Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - April 7th, 2023

who is on leave. Well, a holiday short and trading week and a job's report in the US, and then a former president pleading not guilty to thirty four counts of falsifying business records in an alleged criminal scheme to manipulate the twenty sixteen election. It was a busy week, to say the least. It was a very busy week. And coming up this hour a bit of perspective on the first ever indictment and criminal charges of an ex commander in chief and what that means for the twenty

twenty four presidential election. Plus our BusinessWeek team explains how a group of undercover labor organizers are making serious progress in unionization efforts at the likes of Amazon, Starbucks and more. Get ready to learn about salting. Not a new concept, but it's back in favor. All right, all of that to come, We begin with the ten companies to Watch for the second quarter, based on scenarios from our Bloomberg Intelligence researchers, each with important catalysts coming in the next

few months. The list follows our roundup of fifty Companies to Watch, revealed back in January. This new list includes companies in ai IT, beauty and banking, sneakers and in the selling of stocks. It's kind of a mixed list. I love it with the details. Joining us right now the editor of Bloomberg Business Week, Joe Webber and Tim Craighead, He's director of Research Content and senior European equity strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence. Guys, thanks so much for being here

at love. When we do these lists, Joe, let's kick it off remind us how it all comes together. So we do this exercise called fifty Companies to Watch that publishes in our Gear Ahead issue in January, and we love that project so much that we started talking to Bloomberg Intelligence last year about how can we keep this going, and we came up with this idea to do ten companies every quarter, and what we want to do here

is really talk about just that quarter. These are these are whereas the fifty companies to watch is for the whole year. We just want to talk about who could shine or maybe not not have such a great outing

in a given quarter. And so what the analysts at b I, led by Tim do is basically have their magical spreadsheets that they push everything through and what they're really looking at for these quarters are catalysts and those are the things that allow them to kind of discern the tin companies that we want to talk about on any given quarter. Um. And what I what I like about it is that there's always this element of surprise. There's there's a global nature to this. There's companies you've

never ever heard of. But that surprise is part of what I think brings a little bit of the charm to it. Well, we have to say before you got started, Um, we were talking a little bit with Tim before we went on air, and like we were surprised about a name like Gap. We'll get into that in just a moment. Tim, come on in and talk to us about the met metrics.

You know that you look to kind of put this list together, absolutely, and thanks for thanks for having us the list, whether it's the fifty for the year or it's the ten and a quarter. As Joel said, has a catalyst, and there's there's actually three pieces to it, with the catalyst being a very critical one. The first one, however, is that our analysts has to have a high, high conviction,

strong view. The second pieces that view needs to be different from what the market generally is perceiving, and that could be, you know, our expectation for revenue or earnings, um, it could be the expectation of a restructuring and what its impact could be. But comparing that to consensus or what we think investors are embedding m is a critical. So it's a strong view that's differentiated. And then there's that catalyst. It's a trigger that we think can happen

that will bring the market around to our view. And that's how we work. It's this three pillar approach. And as you've said, it's across regions, there's positives, there's negatives, it's across all sectors, and yeah, it's it's a good bottom up list, which I think is particularly interesting right now in a world that's so macro top down driven. It's refreshing to take a bottom up look at something that's a little different. Hallelujah. I'm tired of macro talk.

Give me specifics exactly. We love We love to name names, Carol and I speaking of naming those names though, Tim, can you just run us through the winners here? Who are the ten companies on the list? Yeah? Sure? Thing so Asia, there's two. One is an insurance company called AIA. The other is Hong Kong Exchanges, which is the stock exchange in Hong Kong. In Europe there's three. There's a bank BBVA, it's a big Spanish bank, but as we'll talk,

there's a Mexican element to it. Cap Gemini, which was one of the biggest it service companies globally, and Bestas, which is one of the biggest producers of wind turbines in the US. There's a consumer bent the things. Uh, there's Sketchers, there's Gap stores, Alta Beauty and Casey's General Stores. But they all have a little bit of a different twist in terms of why we're either positive or negative.

And last but not least, GFL Environmental, which is a waste management company that we've got actually a little bit of concern about Can I ask a question about the consumer piece in the US, Why do you think it was so heavily weighted to these consumer discretionary names. Yeah, well so there's it's interesting, you know, there are they all are in different businesses. So you've got footwear, you've got a peril, you've got beauty, you've got convenience stores.

