Bank of england governor, michael king. That is right. Michael lewis, the author of liars poker, the big short does a book review of mervyn kings new book. In the process, he talks about what a great professor he was because he was his teacher, but he also talks about this one plan that mervyn king comes up with that would really help the Banking System in his view by simplifying what gets bailed out, what doesnt and protects banks and in a much simpler way, which just sort of kind of seems so simple, hard to believe that people are not already talking about it. Carol it is not like he wrote a book about pay, this is what it is like to be the head of the bank of england but he wrote something useful to avoid another financial crisis. Ellen mervyn king says anybody can write a book about how they save the world and what he wanted to do was talk about what he had learned and possible solutions, so one of the things he talks about is separating the boring parts of the bank, as he puts it, from the more exciting parts, so deposits, etc. In one part of the bank. He doesnt say they have to be separate institutions but they have to be split up from the sexier investor banking parts with assets are much riskier. Carol some great advice. In the markets and finance section, you guys really take a look at what has been going well at hedge funds because it has not been a good year for these guys. Ellen hedge funds, there are many more as time goes on, yet, they are not doing so well. In some cases, they are not keeping up with the s p 500 has done. It varies a lot, but just when you go into a hedge fund, you are paying usually 2 of assets, plus, a portion of the profits. It is just harder to make money as a hedge fund these days. Usually, hedge funds have exploited a certain trading philosophy or algorithm and it is just there are so many in the market and they are steering away from some of the riskier Asset Classes and they are also did looking at equities and no one has come up with a special sauce or not enough that come up with a special sauce for them to look like an attractive alternative. Him him carol you kind of ask the question, is the hedge fund model broken and you go into that. And the policy and politics section, a take a look at Princeton University and neighbors who have gotten perks from the university but the neighbors are saying, enough, i want you to pay more taxes back to the city. Ellen universities are nonprofits and they do not have to pay full taxes on property, etc. , and people in princeton are saying, we want to do pay we want to you to pay more taxes. You have so much money and you are making money and you need to chip in more. We are paying incredible property taxes, 17,000 a year, whatever it is, and they think princeton should chip in more. Carol we are talking millions of dollars more. Ellen we are talking a lot of money more and princeton does not think it should have to, but you even have somebody who is a former princeton professor in the story saying, i think they should pay more and this has come up in other places. Similar battles are coming up in new haven with yale. It comes up every two years. Carol lets talk about the cover story. Nestle a is looking to break their addiction to sugar. It is kind of the backbone for somebody for some many of their products. Ellen nestle does lots of things. Carol haagendazs bars, right . Ellen and oh henrys, lots of good stuff, and they have other businesses, too, it is pretty diversified. They make instant formula, but one of the things they invest in now are products that would basically cure you once you have problems because of your sugar addiction. These things are all in the works. You will not find them on the shelves now, although, they have some products that are meant to help you on the shelves now, but they have a research lab set up in switzerland and they have a lab to test these possible products. They see it as the future. Carol there are lots of details and i spoke to Matt Campbell about it. Matt as we say in this story, this is built on a foundation of sugar. I think that is a very accurate foundation. Carol nestle is built on sugar but there is a war on sugar if you look at what governments are doing. And regulators. They are looking at companies that make sugarbased products. What is going on specifically . Matt it is not news to anyone that there is an obesity epidemic in the world, europe, developing countries, latin america and asia. Him governments are seeing Health Care Costs spiral out of control and they are starting to think about sugar over the bit like to think of tobacco. There are significant differences, but i think there is significant fear in the Food Industry that big food is the next they tobacco, if you like. Carol what is the impact on nestle . Leading them down a different path here . Matt sales and nestles candy business, chocolate, cookies, candy bars, has shrunken for the last three years and there is a shift going on in Consumer Behavior and that is driving nestle to look for new ways to grow and new ways to keep the data they have built. To keep the status they have built up over the last 150 years. It has become europes most valuable corporation, which is an amazing accomplishment. They do not want to let that go. Carol so what are they doing . Theyre looking to invent and sell medicine, tell me what they are doing. Matt nestle is spending a lot of money to turn itself into something that looks a lot more like a Pharmaceutical Company they had a food company. Food company. Ght a