Poynt aims for Europe, Asia
A Palo Alto company that’s speeding credit card swipes and dips for restaurants and other retailers is now planning to expand to more countries with its recent funding.
Poynt recently raised $100 million in a round of funding led by Elavon and National Australia Bank, bringing its total backing to $133 million.
The new round will help Poynt expand to several countries in Europe and Asia. It will also help the company bring Poynt’s software to other makers of card-reading devices.
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next. Moonves led her to an easel that showed the status of various Warner Bros. productions. She examined it, then turned to face him. “Look how hard you make me,” Moonves said. She saw that he had undone his trousers, exposing his erect penis.
“Be my girlfriend and I’ll put you on any show,” he said, in Phillips’ recollection — and then grabbed her by the neck, pushed her to her knees and forced his penis into her mouth.
Moments later, the intercom buzzed. It was Levey returning Moonves’ call. Fumbling with his pants, Moonves returned to his desk. “I have this great actress,” Phillips heard him say.
“I felt my blood rushing in my body,” Phillips recalled. “I was vibrating. I can still feel it.” She walked to the desk. As she grabbed the bat, her eyes locked on a photo of Moonves’ wife on a bookshelf. “All I could think,” she said, “was that I wanted to use the baseball bat to knock his head off.”
Moonves finished the call. “John wants to meet you,” he said. His relaxed demeanor stunned Phillips. She put down the bat ran out the door.
“I strongly believe that the sexual encounter with Ms. Phillips more than 20 years ago was consensual,” Moonves said in a statement to the Times.
The next day, Moonves called Dauer and said he wanted to introduce Phillips to producers. When Dauer relayed the exciting news, Phillips replied: “Absolutely not. Keep him away from me.”
Last fall, the New York Times and the New Yorker published exposés detailing allegations of sexual misconduct against producer Harvey Weinstein. At CBS, rumors spread that Moonves had a #MeToo problem. In November 2017, a Times reporter, following up on a tip, called Dauer and asked about Moonves and sexual misconduct. Flustered, Dauer said he couldn’t talk but would call back.
He immediately thought of Phillips.
By coincidence, the two had recently reconnected. Phillips had returned to acting and Dauer had asked if he could try to get her parts.
On Dec. 4, six days after the Times contacted him, Dauer emailed Moonves: “Leslie — it’s very important you call me.” Moments later, Moonves was on the phone. It was the first time in years that the two men had spoken.
Dauer and Moonves have given different accounts of the conversation, but they agree on one crucial point: They discussed the possibility of getting Phillips an acting gig to keep her happy.
In the version Moonves provided to outside lawyers for CBS, Dauer told him reporters were calling about Phillips and that she was “making noises.” A spokesman for Moonves, Chris Giglio, said Dauer pressured Moonves to get jobs for Phillips and his other clients.
In Dauer’s telling, he was simply trying to alert Moonves about the media calls. In an interview and a sworn declaration, he said it was Moonves who broached the idea of doing something — finding her acting work — to “make amends” to Phillips. (Giglio denied Moonves ever said that.) Moonves told Dauer that he was bracing for an article about his sexual conduct.
“I think I’ll be OK,” Moonves said, according to Dauer’s sworn statement. “But if Bobbie talks, I’m done.” Moonves asked him to persuade Phillips not to speak publicly.
Shortly thereafter began a months-long cascade of hundreds of text messages, which were reviewed by the Times, and whose contents could determine whether CBS pays Moonves an exit package of $120 million — or nothing.
After his initial phone call with Moonves, Dauer phoned Phillips. According to her, Dauer said he had “run into” Moonves, who had brought up the long-ago incident. Dauer told her that Moonves “feels horrible about what happened,” and “wants to make amends,” including by offering her work.
Phillips was angry at Dauer for engaging with Moonves, but she assured him that she had no intention of speaking to journalists, and that she might even be willing to forgive Moonves.
