Weakness at the french retail unit hits Third Quarter profit. And game on for unisoft after it blows past Second Quarter sales forecasts. We are roughly one hour into the trading session. Lets see how things are opening up a bit of a soggy day in line with what we saw in u. S. Equities yesterday having a bit of a down day the picture is mixed behind me a bit more red than green on the heat map which points to an overall performance of the stoxx 600 which is underwhelming lets look at how individual sectors are doing. Ftse 100, treading around that 0 mark. Slightly in the green. Xetra dax also really treading around the flat line we did have earnings earlier on. Well get into that in more detail shortly i want to point out ftse mib is down 0. 5 . We did have some weaker results out of one of the banks there. Banco bpm is down 5 or so in early trading. Lets look at asian markets. Clearly a lot of focus on this trump is in the region meeting with various leaders nikk nikkei, a bit of a weaker performance overnight after the 1. 7 gain we saw in yesterdays trading session when trump was there. Across the board, treading around the flat line hang seng down 0. 3 . On that willem, what can you tell us about trumps vision to asia donald trump has arrived in beijing. He touched down there. Hes meeting with chinese president xi jinping xi is taking him on a four tour the forbidden city all responsible Nations Must Join forces to isolate the brutal regime of north korea and deny it in any form any form of it. You cannot support, you cannot supply, you cannot accept. We call on every nation including china and russia to fully implement u. N. Security council resolutions, downgrade diplomatic relations with the regime and server all ties of trade and technology eunice yoon is in beijing for us what are the plans for the rest of the day for these two leaders . So far the president s have been enjoying their time at the forbidden city the state media has been reporting its been a casual and informal affair, they were drinking afternoon tea, and also President Trump showed president xi on one of his devices his granddaughter singing chinese songs and reciting chinese poems. According to state media, president xi said her performance is a plus. These are the stories that are showing how informal and cozy the relationship has become. That the state media likes the idea that this bromance is flourishing between the two, and a description that the Chinese State media has been putting out there is that this is a state visit plus so already we have seen the regular state visit, his arrival at the airport, him going to the forbidden city we know he will be sitting down for a formal bilateral with president xi tomorrow. At the same time its these int matd mome intimate moments that the press has been highlighting to showcase this budding relationship in terms of business they have to talk about difficult and sticky issues such as north korea as well as trade. Already theres been announcements on that front where the u. S. Commerce secretary who has been traveling with the american president has said the focus will be on reducing the trade deficit he said that american and Chinese Companies will be making deals worth about 9 billion jd. Com, a chinese eretailer has said theyre committed to buying 2 billion worth of American Goods over the next three years. And that more than 1 billion o that will be from pork and american beef. Eunice, you mentioned north korea. How is the u. S. Setting the stage for talks on that subject . The white house had already put out a statement or made comments about this saying that President Trump is definitely going to be pressing china on the issue of its financial links to north korea he also is going to be pushing president xi jinping to make sure that china abides by the u. N. Resolutions and sanctions so hes setting the stage really for further pressure on china to do something more to try to rein in north korea the chinese have often said and continuously say they do abide by the u. N. Sanctions, and they also have said that they really cant do a whole lot more. And they said that part of it is because they dont feel that this is entirely their responsibility but theyre also concerned about further pressure on north korea could end up becoming a humanitarian crisis for them right on their border thanks so much. Thats eunice yoon reporting for us live from bay sing. Democrats have won the governors races in virginia and new jersey on elections on tuesday. The virginia race was closely watched as a measure of President Trumps standing in the swing state and Ralph Northam won a decisive victory in a tweet trump said gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what i stood for. The u. S. Senate could delay a major tax cut bill until 2019, this would represent a sharp break with the timeline favored by the Trump Administration and house republicans. Senators are said to be looking to secure more tax relief for the middle class with fewer benefits going to wealthier taxpayers. More banking woes in europe. Shares in Credit Agricole are trading near the bottom of the stoxx 600 today with trading and Retail Banking suffering Credit Agricole has no interest in a deal with commerzbank the cboe says major futures exchanges in the development of cryptocurrency changes and will allow traders to trade them. They refused to say when they would allow a bitcoin trade exchange fund. Karen has been at the web summit in lisbon for the last couple of days the buzzwords have been arrested ficial intelligence, fintech, bitcoin. What can you tell us what have you heard on the subject . Not Just Technology companies here at web summit but Traditional Industries like banking trying to get up