And what what our analysts are looking at is, again, what is the market thinking generally, there's a concern about where consumer spending is going. Consumer discretionary activity cases, for example, is we think susceptible to that risk, you know, the potential of trading down, you go into a convenient story, you buy a little bit less, you buy something cheaper.

They all they are also looking to expand beyond their core of four Midwestern states where they're less well known, and it just presents a risk to what we think consensus is embedding. The other three are all very company specific stories that are that go beyond the economic cycle.

So sketchers there, we all know those shoes. They're certainly quite compy, but they're going beyond the US business and they're opening in India, they're opening in Canada, so there's new distribution, there's a partnership with targets, its expanding their base. We think there's upside opportunity gap. A new CEO was coming in. They've re merchandise old Navy where they had problems last year. They've proven already to Banana Republic can do better than it was you know, not long ago,

and they can adopt that to the gap itself. This is only a three billion dollar market cap company, you know, think about the brand and a new CEO comes in, We think that there's a real story to be had and alta, you know, a lot of our a lot of your listeners are gonna are gonna know this from the standpoint of the beauty shop. People are going back to the office, and regardless of the economy, people want to look nice, not consumer discretionaries, consumer staple inn That

was truly so Tim. What about some some of the macro kind of pressures that obviously the economy has been been facing with with say inflation, which continues to you know, stick around and you know, defy the Federal Reserve a little bit. How does that plan to if at all? How you guys look at these companies in the quarter ahead. Well, I guess a couple of things come to mind. Their jol One is GFL. Now, this is a waste management company.

They have been really driven by M and A in terms of acquiring companies, and that's fueled their expansion with higher inflation, higher interest rates, and you know, we do think that the FED is going to be higher for longer as opposed to necessarily pivoting quickly. But I won't get into the macro. Higher interest rates put a crimp on what we think they can do in terms of

this M and A fueled growth. And by the way, recycled paper is very depressed right now as well, so we see some risk to GFL, even though you think of waste man management is kind of being a countercyclical business. Another one that sort of plays into this idea about inflation and higher interest rates is BBVA, the Banko bill Bao, the SKAYA. It's a big Spanish bank. They've got a big Mexican business where loan growth is actually quite resilient.

They've got a big Spanish business that is very interest rate sensitive, so when interest rates go up, their net interest margin or profitability improves. That's a classic banks story and Frankly, the market seems to be preoccupied with their Turkey exposure, but that's now actually very small and we think it's well reserved and not a problem. So we think the market's focused on the wrong thing and not on the right thing, which is actually a positive story

on interest rate. Tim, I guess yea. I'm still stuck on the gap because wasn't this like a seventy billion dollar market cap company at its heyday room to grow? Yew? It is so interesting to I mean literally, I Carol, I looked that up before we got on Eric because I was curious, like, Tim, are you sure about this? Yeah? I mean seventy billion to three and a half billion. It's now a small cap even though you think of the brand versus Casey's, which you know is a good company.

But I think a lot of folks probably aren't to wear Casey's at eight and a half or alta in the mid twenties. Guys, Thank you so much, Tim, Joel Thanks to the editor Bloomberg Business Week, Joel Weber and Tim Craighead. He's director of Research Content and Senior European equity strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence. Joel will be back with us a bit later on. Explore the fullest of companies and more details though in the new issue, and be sure to check it out online at Bloomberg dot com,

slash BusinessWeek and on the Bloomberg terminal. Of course, it's very cool and interactive. A lot of little moving bitmoji's there, so you got to check it out online. I love when there's some visuals that move online. All right, Coming up, we look at the ripple effects of the Trump indictment with Tim O'Brien and Bloomberg Opinion, who literally wrote the book on the art of being the Donald long before he was ever in the White House. This is Bloomberg.

