Accepted a sweetened offer. China cracking down on peertopeer platforms. Theyre vowing to cleanse the market. The platform should serve as an intermediary. Says theys the pboc are strengthening oversight of online payment firms. Kong,e of markets, hong shanghai, swinging back into gains. Gains in some parts of the region today. Those are your top headlines. This is bloomberg west. Cori im in for emily chang. Mark zuckerberg fires back at his critics about expanding Internet Access in india. tis the season for jeff bezoss net worth to soar. Gender and racial equality are back in the spotlight as twitter names a new head of diversity. Now to our lead. Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg making a personal appeal in one of indias leading newspapers insisting that the country allow , a Free Internet service. India, secretary wrote instead of wanting to give people access to some basic Internet Services for free critics continue to spread false claims even if that means leaving behind a billion people. It allows free mobile Internet Access. A restricted handful of apps including facebook. Facebook says it is at least something. Opponents say it threatens the principles of Net Neutrality. Indias Regulatory Authority communicationse to stop the service pending a ruling of whether it violates Net Neutrality. The decision is expected next month. Isning us now from new york David Kilpatrick the author of , the facebook effect. Larry is the president of the think take focused on telecommunications issues. Larry, let me start with you. This notion of Net Neutrality. Which has recently become the policy of the fcc. If not the law of the land. Why is it so important in a developing internet world . Larry the Net Neutrality debate has been going on for at least 10 years here. It has been highly politicized. You are seeing that in india. That the Free Basic Service one can look at it through a net as an issue of having to seek permission for innovation. It really is a Program Designed to encourage Broadband Adoption. To get the social value of the internet to as many people as possible. Cory you know the heart of Mark Zuckerberg and facebook to the , critics of this, who see a land grab by facebook, is that how Mark Zuckerberg sees it . David of course not. Mark zuckerberg for 10 years plus has basically believed that he is taking facebook and conductivity to everyone on the planet. That is 7. 3 billion people. That is what he thinks he is trying to do. Before he can get them to facebook he has to get them , connected. He also thinks that he is a rich guy and should be doing some good stuff. Hes trying to do in his mind something good for india, for the planet, with internet. Org and this free service. They feel very blindsided by this protocols of net which reality. I think these concerns are kind of ludicrous. I dont even know what Net Neutrality means. If it is an argument that people should not have something they otherwise would not have i dont , buy it. I think this is a great example of doing well by doing good. Facebook will benefit over time. If these people come online, if they use facebook, if the internet ad market grows in india, but in the meantime he is to get people online. Something that they need and i think its a good thing. Cory hes been talking about the same talking points. Lets listen to what mark had to say in his own words. Mark zuckerberg for every 10 people who get access to the internet, one person gets a new job and one person gets lifted out of poverty. So there is just a tremendous opportunity in india. If there are a billion people who were not connected. This is one of the biggest opportunities to help develop the economy here and to help alleviate poverty. And really lift up a lot of folks. Cory if that is the case, why not offer twitter, why not offer those other companies that compete with facebook . Larry from what i understand the service is open to all as long as they can adhere to the programs parameters. Again, this is free. It is open to all. I think you need to take a step back and think about what mr. Zuckerberg is trying to do. We have been struggling with internet adoption here in the United States for more than 10 years. That was the whole purpose of our National Broadband plan back in 2010. The problem is that when you talk about Broadband Adoption there is a supplyside component , of it. That is always the infrastructure. Then there is a demand side. One element of that is price and the other is relevance. Access to the internet needs to be relevant to me if i want to get on or not even if i can , afford it. What this lowcost program or nocost program does is give people an onramp onto the internet. Yes it might be limited , programming, but it allows people to access the internet when perhaps they could not do it. You solve the affordability problem and the relevancy issue. This notion that if all cant have it, the noncant have it, this does not make sense to me. Cory do you think they could ameliorate those concerns and offering google plus . David they have adjusted the program already quite a bit. I am glad that larry and i agree so completely on this. To add to a point that larry made in india a lot of these , poor people dont understand what going on the internet