Anna is off today. Bloomberg reporters are standing by across the world, ready to deliver the stories that will drive your day. U. S. Prosecutors are seeking more than 13 billion from bank of america to resolve an investigation into the mortgagebacked loans. Jon ferro have the latest on that story. Zeb eckert will break down the inflation data. Caroline hyde will look at amazon. Can the worlds Biggest Online retailer keep growing . Now to our top story and a bloomberg exclusive for you. U. S. Prosecutors are said to be seeking more than 13 billion from bank of america to resolve investigations on the sale of mortgagebacked securities. Joining us now is Jonathan Ferro. This is all about the runup to the financial crisis. The bonds that were sold back to buy home loans. We know what happened to those mortgages and those bonds. It was not ready. Pretty. That is a lot of money. That would be on top of the 9. 4 billion the jpmorgan fines. These numbers just keep on getting bigger and bigger. That means the total amount that jpmorgan has set aside since the financial crisis is 50 billion they have paid in fines. Since the financial crisis. Let me put this number in some kind of perspective. Sales at cocacola about 50 billion. The market cap of socgen about 50 billion. It is a huge sum of money. Just working through the numbers, getting a bit of momentum. With the likes of credit suisse, when i think about it, what is the biggest risk to the Banking Industry the last couple of years . Is it geopolitics, financial markets, or just litigation . These guys have set aside huge amounts of money to deal with legacy issues that date back to the financial crisis. How deep is this whole . Is this hole . Does the likese of bank of america have to pay . If this gets settled, it could happen in the next two months. If you look at the banks in europe, the money they are setting aside is getting bigger and bigger. And if it is not settled, they will get sued. Thank you. We will see you later. On are watching countdown bloomberg television. Few countries measure the cost of living in more ways than japan. Today, we are focusing on the tokyo figure. The zeb eckert is in hong kong with the details. Talk us through this tokyo cpi data and why we care. Why do we care . We normally look at the national cpi number. The National Number is from the month of march. Why does that matter is to mark on april 1, the government of japan instituted a sales tax increase. The tokyo figure released today represents the month of april. It shows that the sales tax increase is filtering through. Core Consumer Prices for tokyo rose 2. 7 compared to 1 in m arch. Riseows the sales tax filtering through. It was not as strong as expected. Analysts saw and saw a 2. 8 gain in Consumer Prices. We are watching ahead because this is projected to tip the economy into a onequarter contraction in japan. Updatedk, we will get growth and Inflation Forecasts from bank of japan. This is important because we are watching the impact of a weaker yen and Higher Energy costs, how this ripples through the economy going forward. Of march, we saw core Consumer PricesHolding Steady at 1. 3 . This excludes fresh food. This is the same number that was reported in december, january, february, and march. It shows Consumer Prices on the National Level in japan stagnating. That is a concern as the bank of japan maintains its two Percent Inflation target. Could leadying it the boj, by the summer, to enact additional easing policies. No time to stand still. Ury powerhouse caring they beat estimates. Start with the numbers. It was a sales beat. That is good news for investors. You are coming off one of the worst quarters in four years. Overall, luxury just nipped in ahead. When you look at the numbers, it tells you a close story. Small is useful within the group. Brands, ysl, have gone through and delivered on the numbers. A sales list of 15 , mega expensive, heavyweight handbags. Gucci, which is the beast within the group, more than 55 of the lecture groups, sales rose by. 3 . That gives you the magnitude. This is one of the reasons why we are seeing this overhaul. Absolutely. And it gives you that clarity that one assumes in terms of what youre doing with marketing and positioning and pricing as you get ready for a recovery. That is the deal with in luxury. , he was the ceo of potato. Of botega. E is 51, italian of course, gucci, you are going marco looking after luxury couture leather. There is another division as well. And then you have watches and jewelry. Albert is french and his pedigree is about louis vuitton. He set up the luxury watches and jewelry at louis vuitton. He has 15 Years Experience. 16 Years Experience at the high end of watches and jewelry within lvmh. They are very clearly siloing the business in terms of what they are doing. A couple of other questions who is going to take over bottega and who is going to run china for the group . Investors are relieved and they are also focused. Your own brand, your own shops, youre all your own control. Back to you. Shares rising in afterhours trading after they beat expectations for sales. European is our business correspondent, caroline hyde. Sales are up, but costs are up as well. And in exactly the same proportion. It is quite amazing. Increase in expenses, spending. Nearly 20 billion is how much jeff bezos is plowing into this company. One investor we spoke to earlier this week was saying it is always jam tomorrow, never jam today when it comes to amazon. Investors like building the company up, because shares rose afterhours. And they are trying to increase profitability a little bit. They are charging more. If you want to be a prime subscriber, you are charged 25 more now. You are charged 99 per year. Overall, he is sacrificing profitability because operating margin fell. 7 . Million, this is a company that is getting 20 billion in terms of expenses. The profitability is not what you are looking at. You are looking at potential growth. And not just in