food company. It has an Extensive Research operation in switzerland that has a genome sequencing machine, brain labs with laser powered microscopes, very Sophisticated Research being done by people far, far more intelligent than i am. They are looking into the gastrointestinal system, metabolic health, and the idea is to develop medicines and therapies that are derived from food and delivered by food, so it is a revolutionary way of looking at medicine and food. Carol so some may potentially come with a prescription required from a doctor, some overthecounter and some on sale already. Matt that is right. There is a slate of these products available from nestle already. They have invested in the company in colorado which makes something called excona, a powdered milk shake, that they say can benefit people with alzheimers disease. The fda had some things to say about that a couple appears ago and they were not thrilled about some of those claims. There are lots of questions about the efficacy of other products nestle might introduce in the future, but there is an existing stable of these products. Carol could we ultimately have a company, nestle, that is selling kind of a problem on one hand and then kind of a solution on the other . Matt i think that is exactly what we may have, carol. Nestle, while it is certainly trying to do things like reduce sugar, salt and fat in existing core businesses, it will never get rid of those businesses. It will always be in large part the candy company, but it also wants to sell medicine so you can spend part of him are can spend part of your life consuming nestle candy and then later, consuming nestle medicine. I will leave others to speculate about the ethical implications. It sounds like an interesting is this opportunity. Carol have you tried medicines available . Matt i have not. The ones that are available so far are very specific for things like major surgery, people with very obscure Metabolic Diseases and not for me yet. I have had plenty of kitkats in my day, though. David nestle has a huge catalog to draw a cover from. Nestle has just been pumping is full of sugar or as long as any of us can remember and contrasting that with the fact that they now want to get into health food. Carol it is such a contrast. I think of that and look at my candy bag, going out stuff under my bed for many months and this is what they are known for. That is part of the whole photographer as a direction, imagine this is halloween and youre going through your bag, eating things, dropping them on the floor and moving on to the next thing. David what were the concepts before this one in particular . Robert we have three total. The other ones were less straightforward. We wanted to get across that these products they want to get into the medicine cabinet, certain things to get in the drugstore. So we had this medicine cabinet with the stuff in there are bandaids, toothbrushes and things like that but spilling out around the candy bars. The other one we played with was as if you were in the vitamin aisle and you see the little bottles with pills but all the labels are replaced with kind of nestle candy bars. We loved both the images and ended up using them in the inside, but we thought that for the cover, we know you wanted a bit of that immediacy and just loads of sugar in your face. Carol up next, alaskas future without oil. David also, exxons fall. Carol and the new generation of psycho fanatics. David all that ahead on Bloomberg Businessweek. Carol welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. I am carol massar. David im david gura. A look at alaska. It has so long relied on oil. The price of oil has gone down so much lately that it has left the state in bad shape and they are running out of oil. Carol it is amazing to think about alaska that has had so much money coming into the state and now it has a 4 billion deficit, so they are thinking of measures they have never thought about. Things like income tax, and they are trying to get it to legislature. David the governor of the state has rand plans on what to do it this date and unable to do any of that because of how dire the situation is there right now. Theyre talking about putting taxes on Oil Companies that have paid small taxes for a long time. Carol we talked about the 2 billion barrels of oil coming out at a day, but that has come 2 Million Barrels of oil coming out per day. That has come to the end of the lifecycle. David it will be interesting to see what happens under the leadership of the walker. Look at exxon mobil, which lost its aaa Credit Rating since the Great Depression that has been held since the Great Depression. Carol what they are doing to keep that cold standard Credit Rating. There are only two Companies Left that have aaa ratings. Carol we are talking about Credit Ratings. That is right. Johnson johnson and microsoft. Until recently, exxon mobil, but s p 500 downgraded them and they were not happy about it, but they did not do everything in their power to clean to it, either. Carol which is surprising because you talk to the ceo and they would hold that up for the triplea Credit Rating company and that meant something. It also meant that when they borrowed, they could do it at cheap rates. Peter if you are going from aaa to aa, it does not mean you are at risk of default. It is a matter of the prestige value of having a aaa. Right now, it isnt only 13 basis point difference, which means. 