Weakness at the french retail unit hits Third Quarter profit. And game on for unisoft after it blows past Second Quarter sales forecasts. We are roughly one hour into the trading session. Lets see how things are opening up a bit of a soggy day in line with what we saw in u. S. Equities yesterday having a bit of a down day the picture is mixed behind me a bit more red than green on the heat map which points to an overall performance of the stoxx 600 which is underwhelming lets look at how individual sectors are doing. Ftse 100, treading around that 0 mark. Slightly in the green. Xetra dax also really treading around the flat line we did have earnings earlier on. Well get into that in more detail shortly i want to point out ftse mib is down 0. 5 . We did have some weaker results out of one of the banks there. Banco bpm is down 5 or so in early trading. Lets look at asian markets. Clearly a lot of focus on this trump is in the region meeting with various leaders nikk nikkei, a bit of a weaker performance overnight after the 1. 7 gain we saw in yesterdays trading session when trump was there. Across the board, treading around the flat line hang seng down 0. 3 . On that willem, what can you tell us about trumps vision to asia donald trump has arrived in beijing. He touched down there. Hes meeting with chinese president xi jinping xi is taking him on a four tour the forbidden city all responsible Nations Must Join forces to isolate the brutal regime of north korea and deny it in any form any form of it. You cannot support, you cannot supply, you cannot accept. We call on every nation including china and russia to fully implement u. N. Security council resolutions, downgrade diplomatic relations with the regime and server all ties of trade and technology eunice yoon is in beijing for us what are the plans for the rest of the day for these two leaders . So far the president s have been enjoying their time at the forbidden city the state media has been reporting its been a casual and informal affair, they were drinking afternoon tea, and also President Trump showed president xi on one of his devices his granddaughter singing chinese songs and reciting chinese poems. According to state media, president xi said her performance is a plus. These are the stories that are showing how informal and cozy the relationship has become. That the state media likes the idea that this bromance is flourishing between the two, and a description that the Chinese State media has been putting out there is that this is a state visit plus so already we have seen the regular state visit, his arrival at the airport, him going to the forbidden city we know he will be sitting down for a formal bilateral with president xi tomorrow. At the same time its these int matd mome intimate moments that the press has been highlighting to showcase this budding relationship in terms of business they have to talk about difficult and sticky issues such as north korea as well as trade. Already theres been announcements on that front where the u. S. Commerce secretary who has been traveling with the american president has said the focus will be on reducing the trade deficit he said that american and Chinese Companies will be making deals worth about 9 billion jd. Com, a chinese eretailer has said theyre committed to buying 2 billion worth of American Goods over the next three years. And that more than 1 billion o that will be from pork and american beef. Eunice, you mentioned north korea. How is the u. S. Setting the stage for talks on that subject . The white house had already put out a statement or made comments about this saying that President Trump is definitely going to be pressing china on the issue of its financial links to north korea he also is going to be pushing president xi jinping to make sure that china abides by the u. N. Resolutions and sanctions so hes setting the stage really for further pressure on china to do something more to try to rein in north korea the chinese have often said and continuously say they do abide by the u. N. Sanctions, and they also have said that they really cant do a whole lot more. And they said that part of it is because they dont feel that this is entirely their responsibility but theyre also concerned about further pressure on north korea could end up becoming a humanitarian crisis for them right on their border thanks so much. Thats eunice yoon reporting for us live from bay sing. Democrats have won the governors races in virginia and new jersey on elections on tuesday. The virginia race was closely watched as a measure of President Trumps standing in the swing state and Ralph Northam won a decisive victory in a tweet trump said gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what i stood for. The u. S. Senate could delay a major tax cut bill until 2019, this would represent a sharp break with the timeline favored by the Trump Administration and house republicans. Senators are said to be looking to secure more tax relief for the middle class with fewer benefits going to wealthier taxpayers. More banking woes in europe. Shares in Credit Agricole are trading near the bottom of the stoxx 600 today with trading and Retail Banking suffering Credit Agricole has no interest in a deal with commerzbank the cboe says major futures exchanges in the development of cryptocurrency changes and will allow traders to trade them. They refused to say when they would allow a bitcoin trade exchange fund. Karen has been at the web summit in lisbon for the last couple of days the buzzwords have been arrested ficial intelligence, fintech, bitcoin. What can you tell us what have you