President obama has used his final state of the union to express regret at americas deepening division. He addressed his economic record, saying talk of decline is political hot air. He says he will push for progress on wages, immigration, and then violence. Lets look at the markets right now. Hong kong and china are currently closed for lunch. Hang seng at 20,000. Shanghai composite has given up most of its gains. This is the picture in singapore, tokyo, and mumbai. Big gains for nikkei 225. I am back in half an hour. Time now for bloomberg west. Emily i am emily chang, and this is bloomberg west. Coming up, spending spree. Chinese Companies Break out the checkbook, snapping up a major movie studio and dating app. Twitter ups periscope. You can now watch live videos inside actual tweets. I will sit down for an exclusive interview with with ceo kayvon beykpour. Popup video for the digital age. Spotify and genius team up to give users the stories behind songs. Chinese companies are continuing a wave of m and a. In a 24hour span, beijing kunlun bought a stake in grindr and announced the purchase of legendary studios. Two separate companies are bidding for ges Home Appliance unit. What is behind the merger mania . Can it last . Joining me now, Jeff Mccracken in new york, brian buchwald. In san diego, paul kedrosky, our contributing editor. Welcome back. It has been a little while. Jeff, i will start with you. What is driving all this . It is not just about china. It is about the united states. Whether youre talking about chinese firms, and you mentioned three firms, but Japanese Companies want to buy more assets in the united states. So do companies in europe. It is not going through the roof. It is 2 , 2. 5 . It is still the largest economy in the world. 2. 5 is still pretty good compared to the rest of the world. This is a desire to have more exposure to the united states. Right now, it is chinese. A month from now, we might be talking about Japanese Companies buying assets in the united states. This has been going on for a couple years. Companies in asia or europe or anywhere else. Emily lets talk about what is going on in china domestically. Does the domestic slowdown in china mean we will see fewer of these deals down the line . I do not think so. I actually think we are going to see more. This is a broader phenomenon than access to the u. S. Marketplace. This is repatriation of the yuan. The same phenomenon is driving up yearoveryear real estate in vancouver. Data was out last week, Something Like 26 . Up there with london in terms of price appreciation. This is largely a capital flow issue. We are seeing the same phenomenon with respect to chinese currency finding new homes where they can translate the currency into something that feels like a harder asset. 20 years ago, it might have been a manufacturing plant, might have been the japanese. Today it is the chinese and technology companies. Emily how much does prestige play into these kind of deals . A good question. Lets separate the two. The question of a film studio, what is a mogul that does not own their own film company . Prestige plays a large part in regards to legendary. Grindr ties into the safety aspect in terms of currency. It also ties into the fact that the chinese Digital Media market is becoming hotter and hotter, more and more competitive. The value of those assets is actually decreasing. We continue to see appreciation in the states. Especially for an app like grindr. That is actually generating substantial revenue. Emily what about time warner . Would that be a target for the chinese . I guess it could be. That is a ridiculously big deal. If someone in china made a bid, you would see Rupert Murdoch show up. We thought eventually, he would make a second run at time warner. He would have to do it in a friendlier way than perceived in 2014. Chinese companies have to be careful. If they tried to buy Energy Assets or infrastructure, if you will, the government will get involved. They have to be choosy. Emily buying the studio, theres concerns about censorship, content. What do you think about the cascading concerns . Even a gay dating app, which would not have been acceptable a decade ago in china. The that shows you less about changing chinese mores than the abject panic about the currency exit, the currency flow. I have to buy something. It has to be relatively liquid. It cannot have regulatory issues. Here comes your list of candidates. Right at the top is a bunch of unicorns and other things, Tech Companies with high valuations. Investors eager to exit. Companies like grindr and others. This will not save people from the acquisition problem. But i would not be surprised to see more stakes in larger, Expensive Technology companies. Emily would you agree with that as someone who understands how chinese cultural attitudes have shifted over the years . It is an interesting question about a gay dating app. How available could that have been in the states 10 years ago . In china, it is more permissive underneath artificial layers. I think there is a lively gay scene in shanghai and beijing, just less obvious. It has more to do with chinese investors looking for a safer haven in the dollar, in u. S. Assets, at this point. Emily jeff, what is the next target . You mentioned ge. That is a deal that probably gets done this month. That will be a three plus billion dollar deal. That is probably the next deal to happen. I would keep an eye out for jack ma and alibaba. They have been in and out of los angeles and hollywood, so i would not be surprised if something comes from that. Emily i asked jack about that in beijing. He said he did not try to buy a studio. He did not think they wanted to sell. Now we are seeing legendary letting go. They like taking stakes in companies where they buy the whole thing. That would not surprise me, a 30 stake in something down the road. Emily jeff, brian, thank you both. Paul, you are sticking with me. Turning to the markets u. S. , stocks staged a late gain with the nasdaq snapping and eight day losing streak. Julie hyman has a wrap. The nasdaq was