Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Countdown 20140903

President obama it is visiting ia in the wake of the ukraine crisis. Ownews, bloomberg thank you for joining us. How is Obama Meeting . What are we looking for in that . A kind of reassurances . What kind of reassurances . They are looking for measures ,hat were required by nato increased air controls and increased presence in the deployment of us. Those measures are expected to be basically extended for the longterm. That is what the leaders are looking for. How concerned are estonians and other leaders about what russia does next . I have to say they are really concerned. Theyre basically at the existential worry now. We have to remember that ever since the war in georgia between russia and georgia in 2008, there were concerns that have been increasing in the baltics. Terroristses back to in soviet oppression. That is obviously the background of this. What about the role of russia minorities in this . Places like estonia has large populations of russian minorities. What are they saying . Yes. This is a touchy issue. Estonia has about a quarter. There havent been many of the opinion polls. What we do know is that the opinion within the russian minority has been approximately been 5050. About 50 support the russian president s actions in crime imea and eastern ukraine. Thank you for joining us. Ott ummelas joining us there from estonia. The eu is considering whether this might include the next football world cup in 2018. That is according to the Financial Times newspaper that in the paper circulated european capitals. In the last 10 minutes, the japanese Prime Minister just announce a new cabinet member. We are joined by our correspondent in hong kong. What does the reshuffle signal about economic, see . Policy . There are various ways of reading it. His popularity has been sliding a bit as his economics havent delivered quite a bit as much as people have hoped. People were looking for signals in the market on a couple of things. Who was going to be managing the Worlds Largest Pension Funds that comes under the Health Ministry. From themed a pretty market from a reformer to run the minister should it means running the pension fund. He has been pushing that one to take more risk and invest more equities get a good have an effect on the arc its good we have seen stocks up. Affect on the markets. We have seen stocks go up. How many women would be in the cabinet . Been focused on he has made this a real centerpiece of his Economic Policy. Facing acome hes shrinking workforce. We have to figure out how to attract women to the workforce and keep them in the work or something them back in if they had gone off to have children. Had set a goal of having 30 of physicians filled across the economy. He is boosted it to five. That he isg to show willing to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. Could you give us an idea of the women who have been appointed . Yeah. Oncef the high profile who is a Prime Ministers daughter has been given the industry per olio portfolio. The women who have been appointed a cabinet have not necessarily been in the arts or economic portfolios. She will take on the issue of Nuclear Power in japan and all of the Nuclear Plants have been closed in the wake of a disaster. Theyre trying to figure what to do to get those reopened. It is really, really adding a strain on the economy. These get a big chunk of their power from Nuclear Power. Thanks a lot. Andrew david talking to us from tokyo. Lets take a look at the latest developments from scotland. The Labor Department and the u. K. Are going to throw more resources find a Better Together campaign in scotland. Scotland is the heartland of labor support for the labour party, the British Labour party. 49 outt of 50 us of 50 seats. Tested for then other together campaign. Yesterday, got out we showed the lead for the Better Together or the no campaign was down six Percentage Points. Theres enough to hold sway. Ment is more likely to be whom one would think with vote for maintaining the united kingdom, the unity. It is very interesting. We look at the men and women split in that poll. It could give us clues as to where the campaigning goes from here. Vote takes place on the 18th of september. Not many days of campaigning left. It might to switch the words campaigning towards the female vote. Itn you look at the poll, was down six Percentage Points as i mentioned. Ll but the nopo campaign ahead by 14 points. They do want to split. The men put the yes campaign ahead. They are more likely to vote for independence. Crucially, the undecideds, 11 of women are undecided against only 4 of men. That is why there seems to be a sense that campaigning towards appealing to women. Are they more risk averse . Theres a childrens author responded to the resumption women are more risk averse. That femaleat idea voters are more wary about taking risks. She says it is more but a different sort of debate, different sort of dialogue. Are still looking for answers. What applications are there for my children . My neighbors children . Women want a conversation where men are quicker to formulate a view. Women want a conversation and then won an argument. That seems to be her line. Women won a conversation and men want an argument. That seems to be her line. Banks is saying they need to way more surveys. Morgan stanley says if we do see a yes vote, the town could fall. If scotland goes for independence. We will keep watching that one. Sanctions and counter sanctions they say we are in a longterm crisis between the west and russia continues to deteriorate. Welcome back. I am anna edwards. Time for todays company news. Apple has confirmed photos of celebrities posted online were stolen from apples cameras. The celebrity accounts were compromised by very targeted attack on usernames, passwords, and security questions. A company that helps businesses has explored a sale and approached companies to gain interest. That is according to people familiar with the matter. Demos they might have also approached oracle. And halliburton has agreed to pay 1. 