After talking to Phillips, Dauer texted Moonves: “I just was on the phone with Bobby and I think you are going to be very very happy.”
Dauer and Moonves met and the CEO denied assaulting Phillips. Afterward, Dauer told Phillips, who was upset.
“I did not sleep as I am feeling anger that Moonves is not sorry — and is calling me a liar basically,” she wrote to Dauer in a Facebook message on Jan. 6. “He is not allowed to play the victim card here.”
The next day, Phillips watched the Golden Globes on TV. Oprah Winfrey took the stage and acknowledged the generations of women who had endured sexual assault. “They’re the women whose names we’ll never know,” Winfrey said.
“My God, this is me,” Phillips thought.
Later, Dauer texted Moonves that the speech had “made the natives restless.” He added: “My hope is when she is working all this will go far far away.”
“I feel very bad about the whole thing,” Moonves wrote back. “I feel sick all the time.”
As Moonves and Dauer texted back and forth, Michael Aiello, a top lawyer at the firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, was investigating Moonves. He was hired by CBS’ independent directors to look into the sexual assault rumors about Moonves — rumors that CBS believed were being pursued by, among others, journalist Ronan Farrow in the New Yorker.
On Jan. 16, Aiello interviewed Moonves by phone. Moonves disclosed that a female television executive had filed a police complaint against him for sexual assault. He also said that there had been an incident with an unnamed actress — Phillips — in which he exposed himself and that she “ran out of room,” according to notes of the interview reviewed by the Times. When Aiello asked for more detail about that incident, Moonves said they had engaged in consensual oral sex.
Aiello advised the CBS board members that they had nothing to worry about with Moonves.
The next month, CBS showed a sudden interest in working with Dauer’s clients. According to Dauer, the network’s head of casting, Peter Golden, contacted him about possible roles for Phillips. She ended up auditioning for a new CBS series. Another client, Eva LaRue, read for a part and two others, Joshua Morrow and Philip Boyd, met with Moonves.
On May 14, CBS sued its largest shareholder, Shari Redstone, trying to weaken her control of the company. It was a declaration of civil war that meant Moonves’ conduct would face intense scrutiny from Redstone’s camp. That made it even more important to keep Phillips quiet.
A few days later, Moonves emailed Golden, the CBS casting director, regarding a new series, “Blood and Treasure.” In the email, Moonves suggested that two of Dauer’s clients — LaRue and Boyd — could get parts. As for Phillips, Moonves texted Dauer that he was “looking into Blood and Treasure.”
On July 19, Farrow contacted CBS for comment. The New Yorker was preparing to publish an article in which six women — not including Phillips — accused Moonves of sexual misconduct.
One evening around that time, Dauer said, Moonves called and asked him to delete their text messages. Dauer didn’t comply. The spokesman for Moonves denied that he asked Dauer to delete the messages.
The next week, a casting director contacted Dauer to say that CBS was interested in Phillips for a guest role on “Blood and Treasure.”
The role, however, turned out to be less than Dauer had envisioned. The character, Erica, was listed as “a big, friendly woman clad in overalls.” The job paid $1,500 for a day’s shooting. Dauer told CBS that Phillips was declining the offer.
Later that day, Moonves called Dauer, sounding frantic.
“They’re coming out with an article in the New Yorker,” he said, according to Dauer. Phillips “has got to take this job or I’m done.” A friend listened on speakerphone and confirmed the account to the Times.
Golden soon followed up, according to Dauer. “She’s got to take the role,” Golden said. He raised the offer to $5,000. Phillips said she rejected it.
Golden said he didn’t recall any phone conversation with Dauer and denied making an offer of $5,000.
“I didn’t care about this particular role, and yet top CBS brass suddenly are eager for me to accept it,” Phillips said. “It all seemed so baffling to me.”
The New Yorker article appeared the next day. “The moment I read that there were other women he had victimized, the light bulb went off,” she said. “I realized I had been manipulated beyond words and that his outreach to me was phony, an attempt to silence me.”