the leader through the session, staging an early rebound and continuing the leadership as the day went on. If you look at the nasdaq on an intraday basis, it was a rocky session. A lot of volatility throughout the day as investors watched oil and some of the other elements pushing the market around. Largecap tech performing well, apple coming back. A couple of positive analyst calls helping stocks from the likes of bank of america and Piper Jaffray saying it is a good buy. Microsoft, and google contributing to tech gains. , one of the top performers in the nasdaq, is an Information Consulting company. There has been flooding in its operation in india. The company reaffirmed its forecast following flooding, saying it would not affect numbers. Back to you. Emily julie hyman in new york. Coming up, spotify adds another layer to the listening experience with the help of a startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz and eminem. Later, can periscope stream new life into your twitter feed . An exclusive with kim on bayport later in the program. Emily in todays version of out of this world, spacex hoping for repeat success after a successful landing of an orbital rocket back on earth in december. Elon musk says spacex will attempt another landing on sunday, this time on a barge in the middle of the ocean. It is part of the companys cost saving quest to build reusable rocket. Spacex has unsuccessfully attempted this kind of Landing Three times before. It is arguably more challenging than a land attempt because it is a moving target. Spacex comes at the experiment with humility. Sayss website, the company the attempt would be like trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a storm. Elon musk is out with comments on apple, saying, bring it on. C it is anng the bb open secret they are developing a rival electric vehicle. Musk says he sees apple as a player that will expand the industry. Apple has not said they are working on such a vehicle just yet. We will be back with more after this break to talk about the state of the union. Emily genius is an annotation startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz and marshall mathers, eminem. It is known for breakdowns of rap lyrics but is moving to other genres. It is partnering with spotify to add content to the app, perhaps changing the User Experience in a fundamental way. Here to discuss, tom lehman and shiva, head of consumer products. I am definitely one of those song and hasars a no idea about it. I would like a feature like this. What are you hoping users will take away from this . I am sure you have all experienced, you are listening to a song, and ask yourself, what does that mean . Maybe you think to yourself, what went down in the studio the day it was recorded . These are the questions that drove us to create genius. The partnership with spotify is about putting the answers at your fingertips whenever and wherever you listen to music. Emily how do people use their phones when listening to music . Are they looking at their phones when spotify is on . This is our first chance to experiment with that. Spotifys fundamental goal is to deepen the relationship with artists and fans. One way to do that is bring a little more soul behind the song. That is what genius brings us. We are hoping people engage a little more when they want to learn more. Emily it seems like spotify is trying to create a viewing experience. Are you . Part of this is rooted in saying we have a lot of context around music that fans love. If we can bring that to life, sometimes it will be about leaning in and reading, which is what genius represents. Another way to look at it is the playlist has not evolved in a long time. We are excited about looking at the format and seeing what kind of engagement we can layer on. Emily what further potential do you see from this deal . One thing that excites me is the artist participation component. You cannot truly understand what is going on in a song without hearing it from the artist. That is one of the reasons we are really excited to launch artist,ee amazing diplo, tanashe, and pusha t. My hope is that this becomes a core part of how artists express themselves. If you are listening on spotify and want to get another expression of that artist personality, you need to leave spotify and go to instagram or twitter or somewhere else. Wouldnt it be cool if you could get that experience where you listen to music . That is something that excites me about the future of this collaboration. Emily shiva, do you see it becoming a core part of spotify . That is a very different company. We have to go where the music fans want us to. If they are excited about learning more, we have to give that to them. We would love to see success and engagement and expand it. We are really excited about it. Emily tom, i want to talk about geniuss integration with the white house, of all things. You will be annotating president obamas state of the Union Address. What will we be able to see . What additional commentary . The white house collaboration shares a lot with our collaboration with spotify. Jason goldberg, chief digital officer of the white house, talked about what he is excited about with the genius partnership, which is meeting people where they are. Whether it is meeting people on spotify and bringing them this layer of context as they look to music or as they experience the state of the union or whether it is people who disagree with the speech or mentioning the speech coming together and discussing it as it is happening. Emily you might have president obamas former speechwriter on there. But also members of the public. How do you plan to curate content and make sure it is a polite experience . That is a great question and a big part of the genius magic. We have had a ton of experience doing this from a Community Perspective in music, in rap. There are pretty crazy debates that go down in that world as well. Resolving flame wars is something we have figured out how to do, and we are excited to apply these techniques to the arena of politics. Emily you can check it out