13 Percentage Points makes the difference. Carol not much of a difference. Peter not much reason to do it because you want to have a little more that sometimes. Carol you also look at leverage ratios for companies and you are looking at that typically go that to equity ratios and what have we seen the past two years . Peter we have seen more debt. It is pretty noticeable since 2006, this top up and how much a step up in how much Debt Companies feel comfortable carrying on their debt sheets in comparison to their total assets or shareholder equity, whichever measurements you want to use. Carol what made you want to look at this . Peter the news was exxon mobil getting downgraded and i went back and looked at what the Ceo Rex Tillerson said back in march and he was still saying, i hope they do not downgrade us and sure enough they did. Carol it is important to him and reputation. Peter it mattered to him, but what mattered to him more was maintaining the Capital Spending projects that he had and continuing the Shareholder Program of buying back shares and raising dividends. Carol i think you and i have talked about a lot of bloomberg and this cool idea that it borrowed a lot of money and the issued buybacks. Investors have left it in terms of what it does to reducing shares. It makes the company look so much better, but at some point, it has to play catchup, all the debt on the balance sheet. Maybe. Peter i do not worry about a company that has fallen all the way down to aa. Plus, that is not where the problem is. The problem is more like, we see a big increase in the s p 500 and triple cs and that is the problem. Carol up next, the benefits of trying to start a comeback after a host of legal and ethical challenges. David and he was afraid of a bloodthirsty sociopath . I. People still love the american psycho. David welcome back. I am david gura. Carol i am carol massar. A look at the rise and fall and future of zenefits. David the company that automates payroll for businesses. Carol members allegedly sold insurance without a license. It is part of as a turbotax for human resources, so it is a program that automates everything from health insurance, payroll, vacation requests and it is a onestop shop for businesses to manage the company. Carol it caught the attention of venture capitalists and became a pretty good size and it has worked its way to about 4. 5 billion. That is not kind of where it is today. Tell the tale a little bit of zenefits. Zenefits makes most money to commission that Insurance Companies pay when they sell an insurance plan. Traditionally, Insurance Brokers are the name of the people who did this and this is the Software Version and it piggybacks on the oldstyle industries so Silicon Valley loves that. The problem is it is highly regulated. Every state has an insurance carol with good reason. Yes, you want someone deciding insurance that knows about insurance, so every state has an insurance exam, licensing requirements and also the stuff. Licensed inyou are one state, you can get the reciprocal license in another state but you have to be licensed in whenever state you are selling insurance and. Carol and that is where they ran into trouble. They ran into trouble on that and and they have run into trouble in california, which is where they are located, san francisco. Their founder and ceo says what they created, called the macro, which would allow people to bypass this one Online Training course, an aspect of it, and that you had to be on it for 52 hours and it allowed people not to be on it for 52 hours. Carol so they should not have . That is the bottom line. Right. Carol it is interesting. The company that was not doing anything wrong now seems to be doing not very many things right. They got in trouble in california, washington, and they say other states have followed suit but they will not say which ones and they are facing millions of dollars in fines. Carol this involves wellknown players. Andreessen horowitz, the venture capitalists behind airbnb and david sachs came in to help run the company. He is another wellknown investor that has been involved in paypal and so forth. What was his role . He came on a originally as chief operating officer and he was going to work with conrad and help zenefits grow into a better company. And then all of this came to light and conrad had to resign and david sachs was ceo and he is past with the turnaround. He is taxed with the turnaround. Carol what is the future of zenefits . Where is conrad . Is he sitting on the couch somewhere . He probably is, but he is already planning his next company, although, we do not know what that is. We have heard some people say they want to get in touch with them. He grew this company to 60 million in three years and that is nothing small to laugh at in Silicon Valley. Carol he is revered to some extent. Does zenefits have a future . I talked to a number of customers that are frustrated, but i think so. But no one said that they would leave. David a look at the new generation of american psycho fans. There is a musical on broadway of american psycho, based on the book about a serial killer. One of your reporters goes to a show with yale is this school students. What do they make of the show . They kind of come out being conflicted. They go in, they like it, and we actually quote one person who saw it, 825yearold who said something to the effect that it changed his mind set and they spent the next day shopping for kiehls. Oducts at david why is this show out now . This is a period piece from the 1990s, created controversy, why is it out now . It is part of a broader trend. There have