1 billion dollars to settle most of the lawsuit over its role in the biggest u. S. Offshore oil spill. It helps the company ovoid billions more in potential penalties down the road. We wait for the court ruling that will decide the extent of bps liability. Obama is in estonia today to reassure Baltic States of natos commitment to assuring the sovereignty of former soviet regions. Obama will fly to the u. K. To take heart in the nato meeting in wales. The White House Press secretary outlined the u. S. Agenda at the meeting. In cooperations with our allies have plans to cynically increase the readiness of a Nato Response force to ensure that the alliance is repaired to respond to threats in a timely fashion. This little training, exercises and discussions about what kinds of infrastructure will be required in the baltics and poland and romania and other states on the eastern french year to deal with a world in which they face new concern frontier to deal with a world in which they face. Joined by a former nato representative in moscow and Eastern Europe. He is an associate fellow. Thanks for joining us today. I gather there is a tom clancy novel. A fictional novel that talks about russia testing europes resolve by invading estonia with its ambitions ultimately on ukraine. That is fictional. Good russia invade could russia invade certain places . It is highly improbable russia would attempt an invasion of those countries. What we have seen is a consistent effort by russia to influence events in some of those places and to get its claws if you like into the political system, into the economic system. That is a very large gap between doing that and doing the kinds of things you are suggesting. The situation we have seen is very worrying to those countries. It really is russia has gotten away with a great deal here. The nato allies find it. Ifficult to react assume in 20 years russia it is a difficult partner. That simply hasnt happened. You think nato is in the process of rediscovering its work this . How much appetite is there to that nato ishings built on . How ready is nato really psychologically as well as militarily to defend those principles . A huge wakeup call to nato. They are bound by this commitment. It is an attack on all. Obama has president made a declaration that they have an unwavering commitment to estonia and ukraine. The difference is there is no of upholding ukrainians defense. In this case, i think it will be on the strong signal to estonians that nato does stand by its commitments and the United States is there it i believe the nato summit will deliberate a clear message that nato intends to improve the. Efense of the border state wintering a new phase in this crisis . As the putin seems to be becoming more blunt. Hes threatening to march on that capital and he is warning the west not to mess with them. He has used a different type of within that context. How does i give him some form of exit. The measures with the west is perhaps having an effect. It is not working on him as such and bringing him to the table. We will see a ramping up of sanctions. It damages the political atmosphere. We can carry on indefinitely like this. There are economic reasons and others. A fullscale invasion that is out of the question. It would the an enormous damage to the ukrainian economy and sapping the country strength. The western countries will try leadsow putin a path that to the negotiating table work on a settlement. It seems the broad controls are quite clear. That is that ukraine has two put some constitutional limits on set thecity to constitutional bar. I think it is largely a false issue. Most are bilingual. And also the issue of decentralization in order to continue to exercise power in the east of the country. Ukraine will have to decentralize. Kiev realizes that will have to happen. All of the ingredients are there and manageable. The outstanding issue where putin seems to be rattling around the cage is one of the association agreements, ukraines limitation of that agreement. It is damaging to russias economic interests. John, great to get your thoughts on this morning. John lough. Coming up, washing machines meet smartphones and wearable phones wearable devices. We go to berlin for the tech summit for look ahead at which product launches might try up in the battle for the spotlight. Welcome back to countdown. I am mark barton. All of the devices you dont need yet smartphones appear to do battle as a range of new product lineup at the consumer electronic fair in berlin. Hans nichols is there with a look ahead at which companies could steal the show. Good morning, hans. Good morning, mark. Which devices could still the show . You know you want these devices. You havent seen them yet. This unveils the smartphones and watches and wearables and even tvs. This is the consumer electronic fair in berlin. Over 5000 exhibitors here and we will be focusing at least for the next day or two on the smartphones and we will get into the wearables. We look at the smartphones, a lot of talk about what is going to happen in the battle space. These are phones that are also tablets. A might be coming out with their new phone. There also might be a potential for lg to show their latest model. We have got to talk about lumia phones of what the next model will be like. Will it challenge the samsungs and apples of the world . Bigwill notice there is a cap. That is no apple here. Apple is not coming. They plan to unveil their latest september 9. It is a big hole here. You can have an electronic show without apple showing up. Lets talk wearables for a second. That was the big story last time. There are big rumors that we will have smart watches. Phone. Ntethered to the we will talk about television and more pixels and more resolution. The company up credit card. I will do my Christmas Shopping right here on the company dime. The more pixels there are enough with the pixels. You can keep the pixels. Hans nichols in berlin. Stay with bloomberg. Todays coverage includes an interview with panasonic europe ceo. That is at half past 9 00. We all heard about apps and that is our future. We have got the story for you next. Welcome back. I am mark barton. Lets have a look at the currency markets. Slightly low for the dollar today. The big news out of japan is the Prime Minister has placed promarket reforms in charge of funds. Ernment pension what he is seeking to do is restore Economic Policy with a big cabinet rish awful. The biggest change since world war ii. It comes after he took office and pledge to help the economy and reaffirm he has raised a number of female ministers to equal a postwar record. That is the big news. 06. Dollar is 105. These are the top headlines this hour. Video of the a beheading of an american journalist. He would be the second american journalist to be murdered by the militant group. James foley was killed in a video released last month. The u. K. Labour party is throwing resources into scotland in a bit to stop them from voting for independence according to people familiar with the situation. They want to rally the no vote before the september 18 ballot. Cup will be world held in russia as planned according to an interview. Theremarks come in light of new sanctions currently being developed by the European Commission that might affect sporting and cultural events. Postedralia betterthanexpected gdp figures of 2. 