heard on the subject . Not Just Technology companies here at web summit but Traditional Industries like banking trying to get up to speed with the trends. When i spoke with the socgen ceo who is keen to differentiate between the technology of bitcoin being blockchain, which they are trying to work on whether they can use it for repo agreements, trade finance, they see the potential. The other big endeavor is hackathons are trying to work out the future relationship with customers in a digital age theres a lot of work to scale up the bank on technology. I spoke with the ceo of socgen and asked what are the most important tech trends bankers are facing there are different technologies, you need to look at them all. You mentioned Artificial Intelligence blockchain, theres also data management, infrastructure, the usage of the cloud there are many things you need to embrace at the same time. Clearly at the end of the day, its not the access to the new technologies that is the issue but more the cultural shift in the mindset of your stuff, and the way to embrace on one hand Business People and i. T. People to put them together, and to think about the client needs which could be improved. Thats more the challenge than really the technology challenge. How much Artificial Intelligence are you using at the bank we are already testing, but its more proof of concept and i think globally Going Forward it will be useful effectively to make processes much more efficient. I would say its not necessary for the next two, three years. Its beyond. Stephen hawking opened web summit with a warning around Artificial Intelligence that it could lead to job losses in the millions and the Worst Development by civilization. Are you concerned about how fast ai is moving, the ready adoption from startups to tech titans to business without regulation . It seems to me that of course we focus probably a bit more on job instructions, and its a bit difficult today to imagine the new jobs that this new world would also help to create. Second, it seems to me effectively that, yes, regulation will be needed. The fact that the machine has been able to beat the World Champion means a lot in terms of potential of the machines and probably regulation will be needed and it will raise fundamental questions. As you can hear, those comments are about Artificial Intelligence i also spoke to him about bitcoin. You can check out those comments on cnbc. Com. In the meantime as i sat downed with the ceo, there was news breaking that the french prosecutor was probing violations possible violations of anticorruption law now, this relates to a longrunning case with libyas sovereign wealth fund. While the bank did not want to talk directly on the latest twist, i did ask about technology and how it can crack down on some bad behaviors at banks and whether they can stop recurring events like this take a listen. We are totally committed to compliance i think its part of our social responsibility its very clear that we have to comply second, the level of requests i think will be met with efficiency and decent costs just thanks to technology from that perspective, the management of that is that all this will help tremendously to identify situations more effectively to provide the right information, also to the regulateders of Government Technology is also part of the solution in compliance so the risk red flags start to go off if you have the right algorithms in place. Exactly and as quickly as possible so you can identify whether theres a problem or not the conversation highlights some opportunities with new technologies coming into the mix. Banks constantly dealing with big data very hard to ensure that theres a right compliance and if there is a problem that you uncover it quickly. Artificial intelligence may be able to track some of those behaviors and management is quick to respond when those are occurring. We spoke about some negative consequences about the technology here at web summit. Back to you. Brilliant so we seem to have some live pictures, President Trump and the first lady arriving for dinner with president xi jinping and his wife well bring you more of those in a moment. We can see some of the president s cabinet there waiting for President Trump oochgs arrival. Coming up, scoring the sovereigns moodies is out on the latest report with sovereign credit and you might be surprised on which countries are solid. Stay with us for your heart. Your joints. Or your digestion. So why wouldnt you take something for the most important part of you. Your brain. With an ingredient originally found in jellyfish, prevagen is now the number one selling brain Health Supplement in drug stores nationwide. Prevagen. The name to remember. 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Quite extraordinary scenes we saw a lot of President Trumps cabinet there awaiting his arrival. Im sure theyll be watching events at this dinner closely. This ongoing bromance as our colleague, eunice yoon described it both of them dressed up for the beijing winter they seem to be rolling out the red carpet there we had comments from the u. S. Commerce secretary, wilbur ross earlier. Today trade will be one of the top items on their agenda. He has been saying chinas massive trade surplus with the u. S. Constitutes unfair trade practice these are live pictures from beijing. Shares in ubisoft are touching a record high after the video gamemaker reported sales that beat the target they are making a lot of money rose more than 85 to 240 million euros, well above the forecast ubisoft said they will Strong Demand for the latest games. More company