means. Seeding theually seatin market just by giving them something they would need to be aware of. The idea of this plan is that people will be able to pay for it down the road. You will be able to wean them off the free service. A gigantic country where people are not very connected. Where he is trying to help them learn the benefits of that. Cory when i see pictures of zuckerberg wearing a tie i find that deeply disconcerting. David it shows how seriously he takes this issue. Cory i guess it does. Thank you very much to both of you. Thank you for joining us on this topic. Coming up, Ecommerce Companies like amazon. Com dominated the Holiday Shopping. The winners and losers. Ceo thatalk with one is incredibly rich. The bloomberg billionaires index next. , cory another banner Holiday Season for online companies. Online giants like amazon had plenty to celebrate. Sales did not treat fedex so well. Shannon joins me now. Always a pleasure. This has been a really interesting time for all companies in retail. It didnt look like it was going to be so good. A short and seizing season leading up to those final days, the big retailers preannouncing some pain. Shannon it came in slightly above expectations. That was really because of this late surge and ecommerce. November wasnt looking good but , those final two weeks in consumers really went out and december, started shopping. Retail sales online were up 20 this year. For that total time span, bricks and mortar, sales were up about 8 between black friday and christmas. It is not even done yet. One analyst was telling me that december 26 is probably going to be the second biggest shopping day of the year because everybody went to the store with returns and their gift cards and trying to get some good deals on sales. That behavior, on one level you can track it consistently over time. An it is really hitting Inflection Point in the last couple of years. The biggest shopping day was the last good shipping day of the year. Shannon fedex says it got this lastminute surge. We are like, come on, it is 2015, you should know that people are going to buying a lot online. I think the volume of Online Purchases really surprised people. It didnt necessarily surprise ups because in 2013 they had their own issue where they werent prepared for the surge. This year was fedexs turn. Cory lets talk about that. Fedex said a sudden surge, we could not prepare for this. Ups had its big screwup two years ago. They introduce all sorts of new Logistics Systems there out there network. They did not have the same problem. It is the same shoppers and , often the same stuff. Shannon fedex did say that they had some really bad weather in the memphis area. Heavy rains, heavy wind where the big distribution hub is. Cause somes will soulsearching for them. You know weather is going to happen. It also may cause some soulsearching for amazon. The wall street journal had a very interesting piece about amazon reconsidering its relationship with ups. They are reof violating it. Can we become less dependent on outside carriers . ,aving a situation like this amazon lives and dies by quick delivery, getting things there on time. If they feel like they cant count on fedex or ups, maybe it bolsters this argument inside the company that we need to build out our own logistics. We need to take this into our own hands. Cory i dont know. I remember a million years ago inc. Theyked at time , were working on their logistics for delivering magazines and they wouldnt have to use the post office. Is this just a Competitive Bidding gimmick . Shannon that could be true but , jeff bezos is known to take a page out of walmarts playbook. Walmart has its own private trucking fleet. 80 of walmart merchandise is shipped from walmart distribution to a store with a truck that is owned by walmart. Their logistics system, and they feel like that has served them well. Jeff bezos is a student of walmart, studying their logistics. I dont know if it will be completely unprecedented for a megaretailer to really on their own distribution chain. You know them better than i do. Cory i mean this in the kindest way. You are the queen of walmart. Always a pleasure. Thank you very much. Plenty to celebrate this Holiday Shopping season. Jeff bezos of amazon was arguably the biggest winner. It thisk is showing year. Despite its general lack of profitability, it has more than doubled this year which means , jeff bezoss personal net worth has increased rapidly. Interesting not so much that his wealth has increased, but that he sold some stock. Tom in the summertime, he sold about half 1 billion worth of stock. Cory but there is taxes as well. Tom a 200 million hit for that. He has added i believe 30 billion this year. That more than doubles the nears gainer on our index. Gainer on our index. Cory he is largely undiversified in those holdings. Tom about 95 of his wealth is in amazon stock. It is done amazingly well for him today. They are basically betting on jeff bezos. Cory take me under the hood. Howd you analyze the rest. Tom the hardest part of his fortune is to estimate the rest of his fortune. Amazons publicly traded. He also owns the Washington Post and business insider. Blue origin, no one knows if it is making profits yet. You have spacex, which