4 . Paul, after all this talk of misery and rising unemployment, this mustve been a pleasant surprise on this chilean economy. Australian economy. It was. We were expecting a read of 4. 5 . 2 1. 1 was a good number of growth for the quarter. We have the figure now a 3. 1 . That is a healthy result indeed, especially consider the disclaimers that were getting issued earlier this week with haveurrent account that forecasted a drag on the gdp figure due to falling exports. A note was released that there was a drug greater than expected from the slowdown in the Mining Investment boom. Ity were saying when it put on hold, the expected gdp to continue growing below trend. In that context, the number was a pleasant surprise. We had the pleasure of reacting to it. I could see the government has managed to make good on its promise to repeal the mining tax. It has come at a cost, hasnt . Yeah, it sure has. It was never terrific tax to begin with. It was a 30 tax on coal and iro n. And never really raise anything close to what was expected. Getting rid of it and keeping that election promise has cost a hefty price on the government. One party were a man happened to be a former call mik coal changes toey made policy. This means six . 5 billion of budget savings that had to be postponed. This in a climate where we frequently hear the government complained about budget emergency. Yes, a coveted the tax, but at a high price. Lot. Thanks a paul allen in sydney. Taking technology to the next level. One is the ipad. You to experience what is happening at any moment. Joining us to expend how it works, we have the founder and ceo. Thank you for coming to talk to us. Tell us how you this works and how it allows people to follow the augmented path. You can tag any location in the world and you can leave it there for the people to discover. How that works is if you can imagine shooting a video or taking a photograph on your mobile device and peeling it off the screen and sticking it up at a location like a postit note and living in there for other people to view. , ever go to google maps sometimes i find some augmented map. How is that different . We let our users digitize every experience in the physical world. We bring that into the Digital World. When you are out and about trying to use one of those mapping applications, it could be cumbersome. Using our application, you could hold the device and look for yourself and you could see the content appearing all around you in real time. You got the idea when you read a rugby match. Correct. You wanted to share the atmosphere. You came up with this idea. It works well for concerts. At the rugby match, i was thinking when i put this on facebook, the atmosphere was in the stadium. However, put up on facebook and people in the proximity of me couldnt see that content. They werent my friends are in the network. We need a new way of taking this content and basically put it out into the physical world. Itag, we could drop the content. You could go to the stadium in dublin. A very emotional game. One was Walking Around with his family on the pitch. It is like a time capsule that people can see. This is if something is happening that is a big event and has specific geography attached to it, you could go to that geography virtually and experience all of the. Does it have to be something that i look through some thinking in terms of the physical apparatus and using, do i have to look through something , a camera or a lens or do i wear something that shows me this . At the moment, the platform is available at the mobile application. We are moving this into other pieces of hardware. You could basically fly around the world and see this content being dropped in realtime. You can imagine a big event in the stadium where youre in america, you could go down to the stadium and see what is going on from other peoples viewpoints in realtime using the platform. How to monetize the idea . We use proximity deals. And someone views the tag content, we can bring in deals that would be very applicable to that piece of content in proximity. If youre looking for a restaurant in a particular part of town, you could see a tag by restaurant into the food there and what people thought about it. More people taking photos of their food . [laughter] breakfast that is the most captured on instagram. Ill have to take a picture of marks breakfast. Please. [laughter] how timeconsuming is that . It is easy. Andare basically signing up pulling up that content in realtime. We are keeping this app free. We will call it our users with cluttering we wont it up with advertising. Boners with smartphones statistically or downloading fewer apps than they were previously. Smartphone owners who are you targeting . You are absolutely correct. Less apps are being downloaded. We have come to transition in app world. Allows apps to do is talk to each other. Right now they cant do a lot. But now they can start sending information between them. And you look at a mobile device, it is an extension of a persons persona and their interest. If you look at the apps a person has other device, it is creating a personalitybased. It is becoming quite scarce. People wont download hundreds of apps. Where are we heading in augmented reality . This is just the beginning. Tell me where were going and when youre five years. Augmented reality has been around for number of years. Gaming, wasnt it . That is where a lot of these services would be coming to the marketplace. Pretty soon the entire physical world is going to be wirelessly connected. Your fridge will talk and your appliances at home. Your mobile device will essentially be the Remote Control that you use and interact with in the physical world. The Digital World and the physical world are merging very quickly. That matrix we saw in the