been a lot of Broadway Musicals that were recognizable movies and tv shows, so it taps into that. I think it is also coming out now because we are in the opposite error that Something Like this will stand out more than it would have 10 years or 20 years ago. David up next, the growing influence of Donald Trumps son in law. Carol and how that Tourism Industry depends on criss angel. David welcome to Bloomberg Businessweek, i am david gura. Carol i am carol massar. We are inside the magazine headquarters in new york. David Donald Trumps powerful soninlaw. Carol and the plan to out netflix netflix. David and which virtual device is right for you . Carol it is all ahead on bloombergs businessweek. Carol we are here with ellen pollock. There are many more must reads in the magazine and that includes the in focus on section with a deep dive into energy. We took a look at louisiana congressman. Ellen he is the majority whip and mr. Oil and gas and he is fighting against obamas proposed rules against oil drilling, offshore drilling, and he is doing things like taking democrats and republicans on helicopter trips so they can see the offshore drilling and Oil Platforms and he is sort of a big ally oil and gas. David he takes folks on trips and taking in a lot of money. Ellen he is. The industry is the biggest funder for his campaign. David you look at Artificial Intelligence. There are all these startups with bots and there is a dirty secret about this. A lot are powered by human beings. Not by robots. Ellen thats right. Were talking about the bots that are personal assistance. You can ask them to do things for you, set up your schedule, and it turns out some of these companies, and they are all younger, there are human beings behind the scenes taking sure they understood the instructions and carry them out correctly. The bot is trying to act human, but behind the bot is a human pretending to be bot. David you have to think about that for a minute. Carol so the Artificial Intelligence is artificial . Ellen artificial and kind of intelligent. David a number of the companies are starting out and people were crazy hours because these schools field requests at any hour of the day and human beings are doing it. Ellen it is supposed to between 24 7, so they have hired this army of usually kind of Young Workers because it has to be around the clock and you have people quitting saying, i cannot do this anymore, and you have the company sort of planning to be much more bot oriented as they go on. Carol not as hightech as everyone thinks. The magazine has an exclusive public unveiling of a new poster by someone who was well known to the Graphic Design world, Milton Glaser. Ellen Milton Glaser is a legendary graphic artist to read of newas the cofounder the famousne, he hed dylan cover, i love new york with a heart was his and he asked this is under the american graphic Artist Institute and he urged people to get out to vote. David what is he going for . Ellen it says, to vote is to exist. He talks to us about his career, why he thinks voting is important and the is excellent of a legendary person in the graphic arts yield for you have seen in all aspects. Carol how old is he . Ellen 86 years old. David it is interesting to think about the role of political posters. I see them around the neighborhood, windows, but the campaign moves online and posters are not what they used to be. Ellen they are not. What is interesting about this one is that it is not for one candidate but it is trying to get people to go to the polls. David there is a featured story about jared kushner, mary to trump,ied to ivanka soninlaw. s but also a very successful business person. We have seen him on stage with donald trump. Ellen he is very young. He comes from a big real estate family that made their fortunes in new jersey and other states. When his father went to jail for a bit, he came to new york and really moved the empire partly to new york. David David Leonard reports about two and kushner. David he is wealthy, a mogul, he owns a newspaper in new york and i think he is interested in having power and influence and youll get a lot more if his fatherinlaws elected president. David he is right out of harvard, he has been hoisted on a big stage, his father faces and in charge of a big real estate company. David leonard he bought a big skyscraper on fifth avenue, and he hung on to it when the market tank and it bounced back and they bought 7 billion worth of real estate, all the way out to cleveland, so he is a big deal. He is also influential in the newspaper and sort of like a murdoch or an aspiring press lord. David what do we know about to do. Wants and hopes David Leonard i dont think it is clear, but he is that a lot of rallies supporting his fatherinlaw and he is behind the scenes and working on his fatherinlaws behalf. He has endorsed his fatherinlaw, so i dont think it is a stretch to say that he would be a powerful person in washington of his fatherinlaw was elected. He would be at the white house a lot. David what is he like as a person . A lotmbitious, has done amount of time since he graduated. David leonard he is very polite, he opens car doors for people, very composed. At times, you almost feel when you do hear him speak, he did not speak to me for the story, but he is almost carefully bland, and he does not let people get too interested in what he is doing, but it is fascinating. What will become of him is fascinating. David how did the marriage come about . David leonard i do not know how they met. I did read that