Hong kong office said the c. E. O. Is missing. The company has not been able to contact the c. E. O. Since last wednesday. Shares have recovered slightly after the 12 plunge on monday. Lets look at the markets for you. Hong kong and china currently losed for lunch. We saw a broader sell off in the region today but over there singapore, tokyo, and to be looking fractionally lower we are seeing the stocks tum falling on tumbling commodity prices. Back in half an hour. Time now for bloomberg west. Im emily chang. This is bloomberg west. Coming up, taking a page out of playbook, in talks to buy a stake in one of asias most venerable newspapers. Plus high Speed Internet access means no day of rest for holiday shoppers. Walmart moves the start of cyber monday to sunday. And the two companies that once made up hewlettpackard set to report their first stand alone results tomorrow. Well preview the numbers for th Hp Enterprise and hp inc. First to our lead. Alibabas founder in talks to buy a stake in the publisher of the South China Morning Post a Hong Kong Based english newspaper according to people familiar with the matter. If the deal goes through he would be following in the foot steps of other tech executives getting involved in media businesses. Amazons jeff bezos of course bought the Washington Post in 2013 and chris hughes the facebook cofounder who bought a majority stake in the new republic in 2012. I asked jack ma about this when i traveled to beijing earlier his month. Im interested in many things but i have to care for may shareholders and our strategy. Would Something Like that make sense . Well, yes. A hink media, we invest in lot of online medias. U see, we also invest in tional business like people say, well, internet, the offline retailer business, together we rk can do better. If it can be better for the media the same thing. We think this might be very interesting to help for us to understand them, for them to understand us. We just want to set examples and also for us we need media to help our small, Medium Sized Companies to promote and, by the way, our advertisement dollars, huge, we gather from Small Business could help the media and media definitely using our data can tell the economy in an accurate way. So are you going to buy the South China Morning Post . I did not say that. Im watching a lot of companies now. All right. So that was a couple weeks ago. Why does jack ma want to get into the newspaper business and how does this fit into alibabas overall strategy . Joining us now to discuss, our guests. By the way, guys, South China Morning Post is like the flagship english language newspaper in hong kong. A bit of a separatist from the mainland in terms of political leaning. So, tom, first ill start with you. What do we know about this . Well, as we are our colleagues in asia have pointed out there are discussions. They are in an advanced stage. There are discussions of buying some kind of a stake. We dont know exactly what the financial terms are. But, you know, as ma explained in his interview, theres a lot of different ways that you can slice this. Like jeff bezos and his investment in the Washington Post jack ma has been a real disrupter of the internet so this is an opportunity for him to bring some of that mojo he brought to ecommerce in china to a publication that has over the last several years not done as well financially suffering some of the same issues, some of the same disruptions. That has so messed with magazines and newspapers here in the u. S. Emily it is interesting given the political significance. Unlike the United States alibaba has a very tight relationship with the Chinese Government. It is a necessity of doing business whereas the media and South China Morning Post specifically have positioned themselves as an outsider with regard to the government. What do you make of that sort of complication . That is a good point. Congrats to you by the way for having that twitter you got earlier on this exact topic. I dont think its easy to answer that question. I dont think jack ma should be viewed as in the pocket of the Chinese Government. He would like to be seen as autonomous but as you point out in reality you cant be a successful business of that scale without a lot of nodding acceptance at a minimum and probably active participation of the government. But it is interesting. This is a luxury product from the standpoint of media. This is kind of like the Washington Post of the region. So if you want to from jacks point of view somebody who wants to get into like the highest status product, this is the place to go. If i want a hong kong reader of the paper, i would have serious reservations about it being controlled by a Chinese National though if youre going to have Chinese National control it, probably jack ma would be about as independent a thinker as any business person in china could be. Emily what do you make of this given the ecommerce angle . You are very focused on ecommerce but he is saying having a newspaper could help our businesses. Well, it seems like every tech mogul needs to own a newspaper. Emily right. Apart from that i think this is obviously coming together, media meets commerce. They are all coming together just as online and off line are coming together. If you own a media outlet with a substantial reach in the audience, obviously you can use it for your purposes as well. Every media mogul will say we wont do that. Emily exactly. Doesnt that defeat the purpose of being a stand alone media entity in the first place put it this way. It will not hurt them to own that. And i think there are some personal pieces in this as well. Im pretty sure bezos didnt necessarily have only business reasons to buy the Washington Post. There