movie, that is going to happen in a couple of years. Do we want less actual contact and more virtual or augmented contact . We want more physical contact d isthe idea behind itagge removed time and space using our service. If youre at a wedding, you could drop a tag at that wedding. Some members are in arent there. They could see the content of the videos in the conversations in realtime. It does enhance. You wont take away from the is a cold world. You want to go with the physical world. That is a relief. Coming up, Ken Mcdonalds can mcdonalds lure back customers in china . Could it put its scandal behind it . Welcome back. This is countdown. I am mark barton. Safety scareood that hurt sales, mcdonalds announced changes in china. David joins us from hong kong. Hi, david. Good morning. That is right. Mcdonalds obviously in an effort to hopefully rebuild the fooddence in the latest scare in china says it is creating a new position. Starting this month, the head of food safety and china is headed by a woman who has been with the Company Since the early 1990s. She used to be the former senior director of global food safety and nutrition at the company. Head of the Food Safety Advisory Council on mcdonalds starting in 2002. What will the new position due. She reports directly to the ceo of the china dismissed. She has the power of over sourcing and production decisions. Of the things that were announced along these lines, that increase the number of what audits across a lot of their suppliers. Have also added them to install more cameras. It is also what they call an anonymous hotline for food suppliers and employees. They have been busy auditing a lot of these. We will see if it does help sales to restore confidence. Thanks, david. Goal will economy annualisk as the the competitiveness report. It focuses on structural reform to help support growth. Winners and losers in terms of competitiveness we have Caroline Hyde with us. Stark warnings. What can we conclude . Theyre adding their voice to the likes of mario draghi of the ecb. Many are not getting through as quickly as they can. Shining a light on portugal and greece doing the right thing here. The health of the Global Economy is at risk despite the bold Monetary Policy we have seen so far. Geopolitics is a concern. Inequality. Therefore, Structural Reforms are the most important thing that we need to see. The biggest challenge to sustaining Global Growth is the uneven implementation of the structural reform. Clearly this is a way of focusing on prosperity what drives it. Who are the winners and who are the losers . 10 switzerland is number one for the six year in a row. Why . Jen to be stalled in the second quarter. How is it still number one . And the high spending labor market says it balances of leave protection and flexibility. They are ready slapping cap still limit immigration. Clearly remaining a winner. Gdp was up in the second quarter. They said the u. S. Has made significant oh press progress. Flexible labor markets. Business trust and politicians. Theyre worried about that and favoritism of some government officials. The macroeconomic environment. Japan is also doing pretty well. The u. K. Is up by one as well. Portugal is up 15 places in one year. Countrynt of reform the has followed is really impressing. Theyre making significant strides. When you look at the losers, finland and germany are falling. Not even in the top 10 in europe. They really do stand out. There are major competitive challenges. They arent fully engage in the reforms process. Situation isfiscal bad and continuing to deteriorate. It only comes in behind panama, poland, and egypt. Egypt caroline, thank you for that. Cannotntley gurry legally operate in europes economy. Our International Correspondent hans nichols is trying to see if the popular ride app is still functioning. A city of taxi stands. Lines of tabs that preset locations ready to take you where youre going. There is also a line of defense against uber. There are court cases. We will assess drivers what they are afraid of. Say they havexi been around six months to prepare for exams. Drivers. So should uber yeah. It is unfair if they also want to do this job. Have to have this call a vacation. A federal court issued a nation ban against uber. Will the Taxi Association speak to enforce that been . If they do, it would be fines for huber. To payys theyre willing up. Im willing to order one to find out. Care enough, a humble b arrives. Drive, no problem in berlin. That means the german battle between uber and the taxes will go on until there is a final and enforceable verdict. That was hans nichols. Coming up, top stories from todays newspapers coming up. Welcome back to countdown. I am anna edwards. Sorry to interrupt. We are talking about what was that film where he was the it was an awful film. [laughter] meet joe black. It was a good film. We are were discussing his best and worst films. Im looking at the independence. The casino and now the sequel arected it is going to do corporate video apparently. He is bringing together brad niro. Nd robert de you would think that would be a great line up to oceans 11. No. It will be a corporate video. A short video promoting a 2 billion resort for macau. The pair late they have never worked on the same film with martin scorsese. It all residue with this resort. Speaking of gambling, vegas is famous for gambling and hangovers so says the times in his piece. They will be holding their inaugural millionaire chef tournament. T has gone more cerebral the price is 1 million. Players will be arriving in show for the limos. Into chess re they will add in big data technology. They are adding new data mining. You get to the downside to some of the moves played. And andy murray is plain djokovic tonight in the u. S. Open quarterfinals. Good luck, andy. I dont care who wins. Second hour of countdown continues after the short break. Obama arrives in europe to read the president seeks to reassure nato members. Women in the cabinet. The japanese Prime Minister shakes up his inner circle. And the Consumer Electronics fair in berlin. Hello, welcome to countdown. A warm welcome to the second hour. Air force one has touched down. With estonian leaders. That is in the wake of the ukraine crisis. For more, we are joined by bloomberg newss correspondent. I hope you can hear me over there. Who is Obama Meeting with . What are we looking out for from this meeting . Lost ourif we have connection. We will try and get that back. President obama is supposed to be meeting with the baltic state leaders. We will come back to that story. Stainless sanctions and the Ukraine Russia story. Eu is considering whether to ban russia from highprofile sporting events. This may include the next world cup taking place in russia in 2018. They say they will go ahead. They said they will go ahead as planned. Headlines,id in our the japanese Prime Minister abe has announced a cabinet reshuffle. What does the reshuffle signal about Economic Policy . Everybody was watching the Health Ministry. The Health Ministry manager manages theld worlds biggest pension fund. Has announcedbe he wants them to get more aggressive. That has a clear implication for the market, both equity and bond markets. One of the reasons why economists say japanese debt is domesticnot as bad as debt in the eu but that could have some serious inflammations implications. We could see the market respond. That has been one of the biggest issues. Pledged to raise the sales tax. The first one choked spending. He needs to do it again to deal with the debt issue. The complexion of the cabinet indicates that they probably will go ahead with the sales tax as planned, maybe as soon as it was supposed to be, which is in a couple of months. The other factor people were watching was the role of women in the cabinet. How does that fit in with abes policy objectives . He is not just trying to break the Glass Ceiling because the needs to be broken. It is also an economic issue. Japan is facing a demographic problem. They have a shrinking workforce. They have one of the worlds lowest birth rates. Has made it part of his policy to attract more women into management positions and to enter then workforce, stay in the workforce, and also to return to the workforce after having children. Japans a real problem in giving the cost of childcare and cultural issues. He has made this the centerpiece of his policy. In his first cabinet, heal me has two women. Now there are five. He is close to the ratio. He is trying to set an example. Andrew, thank you for joining us today. Andrew davis joining us from hong kong to discuss the latest on the japanese cabinet. Act to our top story. Obama in estonia. Obama and hissing visit to the Baltic States earlier. What are we expecting to get from the meeting . Who is he going to be talking to . He will be talking to estonian president thomas who is swedish born. U. S. Educated. The leader of estonia. The primell speak to ss latvia,nd president o with when you, and estonia. Afraid are these countries of the a russian incursion . This is a key topic of conversation, especially among older estonians. The relations have never been very warm since 1991 when the countrys one dependents independence. Olderars of russia among people increased after their war with georgia in 2008. What is happening now in ukraine is only helping these fears to grow. Even though the president has cited these existential fears, the official stance of the leaders is the country has never been as well protected against external threats thanks to nato membership. Would do the russian minorities in these countries think . This latvia and estonia have Large Russian minorities. What are they are saying about the activities in ukraine and where that might lead . Yes. A quarter of than residents of latvia and estonia are russian. While there have not been many opinion polls on the issue, recent studies suggest about the 5050 split within the russian minority between those that annexation and those who are condemning it. Which really depends on how well the people have integrated into the baltic societies. As april,s early there was a petition by some ethnic russians in estonia asking for putin not to meddle in estonia possis fares estonias affairs in their name. Lets talk about scotland. Yeah. Inwe saw moves in the market the town yesterday on the back of the poll commissioned by the sun and times papers. Now those familiar with the labour party says they are moving resources away from england into scotland fighting for what is a bit of a labor heartland. It is in their interest. 50 seats are labor mps. Everybody in the battier Better Together campaign are nervous about the poll which no the a the campaign is down to six Percentage Points. Thes there a sense that message on the ground has not gotten through to the electorate . Hence the yes vote taking adventure that . Is interesting when you look down at the break down of men and women. We have been looking through the details of the poll. The lead for the no campaign was down to six points. The no group was ahead for 13 points for women. Men putting the yes campaign ahead by two points. A different outcome depending on which gender you look at. What is crucial for the campaigners in the runup to the vote is that 11 of women are still undecided about which way to go. That compares to 4 of men. It seems men are more likely to have made up their mind. Is that because they are riskaverse or just pondering it . Childrens author based in edinburgh. A cliche. This idea she said when you go door to door, this is not what they have discovered. It is a different sort of debate and dialogue. Pondering for longer, looking for the answers, the implications. We want a conversation. Whereas we want an argument. She says women want to conversation, men want an argument. Which expense of the dynamics on the set works. Every day. Lets turn back to serious matter. The ukraine crisis. We will talk about investing in uncertain times. With the chief executive. Welcome back. I am anna edwards. Newe has confirmed that photos of celebrities were individually stolen from apple account. They say the photos were compromised by a tiger did attack. Targeted attack. Ppraoched Companies Including sap. They may have also approached were cool. Is 5. 8rket believe million. Is 5. 8 market value billion. And halliburton has agreed to pay one point been . To pay 1. 