tonight. President obama delivering the state of the union for the First Time Ever annotated on genius. Thank you, tom and shiva. Staying with politics in technology, with the iowa primaries only a couple weeks away, president ial hopefuls are beefing up presence on social media, but what is the return on investment . Paul kedrosky is still with us. I am joined by sprinkler insident Carlos Dominguez new york. Sprinkler helps politicians and others manage social media strategy. Paul, obviously, candidates are leveraging digital platforms more than ever. Donald trump has the most likes on facebook. Ben carson, not far behind. They have twice as many as hillary clinton. Yeah, it feels like kids on my front lawn. You want to shout at them, get the hell off my lawn. They are showing up, aggressively trying to run Digital Advertising campaigns. I was looking at some of the numbers this morning. It is remarkable. Ad spending is up 20 since the 2012 election cycle in the u. S. That is nothing like online. Since 2008, it has gone up 5000 from 22 million to to 1 billion. It is surprising it is only 10 of ad spending is digital. 50 by expect it to be the 2020 cycle. It is the dominant form. Emily hillary uses snapchat. Eb bush is big on linkedin trump and carson are big on facebook. Which candidate gets the best grade . They are all trying. A lot of it is still going through traditional media, which is strange for me. What the politicians can learn from large brands is that the world is radically different. For the first time, we have the opportunity to really engage with people on a oneonone basis. The most important part about what you just asked, emily, is that the candidates need to go to where the people are. You do not get to select the channel you are using. Folks are selecting the channels you should be on. You have to be on all of them. Emily that said, you have to allocate your time, your money. Which of these services has the best return on investment . They all offer very different things. We know that snapchat was launched by the white house last week. There is the big event happening tonight. If you go to snapchat, you get a real behindthescenes. I think it is eventdriven. It depends on what you are going trying to go after, what channel you end up selecting. Emily the big question is, do eyeballs translate into votes and action . Paul kedrosky, maybe you like donald trump on facebook, but will you actually vote for him to be president . Just try to stop me. [laughter] no, i think trump is a great example of someone, for better or worse, who has nailed using social media to promote his campaign. Someone joked he is like a magazine comments section come to life, just shouting at you from twitter. It works perfectly for the brevity of the type of messages he is trying to get across. It works really well. It does support his message. That peoplehere in are repeating the things he is saying endlessly. His 139 characters are viral almost instantly. It is a remarkable phenomenon and may never happen again. Nevertheless, it is working flawlessly for him. Emily carlos, beyond trump, does social media action translate into votes . What are you finding . If you take a look at the previous election, social media had a very big impact on president obama getting elected into the white house. In the last four years, technology has evolved immensely. The ability to have analytics and be able to engage one on one with people that you want to engage with is really very doable. So i am really surprised that a spend is0 of the going to digital. You can get much better return and see your spend translating in engagement, which would logically translate into votes. Emily quickly, 2016 will be the year of what when it comes to tech and politics . Shouting. It is the year of twitter. Where an awful lot of the action is happening and the core of the trump phenomenon. Maybe they will get bought by china. Emily paul kedrosky, you are sticking with me throughout the show. Carlos dominguez from sprinkler, thank you for joining us. Tune in to the state of the Union Address tonight on bloomberg television. Coming up, the pinch for real estate here in San Francisco could be impacting our gdp. We will explain. Kong. It is 12 30 in hong i am angie lau. Reference the yuan little changed for a fourth day after the pboc reportedly bought the currency on thursday. Is heading foran a record gain against the dollar. On president has called china to pressure north korea, saying they are under pressure in terms of the economy. Un described the kim jong regime as deceptive and reckless. Ta consultancy shares are trading at 1. 9 after a 12 job drop in profits. That was slightly above estimates at 19 million. Sales fell short. We had an extended drop in india. , itat the end of the day has been slow growth for tata consultancy. But all the metrics are strong. Ie lets check in on markets with juliette. In the region with trade data out of china giving an initial lift to the shanghai composite and boosting australian stocks. It went into the lunch break flat after a very positive morning session. The Hong Kong Market is strong as well, up 2. 4 . Nikkei 225 having its first gain of 2016 so far, snapping a sevenday losing streak. Up by 2. 5 . Regional index as a whole will also post its first win of 2016. Australian market looking pretty good, up by 1. 2 . We had seen a fallback in some of the mining players. Crude oil has been the big story of the day. It has recovered in the asian session, often falling after falling below 30 for the first time in 12 years. 30. 85. 70. 35. Dollar is at we are counting down to the reopen at the top of the hour. Emily San Francisco office rents are the most expensive in the united states. Demand for housing continues to outpace supply. Limited supply can be impacting gdp in the united states. One academic report indicates reducing restrictions in san jose and new york could grow demand by 9 . Justin fox, you just wrote an interesting piece about this issue. You lay out a remarkable argument. Briefly lay out the argument for us. The argument is when you bring sm