news, Marks Spencer is trading lower after a loss of 5 in first half profit but m s says it will ramp up its turnaround plan to substantially reduce its cost base the group is also looking for a new finance chief. The current cfo, helen weir is to step down as soon as a replacement is found whats extraordinary about this is it comes on the back of sky news saying she was expected to step down because there were head hunters already out there looking for her replacement. Quite a difficult situation for the outgoing cfo of Marks Spencer, helen weir. What theyve been try doing is a transformation of the business, not just on the cost cutting front but on the foods and homeware and clothing. Clothing la beenhas been a compe sector to get involved in, and they have struggled in recent years, but the outlook is positive on the clothing side. With respect to food stores, they said last year they were looking to open another 200 stores in the next year. It seems they will have to dial some of that back. My contribution to mms comes at christmas when i tend to pick up socks from santa claus at that time of year from then. Father christmas keeps shopping there, i know that much. Speaking of european business, heidelberg cement is trading higher they beat Third Quarter profits after speeding up a cost cutting plan the group maintained its outlook for a moderate rise in revenue this year. And the United States has called for the u. N. To take action against iran after it said iran supplied the yemen rebels with a missile they launched into saudi arabia in july the United Nations ambassador, nikki haley said irans alleged supply of the weapon meant iran violated two u. N. Resolutions. Rouhani said it was a mistake by the kingdom to consider the u. S. A friend and iran an enemy. Sticking with politics in the middle east, the United States called on saudi arabia to be open and transparent in its widespread corruption crackdown on royals, businessmen and government officials the u. S. State Department Said they did not have advanced knowledge of the purge which included the detention of the billionaire. Pro independence parties in catalonia failed to agree on a deal that would allow them to campaign as a united block in the snap election. The failure to bridge the differences could dent their chances of retaining coalition control of catalonia after the election the global sovereign outlook is looking optimistic according to moodys, despite Political Uncertainty in europe, asia and the middle east. The annual report shows fewer negative outlooks than a year ago reflecting a view that strong Economic Growth is outweighing high debt and political unrest the head of global sovereign risk at moodys is joining us now. I can see this year there are 22 countries with negative outlook versus 35 countries of negative outlook last year. Where is the optimism coming from we turned from negative last year to stable this year we looked at growth, which is more positive around the world and in europe. Likely to remain so for the next couple of years. We looked at debt, which remains very high and will remain high for a long time. We looked at policy and the ef te effectiveness and the extent on which policymakers can doeal wih lower growth and high debt, and the geopolitical backdrop. You also said in the past to boost growth countries need to invest more in infrastructure and that would instaentail issug more debt. Public debt is at record high levels what does that mean for for countries trying to stimulate froth from an infrastructure perspective one of the features is the more benign economic back drop which is primarily cyclical but will allow a window in which to achieve fiscal reforms that theyre aiming to do, which will give them space in order to promote investment for growth to remain sustainable, investment is needed thats a high challenge for many governments. So i want to ask you specifically about the uk. On the day that theresa may gave her florence speech, moodys came out and downgraded the outlook citing concerns about public debt and uncertainty about the trading arrangement. What does the uk government need to do to assure you of its Growth Outlook in the next couple of years . The Growth Outlook for us over the next couple years is not a strong driver. What were concerned about is growth over the medium term. Were seeing the impact of brexit and longer term features such as low productivity growth is going to be lower over the medium term than expected prior to brexit. Partly because of the distraction that brexit poses to the government, the efforts to bring the debt load down are halting. We have less assurance that that debt load will come down materially over the next few years. Outlook is still negative from here . The outlook on the uk is stable we downgraded to a stable outlook. Those reflected the pressures we saw, but the risks a balanced. One other thing i want to talk about the u. S. As well you said in the past some protectionist policies could impact some of the Global Outlook specifically for countries that the u. S. Have quite a big deficit with have you changed your thinking in that regard i think its broadly the same and unclear what u. S. Trade policy is intended to be or will be we see the threat through nafta to the closest trading partners, canada and mexico, how significant that threat is remains to be seen i think the greatest thing is uncertainty. Part of the message of this report is that the economic back drop is more benign because global trade has survived much of the noise weve seen over the past six to 12 months. Thank you very much coming