she became aware of him when he bought the observer in 2006 and that was important for him to raise his profile for people to take him seriously, but it is the merging of two real estate dynasties. York jersey and a new one. They had a big wedding with all sorts of stars there and she is very effervescent and i think charismatic herself, so they make quite the power couple. David the john kennedy comparison is in your piece. You do not make it. David leonard no, a friend of his does. But the son of a politically ambitious father, politically ambitious son and the have resources to do something with that and the family connections with the inlaws. David mexican drug cartels have come up with an innovative way of getting profits back over the border. Carol we talk with the reporter. Authorities have cracked down on banks for sending money that drug cartels have tied up, so banks have become more careful about the amount of money they a lot to get wired, especially big amounts, like drug cartels need. David how much money are we talking about . Alan in general, they move billions and billions of dollars each year. A lot of it is in bulk cash smuggling, which is when they stick it in suitcases or cars and moving across the border. Wire transfers and some of it is what they call trade based Money Laundering and that is what the article is about. The way that they turn it into other kinds of things. In this case, gold, to get around the controls and move the money back. Carol it sounds up they have come up with the schemes for years in terms of laundering the money and covering it. How did it come to light to authorities . Alan these came to life because there were two separate cases. This has been going on with gold for millennia, actually, gold is one of the original ways to transfer value, but what happened here was that there was a guy, reebok, he used to work there was a guy, a fellow burke, who used to work for the u. S. Customs agency and he noticed a lot of this coming out of miami and he realized it was the drug business in miami. He ended up retiring as time went on, and he had an interest in this and he convinced one of his successor agents that this so theth looking into, department of Homeland Security started an investigation in south florida into gold imports and exports and they can across this Gold Trading Company called natalie jewelry, husband and wife owned it carol it sounds so innocent. Alan doesnt it . Jed was an antiques dealer and then he got into the gold is business. But the case in miami was not what it appeared. What they ended up busting napoli jewelry for was a gold undervaluation skin, basically undervaluing gold being imported from automall and then sending more money back and that was a tax evasion scheme. When they busted the company, they discovered millions of dollars in cash in the company. And what they discovered in the records were all of these shipments, hundreds and hundreds of boxes labeled chicago gold or shopping silver coming from chicago and they said, what are these . It turns out the shipments would be hundreds millions dollars worth of gold that the cartel had sent to natalie jewelry, specifically jed, over the years the scheme ran. Carol up next, a new fuel refinery. David and adidas seizes the benefit of expensive and environmentally friendly lifeboats. Lightbulbs. Carol and the magic criss angel has on las vegas. All of that the head on Bloomberg Businessweek. Carol welcome back. I am carol massar. David i am david gura. This weeks focus section is about energy. There is a story about the town outside of rio that tells the story about how it has been affected by the declining pricing oil and this carwash scandal in brazil. Carol you have a small town and a huge oil company that was building a huge complex and expecting it to change the Economic Future of the town or city that was really contingent this agricultural kind of economy and make it inte completed but it has ballooned many times, about 14 billion now. That is compared to other refineries, usually more expensive. The hope is that one refinery may open up at present will not be able to do that unless they get 2 billion worth of funding from someplace they have not found yet. Carol it is a reminder that if you have a huge company and think of it as a slow entity, but it trickles down to other places and has an impact. Also, adidas and clean energy. David we spoke with chris martin. Chris adidas was looking for ways to get cfos more interested in investing in Energy Efficiency. One of the ways they did that was Trained College students, mba students, to go out and talk to the cfos about ways to invest in Energy Efficiency sustainably. David one of them is elizabeth turnbull, she goes to adidas, the athleticwear company, and this is a shining star when you look at all the companies who have done this. Towhat adidas has done is set aside funds and allow the Energy Efficiency experts to take over. They invest in projects that they hope will get a 20 return. Initially, they had seven projects, 750,000 dollars to spend, but they have since spent over 5 million in supporting the projects by reinvesting the funds through the savings. David is adidas an outlier . Have other companies done this successfully . Chris they added a new trick to it, which is setting up a portfolio of projects. Some do better than 20 , some worse, and that gives them more options about where to spend the money. David how quickly can the cultural change take place within the company . You sent ambassadors to meet with the cfo, but when does this trickle down to the company . Chris you really need the executive buyin and you need them to understand investing in this longterm rather than this will save me a few dollars on my electricity bill. Carol magician criss angel attracts more than crowds. David he brings a lot of money, not just for himself, but to the las vegas economy. Brett magic is huge and no one is huger than criss angel. His new show is starting and this is a huge revenue generator. 