Thing is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenebec from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Master with Madison Moves this week. As this office is done time and time again, we today uphold our solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone stands equal before the law. No amount of money and no amount of power changes that enduring American principle. We have to save our country. God bless you all. God bless you all. And I never thought anything like this

could happen in America. Never thought it could happen. The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend

our nation from those seek to destroy it. Well, the two men you just heard from are on opposite sides of a first of its kind legal battle Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg followed by former President Donald Trump at his home Marilago, both from this past Tuesday, and the two meeting in court this past week in the Big Apple as Donald Trump, the first former US president to be indicted, pled not guilty to thirty four counts of

falsifying business records in an alleged criminal scheme to manipulate the twenty sixteen election, and he's accused of using hush money to bury damaging information about an affair to help boost his campaign's prospects. It's the legal worlds, right, maddie. Interconnecting or cross connecting with politics with business like it all just kind of came together, all right, Well, it seemed only right to have our Tim O'Brien in. Tim his senior executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion. A former editor

and reporter for The New York Times. He is the author of Trump Nation, The Art of Being the Donald that was published back in two thousand and five. He joined Maddie and Me to help explain the fallout. Well, I don't know if it's a big page in our history. I think, like everything around Donald Trump, it's another referendum on our national identity and our institutions and what we want out of leadership and the rule of law and

process more generally. And I think one of the challenges of the trump eras he challenges us to think about what we value and who we are. And I think, ideally the things that we try to value as a community that transcends political or ideological divides. But he's a person who actually lives in the divide. He pushes it apart, like you know, Hercules at the temple trying to knock the pillars down. And so I think today, you know,

I think this was a slender case. I don't think it was the most weighty of the cases that he's facing. I think it's the first chapter of a long slog through a legal tar pit that he is afraid of and burdened by. Very subdued. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of energy has gone out of the bubble. But he was subdued in court. However, on his social media feed he was as chatty and as bonkers as you could imagine, which I don't think his lawyers want

him to be. Well, his lawyer said afterwards that he's going to commit to not posting about it on social media, which how do you? Yeah? Right? And when he was in the White House, they said don't tweet without supervision, he did it anyway, He's going to do whatever he wants. Yeah, I think it's a come uppance. You know, he's someone who's used to being in control of process in his image, and he's trotted out on a public stage and humiliated,

even if the charges aren't the weightiest there are. I'm surprised that you think that it's humiliating given the weight of the charges. Now, well, he's a New Yorker, he's a native New Yorker. He made his bones here. This is a place where he got discovered, where he carried down the family business, where he triumphed. And he's basically being told by a court in that same city that you are a criminal and that we're going to prosecute

you for it. And had he not been president, he would have been perp walked and handcuffed too, so that would any of us would be humiliated by that. He's also I think he will digest that as he does, and it will feed his desire to fight back. I don't think that means he's capitulating, but I don't think he was happy. Timmy, you did write a book and you spent a lot of time with the president. How do you think about the time you spent with the president a lot of conversations with him, and how you

think about kind of what's happened since then? And then, Well, he was such a different person during the time that I spent Well, he was a New York real estate developer who had a TV show, and he was an amazing cartoon character. But he wasn't the most powerful man on the planet who oversaw national security and access to the nuclear codes and was reshaping the Republican Party in

his own image. He is a constant. He is the most consequence political figure of the twenty first century bar none, and I think that's through sheer force of his personality and the capitulation of his party. I think around substituting the acquisition of power for the embrace of values, I think the traditional classic Republican consertive values, lower taxes, less regulation, conservative court, a robust, hawkish foreign policy. That's all been turned into like a quisine art in the Trump era.

And what substitute for that is suspicion of expertise, suspicions of authority, suspicions of institutions, all on the service of a narrow elite grabbing power and holding onto it. Well, that relatability is part of what you've said makes him such a formidable candidate. I wonder if you see this trial as something that will hurt or help his relatability on the national stage heading into the election. You know, I don't know. I do think that his supporters, you know,

forgive him everything. He's got a vice lock. I think on about thirty percent of the Republican electric that makes him a power broker in the primary season. I think independent voters and moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats learned who he is through his first term in office, and I don't think he's going to get them back. And I think I don't think he's a viable national candidate. You

don't think, no, not anymore. No. I mean, look, he lost the midterms in twenty in twenty eighteen, you know, he lost the general in twenty twenty, he lost the mid terms and his party lost them in terms of twenty twenty two. So no, I don't think he's a national candidate, and I don't think the strategy will forge a national consensus for the party. And that's why they're in a hostage video with Donald Trump because they need to get through primary season with his voters, but they

can't win a national election with those voters. Because that's what's fascinating to me, still his hold on the Republican Party and how they are so careful about not wanting to come out and criticize him, even you know, as he's going through this process. I mean, so when does that go away? Is it after that? I don't think it goes away. I think it's just going to get tested in the primary and will have to see. It'll be interesting to see what Mitch McConnell does with that, right.