to speed with the trends. When i spoke with the socgen ceo who is keen to differentiate between the technology of bitcoin being blockchain, which they are trying to work on whether they can use it for repo agreements, trade finance, they see the potential. The other big endeavor is hackathons are trying to work out the future relationship with customers in a digital age theres a lot of work to scale up the bank on technology. I spoke with the ceo of socgen and asked what are the most important tech trends bankers are facing there are different technologies, you need to look at them all. You mentioned Artificial Intelligence blockchain, theres also data management, infrastructure, the usage of the cloud there are many things you need to embrace at the same time. Clearly at the end of the day, its not the access to the new technologies that is the issue but more the cultural shift in the mindset of your stuff, and the way to embrace on one hand Business People and i. T. People to put them together, and to think about the client needs which could be improved. Thats more the challenge than really the technology challenge. How much Artificial Intelligence are you using at the bank we are already testing, but its more proof of concept and i think globally Going Forward it will be useful effectively to make processes much more efficient. I would say its not necessary for the next two, three years. Its beyond. Stephen hawking opened web summit with a warning around Artificial Intelligence that it could lead to job losses in the millions and the Worst Development by civilization. Are you concerned about how fast ai is moving, the ready adoption from startups to tech titans to business without regulation . It seems to me that of course we focus probably a bit more on job instructions, and its a bit difficult today to imagine the new jobs that this new world would also help to create. Second, it seems to me effectively that, yes, regulation will be needed. The fact that the machine has been able to beat the World Champion means a lot in terms of potential of the machines and probably regulation will be needed and it will raise fundamental questions. As you can hear, those comments are about Artificial Intelligence i also spoke to him about bitcoin. You can check out those comments on cnbc. Com. In the meantime as i sat downed with the ceo, there was news breaking that the french prosecutor was probing violations possible violations of anticorruption law now, this relates to a longrunning case with libyas sovereign wealth fund. While the bank did not want to talk directly on the latest twist, i did ask about technology and how it can crack down on some bad behaviors at banks and whether they can stop recurring events like this take a listen. We are totally committed to compliance i think its part of our social responsibility its very clear that we have to comply second, the level of requests i think will be met with efficiency and decent costs just thanks to technology from that perspective, the management of that is that all this will help tremendously to identify situations more effectively to provide the right information, also to the regulateders of Government Technology is also part of the solution in compliance so the risk red flags start to go off if you have the right algorithms in place. Exactly and as quickly as possible so you can identify whether theres a problem or not the conversation highlights some opportunities with new technologies coming into the mix. Banks constantly dealing with big data very hard to ensure that theres a right compliance and if there is a problem that you uncover it quickly. Artificial intelligence may be able to track some of those behaviors and management is quick to respond when those are occurring. We spoke about some negative consequences about the technology here at web summit. Back to you. Brilliant so we seem to have some live pictures, President Trump and the first lady arriving for dinner with president xi jinping and his wife well bring you more of those in a moment. We can see some of the president s cabinet there waiting for President Trump oochgs arrival. Coming up, scoring the sovereigns moodies is out on the latest report with sovereign credit and you might be surprised on which countries are solid. Stay with us for your heart. Your joints. Or your digestion. So why wouldnt you take something for the most important part of you. Your brain. With an ingredient originally found in jellyfish, prevagen is now the number one selling brain Health Supplement in drug stores nationwide. Prevagen. The name to remember. Haim messing up every dish, pot, and plate. To show my love. Tada all this devotion only calls for a little bit of dawn ultra. So concentrated, just one bottle has the grease cleaning power of three. Bottles of this other liquid. A drop of dawn and grease is gone. Try using dawn beyond the sink. Hi, im the internet you knoarmless bowling. Lt . You got this, jimmy you know whats easy . Building your website with godaddy. Pick a domain name. Choose a design. You can build a website in under an hour. Now thats a strike get your domain today and get a free trial of gocentral. Build a better website in under an hour. I love you. Youre seeing live pictures of President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump arriving inside the center of the forbidden city in beijing. The first time a u. S. President dined inside the forbidden city. Most of us recognize that from film sets. Its not easy for officials to get in there from foreign countries. Quite extraordinary scenes we saw a lot of President Trumps cabinet there awaiting his arrival. Im sure theyll be watching events at this dinner closely. This ongoing bromance as our colleague, eunice