20 years ago, gambling was about down to 35 and the casinos of have to figure out how to make a gap. David this is big business. The are spending a lot of money to create sets, illusions, the works. Bret these are massive shows. The average price tickets can run to about 140, so you feel like you need to give the audience a money worth. Some of the tricks involved in these shows are pretty common, things you heard of like sawing your system in half, it does not sawing your assistant in half, it does not cut it, so there is dj, live music, it is amped up. David is this criss angels career or part of it . Bret he has gone pretty much been on this. He is known for a tv show and has been touring show. He hasnt sold Something Like 35 million worth of magic sets, but for the main part, this is his act. The other step leads people to vegas. Carol , live nation once in on television and the partnership in hollywood. David how to pick the best Virtual Reality device for you. All of that ahead on Bloomberg Businessweek. David welcome back. I david gura. Carol i am carol massar. In the industry section this week, a look at how live nation takes a page from amazon and netflix. David what are they trying to get into now . Lucas they are trying to be a tv company, so they are trying to take all of the experiences that some fans can experience live and bring it to you in your living room, your Television Set or your phone. David what is prompting people to do this . To too few people going or they areals aiming to expand . Lucas it helps promote their product, so lets say you are sitting at home and see beyonce perform live, she looks amazing and you want to go the next time she goes on tour. The next is they can sell ads selling the shows two other people. It is huge in terms of revenue standpoint for live nation, that advertising is one that really is a highmargin solution. David how much does the company have to change to do this . Are they looking at acquiring other companies . Lucas not a tremendous amount, so some of it is hiring. They hired someone from mtv to oversee inhouse studios and they have acquired small acquisitions, branded content studios, another company with a lot of experience with youtube, but the main part of the business is still there with a huge ad sales force to help sell ads for shows and they will partner with people who have competency in the area. David the timetable lucas immediate. David they are already doing some. Lucas they have Concert Series with yahoo , partnerships with snapchat, and this past wednesday, they will have announced the deal with hulu and they have a show that will be on channel in the fall. David live nation has become the cable company. Lucas it is the premier Concert Company and that is how musicians make money. Billboard ranks the most powerful people in the industry and it is bigger than any ad at spotify or youtube. David why would an artist go along with this . Why wouldnt i do this add value stuff on my own and why would i want to see that at five nation . Lucas some people will. If you are a star of a certain magnitude, you may do it on your own but perhaps live nation adds to that in some way. Live nation is important for most musicians in the world, so if they want to make a few videos and as long as you dont have an adversarial relationship, why not try it . Carol handy guide to how to pick out your own headset. We are seeing version one of a lot of these headsets and they range anywhere from 15 up to 800. What you are getting is the first best attempt and we have a guide in the magazine that really sort of explains which headset is right for you. David how big a difference is there between the 15 Google Cardboard option and date hundred highend one . Bret pretty massive. The higher up the chain, the more david more immersive. Bret more immersive, but if you buy the higher model, it requires a serious pc game and and i could run up, so you are spending another 1000 to have it work in the right way. David is this just for gaming . What does the future hold for these devices and how they will be used . Bret the sky is the limit. Google uses their cardboard in a pretty interesting way to view everything from political rallies to refugee camps, so there is news value as well. David great stories. What was your favorite . Carol i liked the cover story a lot on nestle. The company is known for sugar products and theyre going in a different direction. We talk about so many things being disrupted and this Company Disrupting what you are doing. What did you like . David i like that profile on jared kushner. I do not know anything about that and it was a good profile. Carol Bloomberg Business week is on newsstands now. David see you next week. Emily this is the best of bloomberg west, where we bring you to the top interviews from the week in tech. One year after losing her lawsuit, allen is back. She has no regrets. Plus, they get serious about you fox media gets serious about snapchat we will talk about the studio just for snapchat and where he thinks new media is headed