1 billion. President obama heads to Eastern Europe to reassure nato members of their security. Asian stocks are being lifted by Strong Manufacturing data. Joining us is sabr chief executive thank you for joining us. Lots of russians being posed by investors. Lots of questions being posed by investors. Of gomezthe ceo investment management, what is the key question that you and your clients are focusing on . It is about Interest Rates and when they will rise and what happens when they do. The consensus in the markets which i think is right for now lowererest rates remain for longer than people think. Although we are beginning to see leadsth in the u. S. , that to two things. The performance of the dollar, which will continue. And the performance of u. S. Equities versus others. My worry is opposed to my question is every assumes the rise of Interest Rates will be smooth. Im not entirely sure of that. Do i believe in a new normal . Im not going to go back to a level that has been normal for 200 years. I worry about that. I worry about such low Interest Rates for so long might have resulted in inflation and people dismissing inflation theory that is my second worry. Imthe time being, it means probably still ok on the dollar. And you asked equities and u. S. Equities. I would be more cautious on bonds. If you think that is the biggest risk we see, Interest Rates go up in the u. S. Think thatean you is positive for perhaps the u. S. And developed Market Equities . Is it positive or just less negative . I think it is less negative. Might turnis they off the tapering or quantitative easing. It means you have indication of a stronger economy. It might be coming from a good place. There are some indications that the economy might be stronger than people think. This is not the case in europe. Arepean Companies Earnings Getting Better because they are being exposed to better areas. Is i am an cynic. Began for somebody else. The ecb could be i think that is a good point. We know that draghi is beginning aboutk there is talk quantitative easing being passed over to europe. We saw some stimulus in china that has fizzled out. The state is passed that. The question is how fast will Interest Rates rise. Longterm, that means you are less key on bonds keen on bonds. People have been calling this a bull market for so long. I dont this is going to happen overnight. These conditions of low Interest Rates are going to be with us for some time to read the fed is going to be very cautious about how it tapers quantitative easing. Is how doesement the political situation impact Interest Rates and markets . Well the proper while the is assesseds with what is happening in iraq, the real issue is what is happening in ukraine. We are now in the summer. As we come to the worcester winter, if russia wants to go beigerent, they can really hurt the european economy. Turning up the gas. Telling them they cant play football in 2018 doesnt quite work. Are you going to be less enthusiastic of European Companies as a result of being moving into the winter . I think im going to be more watchful. I was more cautious on europe one a lot of money went into europe. I did not quite see it reflect any earnings. I am more happy now because i can see the earnings going up. They are exposed to some of the economies in the states. Lets wait and see. That is what the markets should watch because there is the possibility of damage. Draghi has to do more quantitative easing. What you expected from the ecb . A big announcement on qe . A tweak of Interest Rates . What do you think will happen by the end of the year . A small tweak. If you look at the track record, they are notas into big gestures, they are into small gestures. They will say to the market, we are going to do a bit of easing. We want things to pick up. If there is damage in the winter, if the russians start to seriously affect the gas flow. That is still to be seen. The s p at 2000 everything is expensive. The problem is, everything is fully valued. It is an interesting place to be. And everything being fully valued, the one area you can say, so equities seem to be fully valued. Bonds certainly are fully valued. Where are you heading . Which areas are you heading into . There are some areas in infrastructure that you can harvest which are much more longterm and steady. Some areas and property debt that you can try to harvest. And some areas, funnily enough, and highyield stocks. They give very much for joining us. The chief executive officer. 7 20 in london. The tech summit in berlin. Producthead at which launches might triumph in the battle for the spotlight. Welcome back to countdown. London. In all the devices you dont need smartphones prepared to do battle with the new lineup of products at the Consumer Electronics fair in berlin. Hans nichols is doing some research over there in berlin. Looking at the companies that will steal the show, hans. It is research. What im going to researches how to pretend you are working when you actually are not. So many neat smartphones will be unveiled. Wearables spirit wearables. Hooky from can play work. They can for their bosses. Im probably most excited about some of the wearables. Lets talk about the smartphones. Those are coming out. Samsung is expected to reveal a new notebook, so they can really own the fablet space. Phone froma new microsoft. Motorola as well. All those companies up there, there is a glaring exception to read that as apple. Apple is not at the show. Fire,ant to save their hold their ammunition for the iphone release on september 9. Lets talk wearables. Pressof talk in the local and in korea on what samsung is going to reveal in a wearable watch not tethered to a phone. If the only thing you are wearing is your watch, you can check email and make calls. We are going to get a lot of exciting things and watches. Also tvs. The amount of pixels you have, 4000 k. I just saw a nice display that had a pagoda, and sums and some flowers. A shark swam onto the screen to read it was so real, my heart skipped a beat. We will look at what you can buy me for christmas. We will put a gift limit. You will find something for me. Berlin with sharks and all. Thank you very much. Hans nichols. Stay out of the water, hans. Stay with us for more from the conference today. And more. And freddie. We have and friday. Program, theon the u. K. On the rise according to the Global Competitiveness report. Find out why. And which countries are not far behind. That is coming up next. Welcome back. Lets have a look at the dollar. 104. 