt Hickey. Copyright © 2023. Data visuals copyright © by Heather Jones (art) and Walt Hickey (data).

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The S&P 500 just logged its longest losing streak of the year as spiking bond yields sow panic on Wall Street

The benchmark S&P 500 index just logged its longest losing streak of 2023, per data from Refinitiv.

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• US stocks' early-year rally has ground to a halt in recent months.
• The benchmark S&P 500 index just notched its longest losing streak of 2023, per Refinitiv.
• Its losses come with Wall Street fretting about slumping bond prices, with 10-year Treasury yields hitting a 16-year high Monday.

US stocks are now on their longest losing streak of 2023, with an unprecedented sell-off in longer-duration bonds spooking Wall Street and weighing on equities.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.2% Monday as investors fretted about 10-year Treasury yields hitting a 16-year high of 5%, having also fallen over the final four trading days of last week.

It's the first time since December 2022 that the benchmark index has ended five straight sessions in the red, according to data from Refinitiv.

Stocks started 2023 on a tear, powered higher by the massive explosion of interest in AI and investors' belief that the Federal Reserve would start cutting interest rates before the end of the year.

But they've given up some of those gains in recent months, with the S&P 500 now down 8% from its peak on July 31. The Nasdaq Composite has slipped 9% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has shed more than 2,500 points over the same period.

Spiking bond yields have led to the sell-off deepening in recent weeks.

Yields on 10- and 30-year US Treasurys have soared above 5% for the first time since 2007, with the Fed signaling to investors that it will hold borrowing costs at their current levels well into 2024 in a bid to kill off inflation, which is still lingering above the central bank's 2% target.

When bond yields rise, stocks tend to suffer because investors are able to pivot to lower-risk assets that offer a better relative rate of return.

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China is a stormy place to do business right now after shock exec arrests and Foxconn probes

Terry Gou, founder and chairman of Foxconn, in 2017.

Eason Lam/Reuters

• Recent events in China should rattle anyone looking to do business there.
• On Monday, authorities launched several investigations into Taiwanese Apple supplier Foxconn.
• That follows shock arrests and allegations of bribery at the Shanghai offices of US agency GroupM.

Recent events in China should give pause to foreigners looking to do business there.

In the past 48 hours, the news emerged that Chinese authorities launched multiple investigations into Taiwan-based Foxconn, an essential supplier for Apple's iPhone. The company is facing tax audits and investigations into its land use, Chinese media reports said. Foxconn is a major employer in China with hundreds of thousands of workers. The probe may be political, sources told Reuters.

And in Shanghai, Chinese police raided the offices of WPP-owned media agency GroupM, detaining one senior executive and later two more former employees, The Financial Times and other outlets reported. The employees are being held over allegations of commercial bribery, per reports.

A WWP spokesperson told Insider in a statement: "Following the detention of a GroupM China executive on charges of bribery last week, we are cooperating with the authorities and conducting our own investigation with an independent third party."

They said the company could not comment on the details of an active police investigation. "However, we are terminating the executive's employment with the company, and GroupM is suspending trade with any external organization we understand to be part of the police enquiries," they continued.

"We are absolutely committed to behaving in accordance with the law and our own code of conduct, and will take all necessary action to ensure this is the case within our business," the spokesperson added.

Chilling effect

The probes and arrests are likely to further chill foreign business activity in China. They also follow a warning from the FBI and other international spy agencies of the ongoing risks of doing business there — namely getting spied on and having ideas stolen.

Beijing has ramped up counter-espionage laws over the last year, giving it wide latitude to investigate perceived threats to national security. Probes into firms with foreign ties have duly followed.

Blue-chip consultancy Bain and New York-based due-diligence group Mintz have both been targeted by raids this year. In March, five Mintz Chinese employees were detained by authorities.

"It's definitely problematic for businesses," Steve Tsang, the director of the SOAS China Institute, told Insider. "The one thing businesses really want is certainty. Not knowing why this is happening is problematic because you don't really know what you need to do."