up, we will talk to the wto director as President Trump tours asia with trade high on the agenda. That interview after the break is now a good time to refinance . Yes Mortgage Rates are historically low. The time to refinance your home is right now. Get started at lendingtree. Com. The only place you can compare up to five real offers, side by side, for free. Our average customer can significantly lower their monthly bills. Quick. Beat the feds next rate hike. Do not miss this window. Are you sure you have the best rate . It only takes 3 minutes to find out. Go to lendingtree. Com right now. Welcome back to street signs. Im willem marx. And im Joumanna Bercetche. These are your headlines President Trump hosts to lay out ground rules in a meeting with xi jinping. He will press beijing to cut financial ties with north korea. The departure of m ss cfo comes amid sales in the clothing and food units Credit Agricole shares slide after a weak performance in the trading and french retail units hurt performance and game on for unisoft after it blows past Second Quarter sales forecasts. Lets look at u. S. Futures this morning were coinciding with the oneyear anniversary since the u. S. Election. A quick overview of how sectors have done since then financials, technology, aerospace, all up 30 since a year ago telekcom is the only sector dow. Yesterday we had a down day for the indices, which follows a string of record highs s p 500 is pointing to open just a tad lower, almost a point lower. Dow jones and nasdaq up 2 points respectively lets look at how things are looking in europe this morning ftse up about 0. 1 Still Holding at about that 7500 mark xetra dax managed to turn a little bit on the day, up 0. 1 still within distance of that alltime record high that we hit last week. Ftse mib the laggard this morning on the back of banking woes in sector there switching on lets look at how currency is doing. Clearly the dollar is back in focus again given some concern about whether or not the Corporate Tax reform will be passed this year euro dollar hanging in around the 1. 4 higher on the day dollar yen all lower sterling, cable, clearly a big focus and has been a focus since the bank of englands hike last week and were a point lower than where we were going into that event and dollar swiss again in line with the dollar weakness across the board a bit lower. I wanted to point out the u. S. Yield curve. The twoyear note is hanging in around the 1. 64 level. Tenyear about 2. 32. The spread between the 2s to the yield curve between 2s and 10s has been flattening quite a lot. Thats been the main theme for the markets. It has been impacting some banking sectors somewhat as well, which is why we did see financials lagging a bit in the trading session yesterday. Bill ackman lost his proxy fight to win seats on the board of adp the payroll companys investors voted to reelect the entire 10 board at the annual meeting. Ackman and his two nominees won less than 25 of support leslie picker reports on the battle adp announcing today that Share Holders reelected all ten of its directors, pershing squares three nominees including the leader bill ackman received about a quarter of the shares voted at the meeting. Adp krshceo Carlos Rodriguez described the results as an ass whooping he said in an interview with cnbc that his company should not have been targeted in the first place. I think it is surprising, frankly, that a company that has such a successful and strong track record would be attacked, and i think that its really, i think, a sign of, i think, greed and avarice gone too far in the sense that youre attacking a good, Strong Company to make shortterm profits using derivatives and Stock Options and other instruments designed to do just one thing which is put money in the pockets of a hedge fund but victory doesnt come free adp said i spent 27 million spending off bill ackman and his other two nominees for the board p g spent more than that for a margin that was much slimmer but as activists take on bigger and bigger companies, they have more firepower to fight back and higher success rates according to activists insights, companies have won 64 of proxy fights this year including todays. Thats the highest proportion since at least 2014. The number of proxy fights has stayed constant over the last four years leslie picker, cnbc Business News sky has said it could shut down sky news if the channel proves an obstacle to the companys takeover by 21st century fox. The british broadcaster told regulators it would likely review the continued provision of sky news. Separately a Hedge Fund Manager said he opposes the bid. The firm has under a 1 stake in sky. The comments follow news of deal talks between disney and fox sources tell cnbc that it was disneys idea to pursue fox and added that talks are not ongoing but could be revisited at some point in the future. A lot going on in that space thats excellent reporting from david faber in new york talking to people inside those conversations between disney and fox and that was happening over the last few weeks they have stopped now, but the understanding is they will continue again in the future if needs be the news for sky news in theuk thats very significant. Theres always been two potential barriers to the takeover 1. 