94. Is the japanese Prime Ministers cabinet reshuffle. He has rained named a female politician as a minister. Momentuming to restore to his economic policies. He brought in a new health minister, who will be in charge of the worlds biggest retirement fund. New nuclear and he brought in a new person to oversee the Nations Nuclear industry. These are the changes to the longestserving cabinet since world war ii. Abe within these changes has raised the number of female ministers to equal a post wrecker postwar record. I am anna edwards. Ae Islamic State has released video showing the beheading of a man identified as an american journalist. He would be the second american journalist to be murdered by the militants. Wasjournalist james foley killed and a video was released last month. The u. K. Labor party is throwing resources into scotland in a bid to stop the independence movement. Party organizers were moved removed from marginal electoral districts and diploid to scotland to rally the no load. Vote. Fifafive s is the and says the 2018 world cup will be held in russia as planned. This comes in the light of possible sporting sanctions. The health of world economies are at risk. Focus on must structural reform to read here with more on the findings and the winners and losers in terms of competitiveness is Caroline Hyde. Risks theybout the face, largely about structural reform. This is something we have heard, mario draghi banging the drum. Countries like france and italy are slow to overhaul their labor markets. They are risking not only their growth but Global Growth. They sayst moment, the uneven implementation of Structural Reforms is the biggest challenge to Global Growth. Talent and innovation is a worry, trying to get the right interactions between the public and private sector. The health of the Global Economy is at risk. You have geopolitics, income inequality. You need countries to stand up and start restructuring. They call this competitiveness. Tell us who the winners and losers are. Clearly currently not spending too much attention to strong currencies. A row,the sixth year in stand up please. Switzerland. Pretty surprising, and considering that gdp stalled in the second quarter. Weakest growth in two years. Hat they are trying to show are topnotch academic institutions. Threats from talent. They might be limiting immigration. Singapore stays number two. The u. S. Kleins one place up to climbs oneee plac up toe number three. Highly sophisticated companies. Their main concerns were actually the government. Weise for spending, favoritism in terms of officials, somewhat weak. Japan does well. Portugal. 15 places it rose. Why Structural Reforms, making significant reforms. Spain did well. Southeast asia has remarkable dynamics. Malaysia, thailand, philippines, vietnam. Philippines the most improved country in 10 years since 2010. Worst the Biggest Country on the list . Oh, gosh. A comes ind guine last. Chad just before that. One of the ebola stricken countries. They say Subsaharan Africa does poorly. Competitiveness challenges. Latin america does not come off well. The emerging markets are not looking too rosy. The developing world is moving faster in terms of improvements to the emerging markets facing difficulty. Turkey, brazil, mexico. China is the only one that rises. What about countries that had their fingers pointed at them by mario draghi . Italy and france . Not even in the number 10. The top 10 of europe. France comes in 23rd. Fiscal situation, the major it continues to deteriorate. It is mainly about the government and labor market in france. The fiscal balance, the government spending. Italy, 40 ninth place behind place and chile 49th behind poland and chile. No points for italy. Stay tuned for our interview with the lead economist of the World Economic forum. Google gets down to business. Searchhe why the giant is revamping their enterprise unit. Welcome back. Time for todays company dues news. Allowrtnership will companies to jointly manage planning, pricing, and handling on all routes between japan and europe. The company has appointed a chief executive this comes amid declining profits at the biggest and panera at the hugo boss. Take in they have cut their stakes. Now the summer may be over. Google is ready for work. They have announced a rebrand of the Enterprise Products in an effort to compete with firms like microsoft. We are joined by the enterprise director, thomas davies. Thank you for coming in. A rebrand for google. What are you trying to tell us through the rebrand . Technologies changed enormously in the last 10 years. Used to get in the way of the work i was doing. Paste it into the same office, go same desk. I used to to the same office, the same desk. That is not the reality of how we work today. Refresh us on what we are you are offering businesses and you have offered for the past 10 years. We try to bring the best of consumer technologies to the business landscape. The controls, the apostle as he is the policies. We have reached the point where we went to focus on two specific things. The Cloud Services which are allowing people to develop things. Harden and button down on our cloud productivity solutions. Google drive. We are excited about the rebrand. The products and solutions we bring to market. The time is right to put that spotlight on this is ms. Productivity area. Business productivity area. So i can access the document anywhere, on the train or at home. And the people can access the document through the cloud. Give us the reaction to myths about the cloud. Fears. Theave had a spotlight on cloud because of the icloud and fears of celebrity pictures being hacked. How do you persuade businesses as it is good to access work document anywhere . Organizations,at travis perkins, industry heavyweights, they are looking to bring technical business and cultural value to their companies. Work got anyway. We didnt talk about technologies being able to transform. That is not something that can be provided. We talk about fear, we focus a lot of our efforts on security. Security54 fulltime experts. Security is our core business. A lot of the attention is on the end user. There are a lot of things we can do to be more secure. For example, to step verifications. A lot of Internet Technology Companies Offer those kinds of services. A loting that without of focus can be managed by the enduser. That is very much about education. I should remember more, shouldnt i. Tell us about how the workplace is changing. We have gone from having d being ablesktops to to work all over the lace. We have seen people in coffee shops and on index. Beanbags. Third we had next . Where do we had next . Thing people want to do. We call it worked the way we live. People dont want to think about the technology