"I think some companies will get more concerned and think more in terms of the security of their staff," he said. "But it's not going to change everything overnight."

Outwardly, China's leaders have emphasized the country is open to foreign investment. "Both Chinese investment overseas and foreign investment in China have boosted friendship, cooperation, confidence, and hope," said Chinese Premier Xi Jinping earlier this month at a summit on the country's Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.

Those statements have contrasted with crackdowns and raids in the private sector.

In May, Dan Harris, a Seattle lawyer who works with foreign companies in China, told The New York Times he had seen businesses looking to reduce their presence in China without abandoning the market altogether.

Apple is turning on the charm

The investigation at Foxconn also has implications for Apple.

Foxconn's founder, Terry Gou, announced his Taiwanese presidential bid in the summer, citing links with major tech companies, including Apple, as protection against Beijing's potential retaliation. In August, Gou said it would only hurt China's reputation and interests if it confiscated the company's assets.

"If the Chinese Communist Party dares to do this, which country, which investment fund, which company would dare to invest in China?" he said.

CEO Tim Cook unexpectedly visited China this week in his second trip of 2023, underscoring the market's importance both for production and sales.

During his visit, Cook met with commerce minister Wang Wentao, who emphasized that the country welcomed Apple, along with other multinationals, a statement from the Chinese ministry said.

Yet Apple has been struggling in China after disappointing sales of the new iPhone 15, and amid reports the company had been outpaced in some areas by Chinese competitor Huawei.

Beijing also reportedly banned the use of iPhones by government officials. Although the Chinese government later denied these reports, Apple suffered a $200 billion market capitalization loss in the days that followed.

Representatives for GroupM declined to comment. Foxconn did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, made outside normal working hours.

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The first Ukrainian F-16 pilots are finally moving from training on flight simulators to real combat aircraft: report

A General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon.

US Air Force

• The first Ukrainian F-16 pilots-in-training are in the process of moving from simulators to the real thing.
• Ukraine's Air Force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat announced this on Sunday, per local media. 
• There's still a long path to getting the aircraft into Ukrainian skies in the war with Russia, however.

Ukraine's F-16 pilots are in the process of moving from using flight simulators to training in real combat aircraft — another development in allowing the US-made fighter jets to be used against Russia's air force.

"We anticipate that the initial cohort of F-16 pilots, currently undergoing training on flight simulators, will soon shift to the cockpits of training and combat aircraft," Ukraine's Air Force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said on Sunday, according to the translation of The New Voice of Ukraine.

"We're currently in the process of transitioning to combat aircraft," he added, per the outlet. "Flights will be conducted with an instructor and will conclude with independent piloting after this training."

Ukrainian pilot training on the much-sought-after aircraft started in late August, Reuters reported. The process has seen pilots travel to countries such as the US and Denmark.

Ukraine's military has called out for F-16s since the earliest days of Russia's full-scale invasion — a call that was answered this summer.

The plane is no silver bullet in the conflict, but it's a notable improvement to Ukraine's stock of Soviet-era jets, as Insider's Chris Panella reported.

It has multiple potential uses, including defending against Russia's exploding drone barrages, bombarding Russian defensive positions on the front line, and — a more risky and therefore less likely scenario — dogfights with Russian planes, Insider's Jake Epstein reported. Much of its capabilities will depend on the weapons it's equipped with — and the effectiveness of the pilots flying it.

A group of Ukrainian pilots arrived in Tucson, Arizona last month, first to be tested for English-language ability and then to join the US Air Force's main training hub, Politico reported.

A recent video released by Ukraine's Air Force detailed how even those pilots who have stayed in Ukraine have begun studying flying F-16s in virtual-reality environments, in between combat missions.

But transferring the F-16 to Ukraine — estimated to happen in early 2024 — is far from the only step needed.

A coalition of 11 countries, spearheaded by the US, is providing the training on both flying and maintaining the support structure to get them in the air, according to Politico.

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