71 billion sterling huge deal issues of plurality and fit and proper fox hoping some of the problems they were having in the u. S. Would not preclude them when it comes to fit and proper. One problem sky news is theyll be ditched because it will be unhelpful for the broader corporate parent when it comes to pass this deal. I should add fox already do own about 37 its a significant stake already. Trying to expand that. This is part of the Murdoch Family legacyeffort. This would be a real shakeup for british news provision inparticular if sky news was ditched by the broader parent company. Its no surprise that sky would look to make that move, but clearly not happy news for those journalists working at sky news. Lets talk about borstin one of our colleagues has been talking about snap where sales fell 17 in afterhours trading. Julia boorstin has more. Snap shares plummeting after disai di disappointing results. Revenue decelerating daily active users grew 44. 5 million over last Quarters Number to 178 million. Thats versus expectations of 181. 8 million. On the Earnings Call there was acknowledgment of a problem with snaps app the one thing we have heard over the years is that snapchat is difficult to understand or hard to use. Our team has been working on responding to this feedback. As a result, we are currently redesigning our application to make it easier to use. Reporter spiegel warning that redesigning the app, which they plan to be, will be disruptive to the business over the short term and its unclear how their users will change their behavior but that snap is betting on the longterm payoff spiegel also says theyre betting on content, both more professional shows and new models for user generated content. We hope that showing the right stories to the right audience will help grow engagement and monetization for our partners and for snapchat while weve made significant progress in content, weve historically neglected the community on snapchat that creates storage for the broader snapchat audience. In 2018 well build more monetization opportunities for these creators theres been a lot of talk on the call about the impact of switching to an automated ad sales model which has brought down prices by more than 60 they say ad impressions are up over 400 . Spiegel saying that the fact that ads are diminishing User Engagement bodes well for the company over the longterm but that didnt help snap shares back over to you not happy moments for snap. Youre not taking enough selfies. Im afraid thats true. Coming up we will talk to Roberto Azevedo who is in asia that interview after the break my name is jeff sheldon, and im the founder of ugmonk. Before shipstation it was crazy, like. Its great when you see a hundred orders come in, but then you realize ive got a hundred orders i have to ship out. Shipstation streamlined that whole process. The order data, the weights of the items, everything is seamlessly put into shipstation, so when we print the shipping label everythings pretty much done. Its so much easier so now were ready, bring on the orders. Shipstation. The number one choice of online sellers. Go to shipstation. Com tv and get two months free. My friend susie cracks and hello sensitive bladder. Ring a bell . Then you have to try always discreet. I didnt think protection this thin could work. But the super absorbent core turns liquid to gel. For incredible protection. Thats surprisingly thin. So its out of sight. And out of mind. Always discreet. For bladder leaks. Also in liners. Welcome back to street signs. Democrats won the governors mansions theyve become the new governors in virginia and new jersey on tuesday. The virginia race was closely watched as a measure of President Trumps standing in an important swing state. Democratic candidate Ralph Northam won a decisive victory in a tweet the president laid blame on ed gillespie saying he worked hard but did not embrace me or what he stood for. What is important is that they talked about trump supporting Luther Strange who did not win it will be interesting to see if he does the same with gillespie. Terms of deleting the tweets . Of course once its up there, its up there forever. Any way, the u. S. Senate tax plan could delay implementing a major Corporate Tax cut until 2019 that would be a sharp break with the timeline favored by the Trump Administration and house republicans. Senators are also looking into ways to secure more tax relief for the middle class with fewer benefits going to rich taxpayer taxpayers. Analysts are weighing in on the plan and its impact. Fitch ratings outlook for the blueprint concludes that the proposed tax cuts would add heavily to u. S. Debt with only a modest and temporary Economic Growth increase. The pennwharton budget analysis said the plan would lead to a drop in tax revenue of 1. 7 5 trillion over the first ten years. Karen joins us live from the web summit in lisbon where President Trump is a top topic i imagine everybody is counting the cost of tax reform and dont Forget Technology is one sector that is the main beneficiary of changes. I spoke to oracle yesterday, they have 60 billion stashed offshore there is a feeling if there is a change, a repatriation holiday that would lower the corporation tax, that money could come back on shore oracle saying they would reinvest in the economy, or whether they would use the money to pay down debt, but oracle was firm they would be using money to hire workers and for other investment plans i also spoke to intel, another company that stands to benefit from tax reform. Specifically the way it account force some capex currently the way its accounted for, its not considered an expense, but if the changes come through it may be able to lower overall profit numbers, and therefore how much tax it pays so, big changes ahead. If you consider how stocks have performed lately, some of it has been down to earnings. Theres been a pop on the back of earnings season