Forbes November 2020

NATIONAL MAN OF THE YEAR RICH PENTZ Fishers, IN Principal Global Investors 2020 LOCAL WINNERS ALABAMA • BIRMINGHAM: Chris Devine, Green Rock • Sarah McElvy, Milo’s Tea Company • SOUTH ALABAMA: Gene Fox, Remax; Town of Dauphin Island • Cathy De La Garza, Uniti Fiber • ARIZONA • PHOENIX: Anthony Lee, MD, Synergy Rehabilitation & Wellness Center • Phoenix • Kelly Bowden, Bowden Investment Group • ARKANSAS • BENTONVILLE: Kyle Moore, Edward Jones • Helen Page, PricewaterhouseCoopers • LITTLE ROCK • Justin Kramer, Conway Christian School • Nicole Wilson, Arkansas Children’s Hospital • CALIFORNIA • BAKERSFIELD: Anthony Galagaza, Bakersfield City Fire Department • Keri Lynn Kehoe, Self-Employed • BAY AREA: William Ellis, Google • Dominique Kim, Blue Shield of California • FRESNO: Nicolas Kazarian, Wells Fargo • Kristen Droogh, Guardian Harvest • GOLD COAST:…

Robert F. Smith told me something a few months ago that stuck: The coronavirus, he said, had in some ways been “a blessing.” Specifically, it had forced upon everyone in America time to slow down, to listen, to think. That helped explain the countrywide urgency following George Floyd’s killing and other racial injustices: Given this unrequested gift of time, millions of Americans could see the obvious in ways they previously couldn’t. National reflection spurred national action. Progress requires that business play a leading role. Examples abound on our fourth annual Just 100 list (page 63), which shows that even big-box retailers like Target (page 61) have embraced the benefits of the proverbial rising tide that lifts all boats. As a voice for progress throughout our history, Forbes is also taking action. Our qualitative…

While we are focused on a possible new wave of Covid-19 cases and the upcoming elections, other crises are brewing that could have an outsize—and adverse—impact on the U.S. Two big ones are a possible conflict between Turkey and Greece—whose enmity goes back centuries—and trouble in the underappreciated and underreported country of Belarus, which had been part of the old Soviet Union but became a separate nation when the Soviet empire collapsed in 1991. Both Turkey and Greece are increasingly at odds over drilling rights for oil and gas in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Greece, which has numerous islands in the area, says it has sovereignty over the particular waters that hold considerable drilling promise. Turkey is disputing this claim and recently sent a seismic vessel, backed up by warships, to carry…

The Last Trial—by Scott Turow (Grand Central Publishing, $29). This legal mystery tells a fascinating story smoothly and compellingly. Turow develops his characters in real, multidimensional ways, turning John Donne’s seeming truism that no man is an island on its head: We are complex individuals who are indeed islands, often mysterious, even as we interact with one another. Turow has a gift for portraying what could be boring courtroom procedurals as gripping dramas. This allows him not to stint in laying out the full narrative of a complicated trial. You’ll even get the best quick explanation of the differences between civil and criminal cases. His ability to explain arcane material in ways that lay people can readily grasp extends, in this case, to the mind-numbing procedures involved in getting a drug…

(Inset) Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis The NFL is back, bringing with it the two most expensive stadiums ever built: Stanley Kroenke’s $5 billion SoFiStadium in Los Angeles and Mark Davis’ $1.9 billion Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas (page 17). The venues were the capstones of two franchise relocations and helped turbocharge those teams’ values: The Los Angeles Rams are now worth $4 billion, up 176% in five years; the Las Vegas Raiders are up 117% over the same period, to $3.1 billion. Unfortunately, SoFiand Allegiant opened in front of empty seats and vacant boxes, as virus restrictions will keep fans in both cities absent all season. Still, the Rams’ and Raiders’ valuations are both up year-over-year in 2020, as is every other NFL franchise save the Cincinnati Bengals, who were…

When Snowflake pulled off the largest software IPO in history on September 16, it minted three new billionaires, including CEO Frank Slootman (above). Big companies including Adobe, Lionsgate and Sony love Snowflake’s cloud platform, which helps them manage enormous amounts of proprietary data across a variety of apps and programs while sharing it—safely—with business partners. Among its fans: Berkshire Hathaway and Salesforce, both of which bought in as part of the float. “The only problem today was no one wanted to be a seller because the conviction was so high,” Slootman, 62, said on the first trading day, when the stock more than doubled from its offering price of $120 to close at $253.93. Some problem. With a market cap above $70 billion after day one, San Mateo, California–based Snowflake is the…