the core business, it is venturing into other areas as well. Rex it is quite amazing. Jeff bezos does think outside the box when it comes to amazon. Yes, they are spending a lot on warehouses, shipments, but going into grocery delivery. This is something tesco is really worried about. If you start getting everything from amazon, not just your face paints i just bought some face paint. She did. Canut the vegetables, they put a lot of grocers out of hardware. Other fascinating areas, smartphones. They are likely to have a 3d display smartphone by christmas. To compete with the android. Exactly. Already, they have the kindle and tablets. There is an interesting hardware called the dash, where you can speak into a microphone and say, i want chocolate chip cookies. It will automatically put chocolate chip cookies into your online purchasing order. See what is running out in your home and take a barcode of it and it will load into your Online Shopping list. Package delivery drones, this is a man expanding outside of retailing. Cloud, the internet, a big business for amazon as well. Rex why did you buy facepainting from amazon . A dressup a bit of coming up, but a neon face pain. Maybe we will have a trial on that coming up later. Escalating crisis in ukraine or gradual fed tapering . We will have more next. Time for todays company news. H into cloudpus computing is accelerating under new ceo satya nadella. They topped analyst estimates. Citigroups chief executive withdrew from an Economic Forum that russian president Vladimir Putin is hosting next month. The bank will send other executives in his place. Citigroup has more than 50 branches in russia. President as the u. S. Toughens sanctions on russia. Spendingtisers boosted to reach a growing number of people accessing chinas normal largest internet search engine. Rose 24 . Welcome back to countdown. Is six 15. London tokyo inflation data showed prices rising 2. 7 in april, the most since 1992 after trading near it strongest in a week. On that data. Aken for more, i am joined i Standard Bank head of g10 strategy. Thank you for joining us today. We are focusing on tokyo today, which rose 2. 7 . Nationwide inflation rose 1. 3 . How much of that increase was down to the sales tax increase . Pretty muchassume all of it. I would assume, in april, we are going to see a similar increase. The real key is not necessarily 2 rise in inflation or the target, but the hit to the economy and the damage that would do. Most of the market thinks it would do sufficient damage to make the bank of japan ease further. At the same time, the bank of japan itself seems to be more confident that the economy can ride through this. You do not think they can. Exley, the bank of japan holds its board meeting. They wait a month or two longer before implementing bond buying. We need to see the impact of the sales tax increase. Last time we had a sales tax increase, you would have to go back quite some years. There was a Significant Impact on the economy. It is not easy to look back at that experience. That was soon followed up by the asian crisis. The japanese economy was very weak. Corona kuroda and the other bank of japan members are more likely to build confidence that the bank of japan will continue to struggle. Rex at the meantime, we are at 102. 40. We have been in the 101105 range for quite a few months now. And i think we will stay there longer, to be honest. Once the bank of japan starts using, that will accelerate higher. Not just the bank of japan is doing more quantitative easing. I think the whole change in structural trade, large current account deficits that we see in extent,ffset, to some by the trading room and we are seeing in the u. S. Mario draghi has spoken once again. He spoke yesterday in amsterdam. He was more explicit in his language. He said that the ecb may start on buying if inflation, if the outlook worsens. How close are we to further measures from the ecb . Again, probably within a few months as far as quantitative easing is concerned. I think the bank can take steps before that, possibly just in terms of another cut in the refinancing rate. So i do think quantitative easing will come. The interesting thing, for me, will be, what happens with the april inflation data . A lot of the ecb members have been talking about that. They are banking on a sharp acceleration in inflation from. 5 to close to 1 . Temporarily will take the pressure off. I do still see quantitative easing ahead. Draghi with the strength of the euro. A board member said a strong euro is causing us problems right now. It is stubbornly high. It is not moving. The potential problem is that will not move it as well. This low volatility we have at the moment will persist for quite a while. There is a cloud hanging over currencies in general. It is not just the liquidity that the central bank is providing, but the whole issue of fixing allegations and potential pressure on interbank players as a result of that. I think that is holding back the market. If the ecb does quantitative easing, it does not make it explicit that that is designed to weaken the currency, then i think the currency probably will not weaken. In many respects, perhaps japan has found out, the only real way to get inflation up significantly and quickly is through depreciating the currency. We are going to talk more about the cloud that is hanging over the fx market. Will stay with us. Welcome back. This is countdown. I am mark barton. Stephen barrow is still with us. You spoke about this cloud hanging over the fx martin market related to regulatory and supervisory pressure in the wake of this alleged fx manipulation. How is that cloud expressing itself . You have already mentioned the volatility. What trades benefit in this period of low volatility and with this cloud in place . Really, carry trade. Current seas are not moving significantly. Ncies are not moving significantly. There is not a great deal to play for in those currencies. What it does do is increase the