google invested in. You could see a big uplift or more of a money pit. Cory does it make you wonder what his ultimate intentions for that wealth . He drives a honda minivan. His wife drops them off at work every day. Tom he is extremely frugal. He is one of the least generous of billionaires. The idea behind that is that he is 100 focused on amazon. Amazon and blue origin, and the doesnt want any distraction from anything else. Cory thank you very much. Interesting stuff from the billionaires index as always. Beatles fans, they twist and shout and they are streaming the over the weekend. Beatles songs that were played 50 million times the first 48 hours they were available online. Spotify has all 224 of the songs from their catalog that became available on christmas eve. Early statistics show come together was the most popular beatles track. Beatles one of the last classic rock holdouts from streaming services. Led zeppelin, pink floyd, caved in 2013. Ac dc finally caved to this summer, thankfully. Tech deals are reaching a level comseen since the dt bubble. Will there be a hangover . Cory 2015 was a record year for mergers and acquisitions. Inh deals reach 450 billion total volume. That is coming close to the frenzy of 2000. That was spurred by the big aol time warner deal. How did that work out . Not so well. What can we expect for 2016 . Bloombergs m a reporter joins us now. Lets talk about bad deals. Are we going to look back on deals instantly as bad deals . Will they go bad as fast as the 49ers have gone bad . Alex i dont know, cory. Nothing jumps out in my mind as, why did they do that . At least this year. There are one or two that are deftly hanging out there as question marks in my mind. Some of them have are the obvious candidates as the biggest ones. When we look back at at t buying directv. A deal to close this past year. Are we going to think that was a great deal 10 years from now if people are watching video in a new way . I dont know. I think that one really relies on technology not going as thinky as people might they are with mobile video. Verizon buying aol, some people are still scratching their heads. It is a bit unclear exactly on how that one comes together. Certainly there are champions of that. Horizonure that fries will be able to put some of that content to use or sell it off. There is still a leap of faith. We will have to see in 2016 exactly how that one shakes out. Emc and vmware stocks have gone down quite a bit. We will have to see in 2016 exactly how that one shakes out. If in fact that deal gets done as currently structured. Cory where do you think were going to see some big mergers, particularly in the next year . Alex i dont have any particular inside information on these. As i think about 2016, my job is to break deal news. What questions am i going to ask . What are at the top of my list . Yelp tried to sell itself this year. It hired Goldman Sachs and had some internal interest. The ceo decided that he didnt want to sell. Could that come back in 2016. As soon as he decided he did not want to sell, the stock went down and has not really recovered yet. It is hovering far off of its onetime highs. You have to wonder if there are some other companies that could maybe work with yelp that have also struggled. Groupon or grubhub, perhaps they could come together and there is a merger of equals situation there. Those companies are the top of my list because they havent really made it as public companies. Maybe this is the year that they decide we have to do something different. Cory you talk about content. Lions gate has been rumored to be on the block forever. Could something finally happen there . What would change to make that deal take place . Alex the longest rumored deal of the year has been lions gate. We have written about it several times. A lot of people told me to expect this to happen in the when taxrter of 2016 rules allow a combined company to be domiciled in canada. We have seen john malone in 2015 take a stake in lions gate. He already owns the controlling interest of starz. He could put both of those companies together, and in fact that company could even be acquired by another john Malone Company down the road from what some of my sources indicate in discovery. John malone could make a mini time warner and companies that he owns. We will see. Cory thank you very much. Coming up, legendary investor offers advice for Tech Companies that want to be big in china. Ofit is tuesday, the 29th december. An update of top stories. Toshiba seeking its credit line, the second in months. It needs an additional 2. 5 billion to pay for restructuring. The Company Previously received a 3 billion credit commitment in september and tends to apply for the funding next month. Carl icon has escalated his bidding war with bridgestone as the billionaire investor seeks control of pep boys. Ins offering 18. 