yoon described it both of them dressed up for the beijing winter they seem to be rolling out the red carpet there we had comments from the u. S. Commerce secretary, wilbur ross earlier. Today trade will be one of the top items on their agenda. He has been saying chinas massive trade surplus with the u. S. Constitutes unfair trade practice these are live pictures from beijing. Shares in ubisoft are touching a record high after the video gamemaker reported sales that beat the target they are making a lot of money rose more than 85 to 240 million euros, well above the forecast ubisoft said they will Strong Demand for the latest games. More company news, Marks Spencer is trading lower after a loss of 5 in first half profit but m s says it will ramp up its turnaround plan to substantially reduce its cost base the group is also looking for a new finance chief. The current cfo, helen weir is to step down as soon as a replacement is found whats extraordinary about this is it comes on the back of sky news saying she was expected to step down because there were head hunters already out there looking for her replacement. Quite a difficult situation for the outgoing cfo of Marks Spencer, helen weir. What theyve been try doing is a transformation of the business, not just on the cost cutting front but on the foods and homeware and clothing. Clothing la beenhas been a compe sector to get involved in, and they have struggled in recent years, but the outlook is positive on the clothing side. With respect to food stores, they said last year they were looking to open another 200 stores in the next year. It seems they will have to dial some of that back. My contribution to mms comes at christmas when i tend to pick up socks from santa claus at that time of year from then. Father christmas keeps shopping there, i know that much. Speaking of european business, heidelberg cement is trading higher they beat Third Quarter profits after speeding up a cost cutting plan the group maintained its outlook for a moderate rise in revenue this year. And the United States has called for the u. N. To take action against iran after it said iran supplied the yemen rebels with a missile they launched into saudi arabia in july the United Nations ambassador, nikki haley said irans alleged supply of the weapon meant iran violated two u. N. Resolutions. Rouhani said it was a mistake by the kingdom to consider the u. S. A friend and iran an enemy. Sticking with politics in the middle east, the United States called on saudi arabia to be open and transparent in its widespread corruption crackdown on royals, businessmen and government officials the u. S. State Department Said they did not have advanced knowledge of the purge which included the detention of the billionaire. Pro independence parties in catalonia failed to agree on a deal that would allow them to campaign as a united block in the snap election. The failure to bridge the differences could dent their chances of retaining coalition control of catalonia after the election the global sovereign outlook is looking optimistic according to moodys, despite Political Uncertainty in europe, asia and the middle east. The annual report shows fewer negative outlooks than a year ago reflecting a view that strong Economic Growth is outweighing high debt and political unrest the head of global sovereign risk at moodys is joining us now. I can see this year there are 22 countries with negative outlook versus 35 countries of negative outlook last year. Where is the optimism coming from we turned from negative last year to stable this year we looked at growth, which is more positive around the world and in europe. Likely to remain so for the next couple of years. We looked at debt, which remains very high and will remain high for a long time. We looked at policy and the ef te effectiveness and the extent on which policymakers can doeal wih lower growth and high debt, and the geopolitical backdrop. You also said in the past to boost growth countries need to invest more in infrastructure and that would instaentail issug more debt. Public debt is at record high levels what does that mean for for countries trying to stimulate froth from an infrastructure perspective one of the features is the more benign economic back drop which is primarily cyclical but will allow a window in which to achieve fiscal reforms that theyre aiming to do, which will give them space in order to promote investment for growth to remain sustainable, investment is needed thats a high challenge for many governments. So i want to ask you specifically about the uk. On the day that theresa may gave her florence speech, moodys came out and downgraded the outlook citing concerns about public debt and uncertainty about the trading arrangement. What does the uk government need to do to assure you of its Growth Outlook in the next couple of years . The Growth Outlook for us over the next couple years is not a strong driver. What were concerned about is growth over the medium term. Were seeing the impact of brexit and longer term features such as low productivity growth is going to be lower over the medium term than expected prior to brexit. Partly because of the distraction that brexit poses to the government, the efforts to bring the debt load down are halting. We have less assurance that that debt load will come down materially over the next few years. Outlook is still negative from here . The outlook on the uk is stable we downgraded to a stable outlook. Those reflected the pressures we saw, but the risks a balanced. One other thing i want to talk about the u. S. As well you said in the past some protectionist policies could impact some of the Global Outlook specifically for countries that the u. S. Have quite a big defi