The eus Top Court Rules that uber is a transportation service, not just a digital provider the company says it wont change how it operates in most countries. Enerthe innogy ceo resigns a profit warning and more pain for steinhoff, shares plunge again as the retailer faces a credit squeeze after accounting troubles. Uber is a taxi company, so says the europeanjustice after a landmark ruling. The definition of uber as a Transportation Firm rather than a tech Company Means it will have to comply with european transport law and regulations in eu Member States the app has responded by saying it does not believe the ruling will change how it operates on most of the continent and says it agrees to regulate services such as uber we are joined by peter woodhouse. Does this indicate uber has to be taken off the road as you have indicated in the past i dont think it needs to be take be off the road it has to focus on regulatory requirements there are further wrangles dealing with employment field and the working status of drivers. This is a slightly separate strand theres another battle that they have to face in the uk they faced pressure from the transport regulator here in the capital city of the uk over whether they will be subject to these regulations while uber is in the eu, is the uk one of the most Challenging Markets for them the uk is a Challenging Market i dont see when the uk comes out of the eu that the Regulatory Environment for a company such as uber will significantly change many of the regulations are imposed internally, not externally in any event. So, yes, its tough. I think it will change post eu brexit do you think regulator also jump on this decision immediately then i think the regulators across europe have been watching closely. Im not anexpert on law outsid the country. I would anticipate that regulators and many other European Countries are going to be pleased with the results. And they wont be able to regulate in further detail what uber and related companies do in the marketplace. What does the decision mean for the relationship between uber, contractors, employees theyre going to have to be, i suspect, rather more tentative. I think my own personal perspective from what i read in the media is that uber has been trying to engage more increasingly positively with the regulators and the people who drive for them they present themselves as a business that is advantageous to all. They may now need to focus on actually demonstrating the benefits for all, rather than the owners of the business is this essentially now a pr battle that theyll have to wage more effectively than in the past under new leadership . Yes under all this, one has the understanding that uber provides a service that the market wants. So i suspect both sides of the debate will have something to say. Peter woodhouse, thank you. Lets look at trading across europe looks flat across the board. You can see green matching quite nicely with red. The stoxx 600 down very, very, very slightly so far this morning. We look at the specific markets across the continent, we can see ftse trading up slightly, as is the xetra dax in germany the cac and the ftse mib trading slightly into negative territory. We look at the sectors to see whats going on. Basic resources are up strongly, as are autos you can see that telecoms are down almost a third of a percent across the continent so that seems to be one of the major drivers of that flat market in terms of balancing things out lets talk about tax bills in the u. S. The Senate Passed the 500 pa page 1 1. 5 trillion republican tax bill by 51 votes to 48 the result was met with a muted response by tired senators as all republicans present voted yes and all democrats voted no Vice President mike pence and Steve Mnuchin watched over the vote which protesters disrupted on several occasions speaking after the decision, Mitch Mcconnell said it represented the start of a new economic era in the United States after eight straight years of slow growth and underperformance, america is ready to take off. With this tax reform america is ready to Start Performing as it should have for a number of years. Mitch mcconnell as excited as ever there that unemotional response to the vote in the senate contrasted with the house of representatives. But the joy was short lived, a procedure issue means everyone will have to revote today or tomorrow paul ryan said how important he thought the vote was heres what it will take to get america back on their feet heres what it will take to help people struggling. Heres what it will take to get the economy out of the malaise for the last decade to hit true growth were doing it today this is the greatest example of a promise being made and a promise being kept as to how that promise is being received by the public in the United States, a new poll shows just 24 of americans believe the republican tax plan is a good idea 41 think its a bad idea. A Strong Majority expect the bill to help wealthy people and corporations rather than the middle class. Portuguese bond yields crept up slightly after hitting the lowest level in 2015 after a two notch upgrade from fitch it lifted the Credit Rating to triple b fitch cited portugals shrinking debt to gdp ratio as a reason for the shift, which means the country is poised to return to major Government Bond indices. Essentially this is mostly about successful Debt Management by the portuguese authorities, isnt it its not only that. Its successful Debt Management but there are three areas of