50 a share cash, raising his offer to more than 1 billion. The chain had previously accepted a sweetened offer at 17 following an earlier bid by carl icon. Onna cracking down peertopeer platforms. It is a first for the industry. The Bank Regulator is going to cleanse the market. New role state that the platform should serve as an intermedia, and not raise or lend money. It comes as the pboc says they are strengthening oversight of online payment firms. Havers and south korea reached a tentative wage agreement to bring an end to strike sarah. Automaker makes its annual sales markets for the First Time Since 2008. There have been seven consecutive quarters of profit decline. Renewedkerberg has calls for india to allow Free Internet service by making a personal appeal and one of the leading newspapers. He proposed free basics, allowing customers to access the social networking site and other Services Without a data plan. It is already offered in countries from bangladesh to zambia, but critics say it threatens the principle of Net Neutrality. The highest court in the has has two burly stopped a senator from being disqualified. She is still in it. That cannas these candidacy had been previously barred because of issues with her citizenship. She renounced her citizenship and 2001 to reside in the United States, but later became a dual citizen. The Election Commission has 10 days to comment. A quick check of the markets trading in the asiapacific. Nikkei to 25 swinging between gains and losses. It is half a percent higher right now. Kospi is down. We are counting to the reopen in china at the top of the hour. Cory despite the slowdown in chinas economy, Tech Companies still have plenty of room to grow there. With sequoiapoke capitals chairman about how u. S. Companys can get in on the action. I dont think anything has changed about china. The underlying consumer demand is very strong in china. Internet companies, their business is very good. It is strong, healthy, it is vibrant. We have built our own business over the course of the last 1314 years. Emily a very robust business. Moritz a very robust business. Some wonderful people. It is no accident that seven of the 20 most valuable Internet Companies today are chinese. Over the next 20 years there is going to be far more Business Done between the Technology Companies that get started in china and get started in the United States been there has been over the last 20 years. Emily what the Silicon Valley have to learn from china . Moritz i am always struck by how eager people who run Chinese Companies are to learn about their american counterparts. How frequently they come to the United States. How jammed their schedules are when they come here. I wish the ceos of Silicon Valley companies did the same thing in china. I think we can learn a lot from them. In the mobile in particular, the products are different the services are different. If any Silicon Valley company aspires to be a Global Company china is going to be a very big , part of their future. Airbnb are seeing edin as well. What does it take for a company to succeed in china. Michael we tried not to make the mistakes that we watched others make. The first thing you need to do is go to china and admit you know nothing. You need to understand that the market is different. You definitely dont staff your company in china with people from america or europe. You also need to understand there is a very different work ethic in china. People just happen to work a lot harder. It is a whole new level competition. Corey also with me david kirkpatrick. I wonder what you think about what is going on in china. We have seen the slowdown of many sectors. We saw the selloff yesterday. I wonder what you think the opportunities are for technology . As well as the suggestion that companies will have to create backdoors for the government to snoop. David the back your question is a highly controversial issue that generates a ton of concern among American Companies and perhaps Chinese Companies over as well. The chinese internet has become a world has become an ecosystem dominated by three companies. I do agree that American Companies need to understand it because this is the biggest , Growth Market of the internet. Where the largest number of people now live. It is probably the most positive and optimistic spin part of the chinese economy right now the internet sector. , the Chinese Government having historically being led by engineers. They understand the potential of the internet as an economic driver in a way that most dont. We will see more consolidation. We saw tremendous salvation we saw tremendous consolidation in 2014, more than 100 billion in deals over the last two years. We will continue to see that. I also think that there is enormous opportunity for innovation and for the launch of new products there. Continued huge opportunity. Corey i am most curious about the linkedin approach. You have a company that im intrigued by, very profitable, very successful, but they basically decided to go against the principles and share information in ways that they were not in other places. David i dont know if you would call it going against their principles. Google had their servers for a they in china, and then decided that is a bad idea. That is the only way to succeed, in partnership with local players. Giving the Government Authority that it does not give to governments in most other countries. Facebook wanted to launch in china. Interestingly, zuckerberg has done what was just recommended , gone there many times and kissed the ring of political and business leaders. He learned mandarin. It wouldnt surprise me if