they use. They want to use any device. We want to get people working in a flexible and productive way. Out. E just starting the technology has reached a point of maturity where you can allow people to work, whether in a coffee shop or at home anymore taxable way in a more flexible. Way if we can make work enjoyable, we think that is a good thing. You mentioned a lot of companies that you have signed up. John lewis. Offeredit that you have that microsoft is not offering . You are able to manipulate documents from wherever you might be . Or at the same time. I remember having to track changes in microsoft word read by the time i saved one, you got for more changes from others. What is it that when these people over . I want to have all my applications, the apps in one place. I dont work in a silo. People fromlots of google. And from outside my organization. Bringing collaboration into companies on a daily basis is helpful. We can do that even if i have google at work . My client is on microsoft or apple . Right. Getting people more productive, working in an agile and flexible way is important to them. Ios want tond c mation intofor their company. What do you mean by that . Everybody in the organization has responsibility and accountability to be the next innovator. By giving them the tools and productivity, allow them to do that. Ideasnd the next 10 great in an organization dont come from outside. It is from your employees. We started with the rebranding. Lets finish with it. Tell us theocess process of going from google enterprise to google for work. How do you get from there to there . Take to people does it get from google enterprise to the new title . Probably more than it should. We never set out to create a traditional enterprise division. We wanted to do something different. Bring this to as many people as we could. 5 million organizations, using our Enterprise Products. Now is a time google for work. Unifying training for us. We were unifying branding for us. Thank you very much for joining us. Director for northern, eastern, and central europe. Looking at a live shot of the city of london. Stocks due to open. We will look at the data driving the markets. Welcome back to countdown, i am anna edwards. We have had an agreement signed under which the group will distribute shares to their shareholders. Under the understanding that christian your dior will distribute to its own shareholders. Then there will be theres also an agreement that they have undertaken not to acquire shores the next in hermes in five years. They have been doing this since 2010. It was back in 2010 that they ofounced they held 17 hermes. The converted derivatives into shares. Happy withas never his arrangement. There was talk that they would in announce a full bid. It seems as if the spec has been resolved. No longer a conflict as of this morning. The chief market analyst. What is on your mind, james . We are looking toward the Economic Calendar as the big one. Not even necessarily todays Economic Calendar. We have been preoccupied with what is going to happen on thursday and friday in terms of the central bank meetings. Even with today, there is data to get into. Not much in the way of company thats today. If you look at the services pmi from a lot of nations, they will be interesting to read especially the u. K. Once. Have ones. We have had mixed ones from the u. K. One massively beating expectations. Today will be an interesting point. The biggest sector in the u. K. Will pick up. Saw the bestpmi numbers since january. That will be getting preoccupation first thing. We have to look to the Central Banks, not necessarily the bank of england. We dont expect too much out of them. The ecb is where we are going to be looking. What are you expecting, james, from the ecb . Do you think we will get some big announcements on quantitative easing . Were you expecting what are you expecting . Is a bit of a balancing act for the ecb. Mario draghi has put these measures into place. We have not seen all of them, the results of those. We havent seen what they are going to do. What will be interesting is mario draghi has to keep the tone of, we are acting to solve the problem. I expect tomorrow, not to see the quantitative easing announcement. I would be expecting to see some kind of rate cut again. Thet just to say we know small cuts, when the rates are so low, they dont make too much in the way of a difference. When we are looking at dragon he low inflation figure higher. What they will do, by cutting the rate again, it will show we have the measures in place already. We have cut rates already and we will cut them again now. We are oking to do qe as we go through. It will be a case of, look, we are still looking at this. Now is the time for quantitative easing. This is a mistake token gesture to say, we are still plowing ahead and trying to drag this economy out of the mire. When you look at the likes of potential sanctions on europe. The retell a terry sanctions sactions litory mario draghi has a tough job. The geopolitics isnt rattling markets too much, does it . We have had the markets reeling so strongly on the back of lowvolume and volatility. A thing that spoke to them would see these fall quickly. We are getting people picking the tops of equity markets. That will continue well they go up. Thank you for joining us, james. s market strategist. Next. The move is we will be speaking to the seat chief executive of titanium capital. Or do you on the move or go i am manus cranny. European equities looking for a higher opening. Retail sales are rising, but chinas Services Industry is doing quite nicely. It is the politics of the world that are at play. As obama touches down to give reassurance to the baltics, what did he say . How did he reassure the position of the United States . He heads to cardiff, in south wales to discuss what america wants. Some breaking news in the past hermes. Es, lvmh and it looks as if they have begun to agree. Lvmh will change their holdings with hermes. Therell be distribution of stock. Lets see how that stock opens. Hand,oss on the other looks like their private equity holders will place just under 850 million shares. Manus. Morning more worriedre about the Central Banks and geopolitics. It is the story that has been running through our markets for quite some time. European equities . At what isake a look happening. They will focus on tomorrow with the ecb. We go to bank of england