credit that we think improved a lot. Public finances, they have improved but not only that, also external vulnerabilities have declined significantly. Portugal will run its fifthyear of current account surplus this year thats due to stronger external competitiveness to the portuguese economy on top of that, theres the banks. We think Financial Stability risks in portugal have moderated. Thats the result of a shrinking and nonperforming loans. Lets talk about their neighbor im off to barcelona later today. You last reviewed spains triple b rating in july, thats despite all this political upheaval. Catalonia is on a negative rate watch what would have to happen in catalonia for you to reconsider things about spain on a whole . Thats a good question. Spain is on a positive outlook we have not changed that despite the recent catalan crisis. We have elections tomorrow in catalonia. They are too close to call but our baseline is that no matter what the result will be, it will be quite messy in catalonia. There will be rising tensions between the Central Government and the catalan Regional Government what would cause you to rethink your position on spain as a whole for us, well be guided by the impact on spanish fiscal stance so far the data is encouraging theres a clear slowdown in catalonia, but this is being compensated by other parts of spain. I was in ireland whereone regulator i spoke to warned about warned about some bubbles developing there theres the potential challenges about brexit and crossborder trade. Do you think the governments efforts to pay down debt are enough to justify the current Sovereign Rating yes, we do. Ireland has been on a positive rating trajectory for a while. We did upgrade last week to single a plus. That was the first upgrade of ireland. Youre not worried about a bubble we noticed that the market has recovered. So far it was concentrated in dublin overheated you mean we were worried about overheating. Recent data seemed to suggest the Housing Market recovery brought that up to other parts of ireland there are some supply issues in ireland that have not been that way, housing supply issues our information is that we dont believe at the moment there is a bubble theres some things in dublin, but on the whole in ireland were quite confident were not at bubble stage yet. I mentioned brexit, im sure most viewers hear about brexit, but in the uk, is that something you waf in tetch in terms of th rating absolutely. The december agreement in our view is positive, yes, because it has opened up the second part of the negotiations. But there are still a lot of unresolved issues. The irish border, the trade deal, and even whether there will be whether there will be a new transition deal, and on what terms those are issues that will be hard to settle, to negotiate, they will strengthen further uk domestic policies. You have been talking up prospects in your notes and ratings for the european economy generally. In the past 6, 17 years, ratings agencies have had criticism over the years when it comes to countries like greece and spain. Now were in this period of quite a lot of optimism, what can you say the ratings agencies such as fitch have done looking forward to the next possible correction or bull market . There is a lot of divergecy ratings, talking about the eurozone specifically. Divergency ratings have shown we have learned some lessons. Weve been criticized in recent years because we have not upgraded enough in the eurozone. But we did not upgrade many countries because now we are very much focused on the fundamentals we are guided by our Sovereign Rating methodology, very closely when we take ratings actions portugal, it took a while to get last week was the first upgrade since the Sovereign Rating crisis. Wove been under criticism that we should have acted earlier i think you will see ratings being stickier Going Forward and we will try really to look much more closely at the vulnerabilitieses, both on the external analysis, which is something in the past we did not do that, this led to some screw ups as you say in Sovereign Ratings before the crisis. Now were confident our ratings better reflect the economic fundamentals across the eurozone, and this is supported by research that shows that is the case thank you very much if you have any thoughts on this, email the show. The address is streetsignseurope cnbc. Com and you can tweet us at streetsignseurope cnbc coming up, well hear from the ceo of ge m am mshggemmalto stay tuned cannot live without it. So if you cant live without it. Why arent you using this guy . It makes your wifi awesomely fast. No. Still nope. Now were talking it gets you wifi here, here, and here. It even lets you take a time out. No no yes yes, indeed. Amazing speed, coverage and control. All with an xfi gateway. Find your awesome, and change the way you wifi. Welcome back to street signs. Shares in innogy are trading higher after chief executive peter terium stepped down. His departure comes days after the energy firm cited a profit warning. British construction firm, carillion opened higher after appointing andrew davis as ceo he will assume his role in january. This means Keith Cochran will step down from his temporary position. Steinhoff tumbles lower. The latest sell juf coaufsellof 10 billion has been wiped off the capitalization since discovering financial irregularities in its accounts the chairman of the London Stock Exchange will keep his job after an activist investors efforts were voted down to remove him tci wanted Donald Brydon gone. Only 20 of Share Holders backe the measure. Tci says the voete constitutes a serious rebuke of the board by shareholders stada says a domination and profit and loss transfer agreement has been settled following the takeover of bane cinv cinven iliad shares trading lower after the Telecoms Company announced they were buying a stake in irelands company eir iliad will own a third of eir. The deal implies a value of 3. 