he ends up getting facebook fair by a joint venture with some local player. You cannot operate on the internet in china without the governments agreement and sufferance. They will not agree to do that unless they have authority that we would not give to governments here. Cory it is not just content companies. It is also the Hardware Companies asked to create backdoors or for the ways to government not just as a local business but also a , partner in the government. David i dont think we want a say what happens in any one country over the others. Edward snowden showed us that that is probably happening in every country whether we like it or not. Whether the Companies Even know it or not. I do think that we are in a very confused time in terms of rights of privacy on the internet. This encryption issues going to be huge in china this year. Its going to be huge globally. These weird laws in europe about the right to be forgotten. Very are all kinds of disturbing governmental trends about what governments think Internet Companies ought to do to protect the people. A very fluidis situation that i worry a lot about. Corey thank you very much. Twitter is taking some heat about a lack of diversity. The company with a new hire today. Details next. Stay with us. Cory one of the biggest topics in 2015 was diversity in the workplace, and it remains a big issue. She asked them about their views on gender equality. They are for it. Sheryl sandberg men and women both need to do their part. In the home and in the workplace. We recently attended a dinner together. One of the things you find is that women do more of the communal tasks. Women do more office housework. They take the notes, plan the parties, serve on the committees. Why are you here . Richard branson i find it extraordinary that people dont take notes when you have meetings. If you dont take notes, most of the meeting will be forgotten. Why is it important . 80 of our lives are spent at work. In my opinion it is up to those of us who run companies to make sure that these experiences are delightful. It is the experience of living, of life. So it is up to us to question , every single aspect of, are we running our companies and away in a way the people are genuinely happy . Are they proud of what they are doing. . Do we have enough diversity . Are we giving people the right chances to be promoted . The right criteria to promote people. Have we got enough women in our boardrooms . Have we got enough minority groups in our boardrooms . To ask theset questions all the time, and then you have to address them. Emily the statistics make it clear that there are not enough women in the boardroom overall. We are not near equality. How do we get there . Sheryl sandberg people have to recognize it is not just the right thing to do for quality, it is the right thing to do for their business. All kinds of studies of diversity shows that more diverse teams perform better. We know that companies that have more women in Senior Management , with more women on the board are outperforming those who , dont. One of the reasons that im honored to be here with richard is that richard will say is that this is good for my company. We dont have enough diversity of facebook. We want more diversity is because we will build a better product and a more successful company. This is anotivate companies to really take diversity seriously is when they realize that not taking diversity seriously is harming our performance. Emily are you writing a new book . Sheryl sandberg i am most certainly not writing a new book. We do have a very active lean in community but i am not writing a new book. Including facebook and espn. People are doing programming around this concept. Emily what is the next phase of leaning in . Sheryl sandberg we are not going to get to equality until we change the fundamental stereotypes of men being leaders and women being nurturers. That means that we do not fully engage women in the workplace. Emily when i was pregnant, i read an article that said i couldnt have it all. I cried. I cried for a couple of weeks. I reached out to you cheryl. You said, no. This is not happening. You will do this. That is on as a part of the reason i am still here. Can women have it all . Sandberg lets ask do you ever get ask if you can have it all . Richard, are you ever asked if you can have it all . Richard branson no. I suspect i have spent nearly as much time with my kids as my wife has spent with the kids. When my kids were young i went moved out of the office and worked from home. I had the kids crawling around. I was changing nappies whilst having meetings. Time and was allow the time to work from home. I think companies should give men that flexibility to work at home, spend time at home, to have longer holidays, to choose when they want to have holidays. Sheryl sandberg the have it all language is only applied to women. Have children and have worked. We assume that men can have both. The problem is we assume women cant. 70 of mothers in the United States are in the workforce because they have to be. Telling women constantly they cant have it all is not helpful. They have to be parents and work. It turns out fathers have to do that too. Most people, work does not work for parents, both men and