was probably also some personal interest. I wouldnt be surprise fd that was also the case here. Emily ali babay has done 13 billion in deals so far this year from Media Companies to pharmaceutical companies to a soccer league. I spoke with mike evans who is in charge of Global Expansion for alibaba and asked him about the m a strategy in particular. How do we make sense of some of these choices. Take a listen to what he had to say. In this sector, ecommerce, where were approaching close to 400 million consumers, the consumer desires are changing dramatically. A big part of our strategy particularly domestically means we have to be positioned with the right investments and assets to satisfy that demand. Emily tom, how might alibaba use this investment to satisfy domestic consumer demand . To the extent as ma said in his interview you might be able to find ways to benefit your small to medium sized businesses that do business on alibaba. Im not sure exactly how he plans to do that. He real key hear as weve been alluding, scmp is so highly regarded, you and i have been looking at this region for years. Very venerable newspaper. Theyre going to have to go to Great Lengths to ensure that they remain, keep this independent reputation they have had visavis mainland china, really its a global newspaper in many ways. We look to it from far away for this kind of authoritative voice on a lot of Business Issues there. So theyll have to work really, really hard and you dont want a situation where it is starting to feel as though ma is turning this into a vehicle that is supportive of any particular point of view or any particular business strategy. Emily now, at the same time alibaba and the wall street journal is reporting that alibaba is now shopping its stake in basically a version of group on yelp, a company that sells movie tickets, they do restaurant bookings. At the same time one of alibabas big competitors is trying to nail down a stake in this company. What do you make of that . Basically, this is a decision to separate the assets from the ten cent world. Theyre building their own competitor. Its basically a food Delivery Platform which is part of the whole onlinetooffline world. Essentially alibaba is saying why should i own a 7 stake in something where one of my top two competitors is also holding a stake. Why would i want to be in that rather than control my own destiny, build my own world, and actually compete like crazy in the market against that player theyre currently holding a stake in. They are saying let me get out of this thing, control my world, and then were going to go head to head in this. They have an uphill battle there because of the Market Leader but alibaba pretty much knows how to do online to offline commerce. Theyve done it before. They also own ali pay the largest payment platform that is independent in china. In addition they have their shopping app in china. All of these things combined and then owning or building their own competitor, that is a good strategy and pretty interesting. Theyve already put a billion dollars into that joint venture. This will be their ticket to freedom to fully compete. Emily i like that. Okay. Youre sticking around with us as well as David Kirkpatrick to talk a little bit about cyber monday or black november as were now calling it. Tom giles, thanks so much for joining us today from new york. Now a new report details today the impact of chinas continuing economic shift. According to the london basic accounting form uhy international the number of startups in china nearly doubled from 2010 to 2014. The country has been pushing to develop a Consumer Services economy from one fueled by exports and manufacturing to help with that transformation. The Chinese Government has provided subsidies and financing to promote internet and technology innovation. Since 2010 there have been over 1. 6 million startups with 4,000 new businesses launching every day. Coming up, one of the biggest retailers is moving its Cyber Monday Deals to sunday. Well tell you who after the break. And after a disappointing Earnings Report can the Holiday Shopping season save game stop or will the retailer go the way of Blockbuster Video and radio shack . Thats next. Emily a stock we are watching falling as much as 16 in todays trading. The Largest VideoGame Retailer posting earnings and a forecast that missed estimates even with the holidays approaching. The company saying on an Earnings Call that sales of the highly anticipated ea Game Star Wars battle front fell short of expectations. Gamestop is also hurting from gamers move to both mobile games and digital downloads. Well, walmart is pushing cyber monday back to sunday. All 2,000 of walmarts deals will go live on the website at 8 00 p. M. Eastern this sunday evening running into the next day and what the retailer is calling cyber week. This decision is part of a larger trend, black november so to speak, with retailers big and small rolling out the sales before the friday after thanksgiving. Here with me to discuss more and how the ecommerce landscape is changing, the c. E. O. Of shopkick ks David Kirkpatrick and youll be with us throughout the show. I mean, is it black november . I mean now ive been buying things for the last three weeks. It is definitely black thursday and black wednesday and very soon it will be black october. The problem with all of this is that it is actually red november. Because all these deals are so much discounting everything that from the bottom line of the retailer it doesnt look very good. Emily so literally every day 50 off at j. Crew. 50 off at gap. How can any of these companies be making money . That is the big problem. Many of these retailers are saying we have to get this