5 billion euros. Shares in gemalto surged after a deal to create a Global Cybersecurity powerhouse with thales philippe vallee, the ceo of gem ma gemalto joins us the french state owned bank is your second largest shareholder, is this combination about French National security . I would say this is more important for me to consider the initial project, which is offered by this combination. We are solving many customers problems across the planet for me this is important to see how the strategy of gemalto can be pursued this is not about french consolidation but acceleration for the gemalto strategy how much pressure have you faced from the french government to make this deal happen i have not received any pressure at all, to be very clear. Weve been discussing in an amicable way with the ceo of thales over the last few months, and we accelerated the process lately im glad about announcing this combination. You described the rival atos bid as weak, but it was only a half billion dollars less than the one you accepted from thales can you explain why you went with thales over atos . This is due to the amount received from atos, and that the board rejected it said they were not taking enough value of the company and also other stakeholders, and the fact that the company would be integrated in different parts and pieces, which would force us to pursue our strategy on the other end. What thales put on the table is something preserving twhat gem ma gemalto is about the 12month share price looks like your stock took a giant nosedive this year, halved over the course of six months. Your stock is closing near the offer price of 51 euros. You guys opened yourself up to a takeover when they saw this as a cheap bargain. Isnt that the case . The idea was to look at the best options for gemalto, the company suffered a bit due to the elimination of one of its markets. The business serving the mobile operator now with this approach we have, i would say, a Better Future we have a solid platform you will still be cutting jobs in the business what do you need to do to turn that struggling business around we need to add just the cost base of our businesses that business is going through a certain transition between the old approach to connect mobile, mobile devices and people to a new one. In particular serving the connected areas. The mobile carriers are concentrating on the next generation and that market and that Business Needs an adjusted work force and resources. Thats the reason why we are restructuring efforts in this specific market. Mr. Vallee, thank you very much for joining us today. Thats philippe vallee, the ceo of gemalto minneapolis fed president Neel Kashkari reiterated his call to wait for higher inflation before raising u. S. Interest rates speaking to cnbc, he warned house dangerous it is when the fed attempts to interfere with stock markets. We do talk about asset prices quite a bit. We look for signs of financial instability. I would say the way i think about it, if we raise Interest Rates, not because of the job market, not because of inflation, but raise Interest Rates to try to constrain the stock market, that can be very costly remember in 1996 then fed chairman Alan Greenspan said theres irrational exuberance. The stock market climbed strongly until 2000, until there was the tech bubble bursting i think those Interest Rate increases that chairman greenspan would have imposed would have been costly to the economy, more costly than the correction itself in 2000. From my perspective we need to segment whats a stock Market Correction and thats investors problems, versus sick thomethin will lead to Financial Stability like 2008. We need to work hard to protect against an o08 scenario. That was Neel Kashkari. The bank of japan started its final policy Board Meeting for this year. It will keep Monetary Policy unchanged. The Central Banks twoday policy Board Meeting will go on until thursday if it maintains the current policy, it will be the first year the bank has taken no action since governor kuroda took office four years ago since his first policy move in 2013 where he injected massive amounts of liquidity into the system, he has taken easing measures in each of the following years. So the lack of additional steps by the boj this year can be taken as a sign that the economy and Financial Markets are in better shape than before exports are growing steadily due to recovering markets overseas and Japanese Companies are enjoying record profits and increasing capital spending. The improving employment rate is beginning to cheer consumers all this has raised the expectations that the bank may raise Interest Rate targets next year but the boj will likely find no reason to tighten Monetary Policy, even slightly, unless Consumer Prices start rising faster improved Economic Conditions have put upward pressure on prices, but the rise was a mere 0. 8 in october which is less than half the banks inflation target of 2 the boj believes inflation will remain sluggish unless japanese firms become more willing to raise wages