attraction of the carry trade. Particularly as a lot of emerging Market Countries have been forced to raise Interest Rates. Turkey, in particular, south africa to a lesser extent. Those countries look more attractive. As long as those currencies remain, to some extent, more ,table, and i think they will because as you see low volatility in the major currencies, it tends to drag on the volatility of the other currencies as well, that opens the room for the policy makers to start thinking about cutting Interest Rates the cousin the on they will not be downside. Or a lot of these countries raising rates. Turkey did not cut rates yesterday, but there is speculation, some political pressure from government and central banks. He might start to see some of those countries that have raised rates be in a better position. Ofwhat could another period emerging market instability within fx markets, what sort of period have we witnessed in january . The last few weeks has gone against emerging market currencies a little bit. What could set us off down the january road once again . Two main things. One is the situation in ukraine. Obviously, that could move in a direction that is that raises risk aversion. Possibly, a way that is going is a slow burning fuse towards some sort of military conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Maybe the way in which that has developed is not causing as much fear for the market as we might have expected. And then, of course, there is monetary policy. The ecb is likely to add liquidity. It is the fed that is the main concern for markets. Next week, the fed meets. I think they are on autopilot with respect to the 10 billion of tapering. I do not think there will be a significant change. They have been desperate to get fisher and Minard Fischer and maynard nominated. Then they can think about the communication issues that they want to put across as they moved to the next age, which will be higher rates. Speak, russia has gone to triple the minus at standard at standard poors. Ukraine situation has continued to weigh on the ruble. The outlook on the ruble from where you are sitting. Still negative. I think the key here is there will be a new level of sanctions , a new round of sanctions coming primarily from the u. S. What does that include . Is it like the first round of the merrily individuals, in which case it may not be that substantial, or do they target institutions . Thank you for joining us. Welcome back to countdown. Lets get straight to Jonathan Ferro for the asset check. I want to have a look at dollar10. We have inflation numbers, our first read from the month of april from the city of tokyo. What has the sales tax hike done for prices . 2. 7 inflation in tokyo from a year earlier. The biggest jump since 1992. Is it trying to celebrate . What does the sales tax hike due to the overall economy . The weakening of the yen has increased import prices, energy costs. At some point, that starts to drop out. I was just speaking with steven barrel. He says that is happening now. Aat happens to inflation in years time . Does the bank of japan have to do more . Those people say yes. Steven barrow thinks this one, over the long term, could head to 120. Bloomberg has learned that u. S. Prosecutors are seeking a record 13 billion fine against bank of america according to people familiar with the matter. Ofhas to do with the sale bonds backed by home loans in the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis. U. S. President barack obama is in south korea. The meeting comes as part of whichs 4nation tour began in japan. Todays meeting comes amid rising tension in the peninsula. North korea is ready to test a Nuclear Device at any time. U. S. Secretary of state john russia is warning russia that time is running out to comply with an accord about the ukraine. That is as russia begins new exercises near the ukrainian border. Will be anit expensive mistake if russia reverses course on an agreement reached last week in geneva. Ofi is a leading provider Payment Systems in russia. For more, we are joined for a bloomberg exclusive by kiwis chairman. Setourse, Ryan Chilcote this interview up so he better join us as well. For many viewers, they might not have heard of your company. If us an idea of what you do and how you operate. As you said, kiwi is a major alternative payment provider in russia. It is hard to say what alternative payment is in russia because more than 80 of payments are made with cash. We have two Major Products for our customer. The first one is the kiwi kiosk. You can use that to pay cash for different services. Track ity bills, traffic fines. There are 160,000 of these payment terminals. Kiosks. Ve more than 120 onwhy is this such an onus using cached in russia. I know there is a reluctance to use Online Banking and reveal credit card details on the web. Could that change . Some sort of change in the thinking, the National Psyche . There is a reason for such behavior. During the last 20 years, we through thevived bank crisis. 2008 and the crisis of 1998. There were major crises. Feel people still rely on cash and payments. And they need the shift to a cashless society. You have another product, the qiwi wallet, effectively like paypal in russia. This is a revenue sharing agreement you have with visa that allows people to use the pay fortem to basically their internet purchases, right . Yeah. You can useea is not only cash, but different types of funds, like your bank account, your bank cards, or even your prepaid account. Yesterday, we heard president visa, saying about that visa and mastercard are going to lose market share in russia. Demand aen able bogeyman ever since they declined credit cards after the fallout. How do you see that playing out in russia . Wallet, based on existing infrastructure. You can use not only visa cards, your mastercard, your union bank card, your ecb card, or you can use this russian nation payments system card to fund your transactions. The visa card is not the o