some numbers baked into the stock, would have to argue might be down to potential around tax reform intel stock took off on suggestions that reform is coming i asked about whether he thought there was a correlation two the comments yesterday about the stock market records and confidence in Trumps Administration or whether it was Something Else driving the changes. Im not an economist, so im not sure im the right person to ask. Im a technologist i dont believe, especially when you look at technology stocks, that people look at government or politics as, you know, how they value us. They really look at the amount of innovation, the products, the growth if you look at it, most of the tech industry, youve seen revenue growth, profit growth, that part is Artificial Intelligence, us becoming more and more efficient thats driving our position more than anything in politics. Would tax changes in the states make a difference to psychology i know you were part of the Manufacturing Council that was disbanded and critical i think the third person to leave that council after it was d disba disbanded. Do you think tax reform would change the mood and music around the administration i think independent of the administration, tax reform in the u. S. Is important. We have one of the highest tax rates. Its cost us billions of dollars more to manufacture in the u. S. Versus overseas. And so that change in the tax law would allow us to keep more manufacturing. We kept 75 of our manufacturing in the u. S. , but we had to overcome that with efficiency, tax changes would help us from a cost perspective so, as you can see, there might be politics at play after the events earlier in the year where he was an early ceo to step away from the Manufacturing Council. So there might be a reason why he might want to attribute stock market gains to the Trump Administration loon listen to oracles mark hurd we are supportive of repatriation the opportunity to bring our cash back to the u. S. , and to invest it is certainly attractive so for that part of tax reform were supportive do you have a plan for investment does some of it goes into debt its interesting. Because of our cash flow and where our cash actually gets located, youll find us at times raising debt in the United States because of our inability to access our cash off shore so the fact that we can actually repatriate our money allows us a much more efficient use of cash but an opportunity again to invest it back in various things that we do, whether its m a, whether its investing in new facilities that were building, hiring more employees. All of those are attractive uses of our investment. Skeptics say in the past that weve seen money used forever share buybacks, also the reduction of debt. The tally earlier was 54 billion you had in debt. Ill ask again, when you have Interest Rates rising, do you think there is a possibility that you might use at least some of the money to reduce debt . Look at what weve done if we went back to 2010, we had 90,000 employees today we have 143,000. Were hiring weve been adding people to the company. Were building new facilities across the around the world to put our employees in that are modern facilities, investing in new infrastructure, new capabilities i hardly think would think of oracle today as a company not taking cash and investing it back into employees, back into facilities, back into its customers and executing its strategy mark hurd there the ceo of oracle. I want to pick up on opportunities. This is a huge tech conference, 60,000 people here as a media company, quite popular with pictures of companies that want pictures with their firms, but somebody else here with more pictures, hes the man you want to speak to if you want Venture Capital funding, joining me is the general partne perkins. Youre an investor in all the big names, im sure youve been busy here at web summit what is the common theme in terms of what youre trying to invest in now . I focus on consumer when i look at consumer innovations, they need to be the kinds of businesses that are mass market and can proliferate on a global scale. Even though a lot of platforms were built out of silicon valley, they cant work unless they can work in cities that are based in europe. So i try to think about would this work . Would this product would this Platform Work in a city like london or berlin in lisbon increasingly for consumer innovations in particular, no matter where theyre based, to use some of these more International Cities that are very historic, have urban density, for them to work well in those cities is important which is why i travel globally is there much coming through the ipeline . You talk about the model that investors want to be on board with when it comes to stock market investing anything coming through the system you mean from a private market perspective the influx of capital is sort of at an alltime high because of that theres probably a surplus of opportunities out there from a private financing perspective. So you can say thats a good thing because it lays Fertile Ground for people to innovate because theres a supply of capital that will fuel that. I think its kind of a bad thing. Too much capital, i think, though it can be formative t can be pollutive i think thats what were seeing today. Some companies youve invested in, it feels like theyre facing greater competition. Amazon sh everybody amazon, everybody is looking for the amazon killer. They want to upend the dominance amazon has do you think theres more runway for that company or that competitors will crowd in at this point i think every start up in the