Table of contents for December 2019 in Fortune

FACEBOOK KILLS LIBRA When Facebook announced a global cryptocurrency called Libra last June, the company said it would launch in early 2020. Now those plans are in disarray as partners flee and regulators heap scorn on the scheme. In the new year, look for Facebook to throw in the towel on Libra—and launch Leo, where Instagram users can trade kitten photos for cash. PROTESTERS’ NEW TOOLS As demonstrations around the world grow over political and environmental issues, protesters increasingly take measures to evade the facial-recognition technology that has been spreading in recent years. Some use old-school scarves or umbrellas, but others turn to more innovative tools—fashion and makeup designed to confuse image-recognition systems and masks that make the protester look like a different person. PIRACY MAKES A COMEBACK Netflix,…

“LEAD FROM THE BACK,” Nelson Mandela famously said, “and let others believe they are in front.” In a year dominated by political chaos and bluster, it was a rare brand of steady—even quiet—leadership that won the day in the business world. And no one epitomizes that brand of obsessively results-driven, team-based leadership more than our new No. 1 (turn the page to find out more). To create our annual list, we first screen for results, looking at 10 financial factors ranging from total return to shareholders to return on capital. Then we search for the standouts. The leaders who tackled audacious goals, overcame impossible odds, found creative solutions. Read on for how they—and their companies—thrived in 2019. You just might learn something about tackling a challenge of your own. 1…

HERE’S WHAT PASSES FOR GOOD NEWS these days at Mattel, the iconic toymaker that has taken more knocks than one of its Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots: a quarter of not losing money. In late October, Mattel posted positive quarterly cash flow for the first time in three years. It grew revenues for its second consecutive quarter, a feat it hadn’t achieved since 2013. Even its long-troubled Fisher-Price tots division would have reported single-digit year-over-year sales increases but for a $34 million recall of nearly 5 million Rock ’n Play Sleepers feared to have caused more than 30 infant deaths. Some of Mattel’s news was good by any measure. Unlike archrival Hasbro, it isn’t being hit by tariffs imposed in the U.S.-China trade dispute, thanks to savvy shipping arrangements with…

AMERICAN STOCK MARKETS keep hitting heady new highs. So why are investors acting as though the sky’s about to fall? Yes, the S&P 500 has eclipsed the vaunted 3,000-point barrier several times over the past year. The same applies to the Dow Jones industrial average, which has regularly breached the 27,000-point level. Those high-water marks have instilled some observers with confidence that the current bull market has room yet to run. Yet the myriad ups and downs between those highs tell a different story. As of mid-November, the market was up only slightly from peaks it reached way back in January 2018. And volatility has become the new status quo. Through October, there were 37 days this year on which the S&P 500 moved either up or down 1% or…

“SECTION 230 SHOULD BE ABOLISHED,” boomed Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at a gathering of New York media in October. Many other people feel the same way. Not long ago, the 23-year-old law known as Section 230 was hailed as a pillar of the U.S. Internet economy for protecting any “interactive computer service” from being sued because of the bad behavior of its users. This legal shield meant online publishers like Reddit and Yahoo could host freewheeling discussions with few repercussions. But in recent years, Section 230 has been blamed for enabling the worst aspects of the tech industry—be it fake news on Facebook, terrorist propaganda on Twitter, or websites that traffic in revenge porn. In August, the law gained further notoriety when Amazon invoked it to argue that it…

FOR MORE than a century, Ford Motor Co. has manufactured many millions of vehicles with names like Model T, Falcon, Fairlane, Thunderbird, Taurus, Fusion, and F-150. But ask anyone which brand stands apart from the rest, and you’ll get the same answer: Mustang. Since its introduction at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, the sporty Mustang—affordable, powerful, as impractical (up to 760 horsepower!) as it is practical (it has a back seat!)—has developed into a pulse-quickening symbol of America’s particular obsession with the open road. Indeed, when the titular character in this year’s hit film Captain Marvel experiences a flashback to her younger days as a military pilot, she’s pictured outside the hangar beside her candy-apple-red, first-generation Ford Mustang. But symbols don’t necessarily lead to sales, and the ’Stang—a two-door…

THE SCENE IS QUIET, EERILY SO. A camera moves over a motionless child—dressed in church clothes, laid out on a metal table—and then pans over a huddle of grieving family members. There is another video just like it, and another, and another—an entire series that, collectively, offers a startling amount of footage showing children lying dead in a morgue in the Philippines. Two stoic-looking women figure prominently in the videos. One of them, Annie Gabito, has a stern and commanding presence. The other, Persida Acosta, is typically at the center of the scene. Acosta, the chief public attorney of the Philippines, offers a word or hand to the grief-stricken family and, in one instance, with a look of serious inquiry prods the child’s lifeless body. Broadcast live on Facebook over…

TYLER PERRY CONQUERS THE (ENTERTAINMENT) WORLD! Viacom may have lured writer, director, producer, and actor Tyler Perry away from Oprah’s OWN with one of the most lucrative megadeals in history, but it’s Viacom-owned BET and the public that will reap the rewards. Expect more than just Madea; Perry is launching original programming, amplifying overlooked talent, and giving BET+—a new premium streaming service—a serious competitive edge. FLAPPERS AND JAZZ Get ready, old sport. The ’20s are back for 2020. In the centennial of the era of F. Scott Fitzgerald, prepare for Great Gatsby–inspired ad campaigns, parties, and playlists (“Green Light” by Lorde, anyone?). Marketers will do all they can to ensure the decade kicks off with a roar. WHO RUN THE WORLD Simone Biles has already cemented her place as…

WITHIN MOMENTS OF DONALD TRUMP’S upset victory in the 2016 election, investors began stampeding into the shares of America’s steelmakers. After all, this was a business he had explicitly pledged to rescue. “Your steel industry—we’re bringing it back, bringing it back, folks!” he had promised a wildly cheering crowd in Pittsburgh the previous April. So when trading opened the morning after election day, the buy orders were stacked high and prices began to rocket. By week’s end the S&P 500 was up 2%, but Steel Dynamics was up 13%, Nucor up 14%, Pittsburgh’s own U.S. Steel up 23%. For a Rust Belt industry in distress, deliverance had apparently come. Fast-forward a few months, to when Trump imposed tariffs on imported steel and steelmaker stock prices surged even higher, at least…

FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 2016, was the kind of sparkling summer’s day that usually inspires giddy buoyancy in London. On that morning, however, anxiety and distress fell on the city like a lead weight, as the results of the previous day’s Brexit referendum rolled in. More than 17 million Brits, nearly 52% of those who cast a ballot, had voted to leave the European Union, after 43 years in the world’s biggest single market. For Rhian Ravenscroft, an attorney for U.S.-based bond-trading platform MarketAxess, there was plenty of time to consider her next move. Seven months pregnant and deeply upset, she had an hour-long journey from her suburban home to the company’s European headquarters in London’s Barbican district. By the time she reached the office, she knew what she would do.…

OVER THE PAST DECADE, investors have reaped immense gains thanks to the longest-ever bull market in U.S. stocks. Most of us have also profited from something else: a slow-motion seismic shift that has slashed the cost of playing the market. The earthquake in question is the rise of “passive” investing, exemplified by index mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that track benchmark indexes. Ten years ago, stock investors held three times as much money in actively managed funds—funds whose holdings are typically selected by MBA-wielding analysts and number crunchers—as they did in passive funds. This August, passive funds wrested away the crown, surpassing active ones in assets under management for the first time. This financial revolution has been spurred by budgetary common sense. Passive funds cost far less to operate, and…