discount business and stop discounting. Then you walk nah their stores and it says 40 off and something is not right. And then black friday comes along and its 60 off. In some cases half of it. And it was all this, some new strategies need to emerge. We need something new. David, have you been shopping all month like i have or are you waiting for black friday and cyber monday . Not shopping as much lately. Obviously with the warm weather a lot of apparel retailers have definitely been feeling a serious hit from a lack of Clothing Sales that would normally accompany getting cold weather toward the winter. I think every monday is increasingly cyber monday for an increasing number of americans. You know, its actually if you look at the statistics for whats called cyber monday, the numbers of the dollar amount of shopping has gone up dramatically year after year. But its still amazing to me how little commerce is still happening online considering the kind of convenience and deals and the efficiency that has emerged in our economy around there. So i tngs logical for walmart to be pushing this really hard especially since amazon has come up their tail pipes so hard. Emily amazon actually started a countdown to black friday sales starting november first but this point david brings up about the shift not happening fast enough is something you know a lot about. Shopkick is focused onion line to offline. Offline to online. Thats right. 92 of all sales, retail sales in america are happening in the bricks and mortar stores. But interestingly enough emily that is shocking. It is. You would think its the opposite. It is 92 offlane. Out of that half of it which is by the way 2. 9 trillion dollars is the total, all of that, 1. 4 trillion influenced by previous online activity, you go online, check out a product then you end up buying it in the bricks and mortar store. So with that, mobile comes into play. Mobile is the one interactive platform you got with you when youre in the physical bricks and mortar place and you can influence that. So one of the things we did at shop kick was say what if we could actually replace 30 discount with a 30 cent reward and achieve the same behavioral change . Most retailers thought we were crazy. Emily right. Spend more not less. Exactly. We came back and tried it with macys and best buy back then four years ago and it turned out it is actually true. With all of this technology that you can drive people to the store with just 30 cents we are driving close to a billion dollars in sales this year through this mechanism. Emily interesting. Now overnight apple changed their phone billboards in San Francisco to apple tv. We actually got some video of that. Im assuming, david, that the apple tv is going to be one of the hot items this holiday season. What do you think . People seem to be excited about it. Its great to have you here talking about retail. Shopkick is beautifully positioned for this transition where we are trying to get convenience that is both in the physical world and the virtual world. Now, in a way you could say apple tv is an example of the same trend because it is trying to bring together the traditional tv experience with the convenience and universal choice weve had from the internet. So this is kind of the big story about commerce generally which really is applying to a lot of the stories were discussing here tonight. That is that the virtual and physical worlds have to come together because thats the way e all actually live. Emily apple to me is not compatible to 4k. What do you think . Its still a cool product. I think it is going to be a hot seller under the Christmas Tree this year. And a lot of people are going to go for it. Because it is finally the new interface that everybody has been waiting for for many years. You remember steve jobs famously said its a hobby. Well, now it turns into a business and well probably find out after the holidays if thats the case. Emily im going to buy one. I know that. Im ready for my upgrade. Okay. Hopefully my husband isnt watching this particular show. He just gets the bill. Okay. Thanks so much for joining us. David, you are with me throughout the show. Thank you so much. Activist investor karl icahn has another target in his sight. Filings show theyve taken shares in xerox, shares surging after hours. Icahn is set to ask for a meeting with ursula burns and xeroxs board of directors. He is one of wall streets best known activists, investors, often taking stakes in companies he bleambs are under valued. Just last week we reported icahn swapped a large position in yee bay for 46 million shares of paypal. Coming up rnings fizer is going to announce the largest merger ever in the drug sector but is it bad medicine for innovation . Later a multi math science project in the heart of one of the driest deserts on earth. Well tell you about it and how it could give us the best clause yet about whether aliens exifflet. Emily a major deal today in the pharmaceutical industry. Pfizer and allergen joining forces in a 160 billion merger creating the Worlds Largest drug maker. Most of the buzz focuses on the deal and the socalled inversion structure which allows pfizer to take advantage of lower tax rates in ireland but there are a lot of questions emerging about the implications for r d and innovation in this area. Joining me now Caroline Chen who covers this area for bloomberg news. What does this mean for r d and innovation . Yes. So Brent Saunders who is c. E. O. Of allergen set to become the c. O. O. At the newly created major megapfizer has been known for a model where he doesnt believe pharma should do drug discovery. He thinks that biotechs, small Drug Companies startups should be doing the innovation whereas pf