consumer space, especially in retail and ecommerce needs an amazon strategy. Its funny to talk about amazon. In a way, its the oldest Internet Company there is. It has also hit its stride where it used to expand the market for everyone, now its stealing share from everyone. In the last year amazon accounted for 53 of the entire ecommerce industrys growth to understand amazons expansive potential but also ability to threaten your business because its so large, because its the Technology Leader baux it w because it wins on selection and price. Even Department Stores are reeling from the Amazon Effect they used to be more shielded because of the behemoth nature of Department Stores, but not the case i know youre investing in tulip which is trying to help big retailers get closer to customers, know their preferences. I believe theyre helping the likes of saks fifth avenue in the United States. Do you believe this type of technology can help save bricks and mortar retailers i think thats the type of innovation that can exist in an amazon world it bricks ecommerce experience within physical stores in the last year alone, 8,000 stores shut down its not because of economics, its because of the Amazon Effect so what tulip allows t allows traditional retailers to come of age and thrive really in a digital ge just quickly, tax regulators, do you think theyre catching up with the likes of tech titans . We had a line from the economy minister in france saying within two years we need to see an agreement on taxing the tech giants well, you know, early on, even in the United States, there was no tax on ecommerce transactions its because people didnt understand crossborder, crossstate commerce and how laws need to adapt to that i think this is going to be a bump in the road i think youre likely to see more scrutiny there, but its just fine. Thank you very much for joining us thank you you are hearing directly from a Venture Capitalist, one of the biggest ones in the industry and what he wants to invest in hope for some of our tech investors out there, that it was useful information and what you need to think about if youre chasing the sector thanks for all those interviews last week President Trump called the 2 223 billion trade deficit with china embarrassing and horrible data throughout the morning shows chinas surplus narrowed in october we are joined by the director general of the wto, Roberto Azevedo. Thank you very much for joining us this afternoon. I wanted to ask you about these empty seats on your appellate body two areempty you expect another member of that sevenperson body to step down in december the u. S. Is blocking any new appointments i wonder how can you overcome those obstacles . The way to go is to talk to the americans. I think they have problems they have expressed those difficulties before. This is a very important issue if we have the body paralyzed, this is a real possibility given the direction were going now, this would be a very difficult situation to overcome. One of the major pillars of the wto is arbitrating disputes between members. Disputes do occur. This gives a way for members to solve their issues in a nonpoliticized way. Avoids a spiral of unilateral actions. We have to listen and talk we have to understand the problems do you think those criticisms are warranted . This gets to the heart of what your organization tries to do surely it is something that is going to be difficult to handle. The major concern now, is that we dont have a solution finding mode, conversation happening yet. Were still at the phase where were expressing concerns, but we have to shift, we have to move from that conversation into one that is solution oriented. Thats what we need to do in the next few weeks switching to the uk a bit the trade secretary, liam fox, said the day after brexit the uk can sign 40 trade agreements with noneu countries i just want to ask you, a, how long does it take to get negotiated agreement and do you think its viable for the uk to get trade agreements done within such a small time frame as per liam foxs comments what i can say about this is trade agreements are complex idont know any trade negotiation that was concluded in a very expeditious and simple manner it is going to be tough always it is always going to be tough the timing element, how long it takes, how many months or years varies it is difficult to predict it depends on the goodwill of the sides whether they want, have the political will do it. Whether they want a solution or not. How quickly they want that its not going to be simple, no matter whether you have political will or not. It is going to be a tough complex, difficult thing thank you very much mr. Roberto azevedo. Reminder that the latest episode of the brave ones airs tonight at 23 00 cet thats all for todays show im Joumanna Bercetche for willem marx and myself, well see you tomorrow Worldwide Exchange is up next. Some air fresheners are so overwhelming, they can. Send you and your family running. Introducing febreze one for fabric and air. No aerosols. No dyes. No heavy perfumes. It cleans away odors for a pure light freshness. So you can spray and stay. Febreze one, breathe happy. If they knew just howers rich they were. Ed the average American Home value has increased 40,000 over the last 5 years. But many dont know you can access that money without refinancing or selling your home. With a home equity loan, you can pull cash out of your house for anything you need home improvement, college tuition, even finally getting out of credit card debt. Come to lendingtree. 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