women. They get discouraged from leaving. They are worried. Men, too. They will not based seen as serious if they go home to be with their child. Not every workplace can be as flexible as facebook or virgin. We sit here knowing that. Richard branson im not sure youre right. Emily what should companies do . Richard branson for most of the Head Office Type of jobs, they can offer flexibility. Flexibility in the holidays if people want to work at home rather than in an office, let them work at home. If they want to work fridays and mondays at home, let them do that. If they want work halftime, let them do that. Sheryl sandberg most companies can be more flexible than they are. There are a couple of changes you need to make. One is results focus, not face time focused. Of course we care that people try. When you do that, you build this culture of being seen in the office trying. That is different than results. It is shifting the effort to results. I also think that really thinking about the way in which we work and the way in which we communicate. At facebook we use our product , to communicate very quickly. A lot of office work and communication is too long and too formal. The meetings are too long. Cutting things down can save a lot of time. That was sheryl sandberg, emily chang, and sir richard branson. Diversity,th the twitter name someone to lead Global Diversity and inclusion. They want to make it a focus after a former employee criticized them for a lack of diversity. The evolution of the internet of things. Where the technology will be used in 2016. We look at the future, next. Cory this week is a little bit shorter than usual. We take a look at what we can expect for next year and technology. The Consumer Electronics show is hitting vegas. Internet of things that could be the focus of this event. David fitzpatrick still with us. Robots,ks, thermostats, windmills, hoverboards, i dont know. The internet of things, where do you see the best potential for a business . David you are absolutely right. Consumer electronic show next week, the internet of things may be the most discussed topic. That essentially somewhat misleading. The internet of things is sort of misnamed. We are entering into an interconnected society. Well see evidence of that in 2016. In reality, consumers have not lept to a lot of these connected products. And made their home in internet of things enabled environment. As much is a lot of manufacturers would like. Nonetheless, what i think is happening in business, and in and automotive fleets and in retail, a lot of amazing , progress is happening. It is about all the signals generated by the Digital World that we live in. Whether it is from the mobile apps on our phones or from the thermostat. Those things really are equivalent. It is not just the things that come out of a hardware device. We are reaching a place where we have got these analytics and Cloud Services that can store almost unlimited amounts of data. The data is just spewing out all around us. This year we will start to see us doing more intelligent stuff with that data. Corey interesting. So many years, this has been the focus of the consumer show, at least the stuff we see facing the consumers, but it is the stuff that happens in the back room where innovation truly happens. Discussing the chips we will have two years from now. Discussing the way a remotecontrolled works. Will you be there . I am. Cory i would love some company. David intel is considered the biggest internet of things company. This is a huge opportunity for the chip makers. Cory its not just the stuff they trot out for the journalist, but the suppliers. David right. I actually have an internet connected the thermostat. I have never tried to use it. Im afraid that i would screw it up. Most people are not that eager to be controlling everything from our smartphone. Not that it might not be fun. I actually think the coolest Consumer Device is the amazon echo, which i have in my living room and it is not the category that people typically think of. It is cool because it is like having siri in your living room. You can listen to the beatles or find out the Wikipedia Page on cory johnson. These things are convenient, an ambient information service. As amazon gives more capabilities to this thing it is , really getting a lot of fun. I said to play some Christmas Music and it was a fantastic playlist. Cory interesting stuff. It will be curious to see what the show is like. Part of me dreads going to this consumer show. In the end it is las vegas, which is exhausting and its own special way. We will surely get some good stories out of it. That is something im looking forward to. David me, too. Cory thank you so much for being with us. You and me in vegas. What happens there will stay on bloomberg tv and bloomberg radio. We promise. That does it for this edition of bloomberg west. I am cory johnson. We will see you tomorrow. Announcer imagine having skin that looks this beautiful, this flawless, without having to wear foundation. Imagine a product that covers everything but looks and feels like you are wearing nothing. Imagine one product that is clinically shown to make your skin younger looking in just 10 days. And can make you look up to five years younger instantly. This life