And and you know, I don't think Kevin McCarthy, he's just not as I think, as sophisticated a politicians as Miss McConnell is. And I think he's a Trumps sickopant. And I think if the Republicans want to re viable national strategy have to move around sickofancy. I'm curious too about the Fourteenth Amendment piece that you've written about him. Is there a chance that this is all hypothetical, right? But is there a chance that Trump cannot be president again?

I know Congress can override that, but do Republicans in Congress want to do that? Well? I you know, that'll be a test that you're You're referring to the Department of Justice cases. One is about the Espionage Act violations pertaining to classify documents going tomorrow lago. The other one is whether or not he incided an insurrection on January sixth. There's ample evidence to make a case for both of those.

The Fourteenth Amendment precludes anyone from who led an insurrection from running for federal office, instituted after the Civil War to keep Confederates out. Depending on how the laws interpreted, interpreted, and applied, that could come into play if the DOJ prosecutes him, and we don't know yet that they will. Was gonna ask you to tim just quickly. We just

got about twenty seconds. You expect the other cases to go forward and maybe could be more difficult for yeah, and I think he's well aware of those And I think though, the weariness you've seen in his face is of what's ahead. That was Tim O'Brien, Senior Executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion, a former editor and reporter for The New York Times and author of the literal book on Trump called Trump Nation, The Art of Being the Donald. He was the one voice I really wanted to weigh

in after everything that happened this past week. Right, it's still ahead. On Bloomberg Business Week, some leading American companies are facing renewed pressure from organized labor as employees within their own ranks act discreetly to rally colleagues to the cause. More on the undercover union organizers that's next. This is Bloomberg. Please sees Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebec from Bloomberg Radio. Every One. Carol Masser here with

Madison Mills. This week. The US labor market and focus this past week thanks to several data points, including Friday's monthly government release. What are the trends though, when it comes to today's workforce is the resurgence of union interest in organizing, which brings us to a very detailed story featured in this week's double issue of Bloomberg Business Week, about the secret force behind a number of labor union wins. It's such a cool story, Carol, with so many interesting anecdotes.

So get ready everyone to learn about the inside organizers school well in the process of salting. Thanks to Josh Idolsam, Bloomberg News labor reporter, who wrote the story and joined us once again with the editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Joel Weber. We haven't had a lot of whole a lot of organized labor in the United States for decades. It's been

on the decline. But salting has been around for a while, and it basically means that there are people who will organize within companies and draw people to their cause, right, and that has been a thing that's like an undercover agent on exactly. And when you think about these labor wins that we've seen over the course of the past year and change, companies like Amazon have been affected by this, Starbucks, Chipotle.

This is happening. And Josh, who I think is probably the best labor reporter in the country, came to us with this idea. That was like, well, who's behind this? It's it's this, these salts, and he had an opportunity to actually get up close with what this movement has looked like. So, Josh, take us inside what this actually looks like in practice, and is you know, according to the sources that you have in the story, you know this is going to be a thing that we're going

to see much more about other companies too. The context here is that union organizing is very difficult in the United States, and while there is a law on the books, as we've written about before a Business Week that gives people the right to organize without retaliation, in practice, the remedies if companies fire people because they're organizing are weak and very slow, and companies have lots of tactics that their disposal to try to prevent organizing, including mandatory anti

union meetings where you might have your manager making ominous predictions about what could happen if you organize. And in this moment when organized labors at a historic low in the number of people in the unions in the US, there has been a particular revival of interest not just in organizing in general, but in this a salting tactic which involves getting a job having the intention to organize

it while you're there. And there are very loose informal versions of that, and there are very planned out versions, like we've seen at Starbucks, where a group of people got hired undercover, had ways to present themselves to the company to not just not announced that they were trying to unionize, but really not seem like the kind of person that would try to unionize, and then on the job worked hard to be good workers and good coworkers

who would be respected by management and buy their coworkers, and to figure out who could be leaders that had been there a while in particular who could play a key role in launching a union campaign, and to make sure that when they did launch a union campaign, they would do it together in a large group at once, in a way that would be harder to crush with retaliation.

One of the things that really stood out to me, Josh, was I guess I had this preconceived notion of how, you how somebody who was organizing would go about doing it, and it would be like, you know, you would make a bunch of noise and draw people to your cause. And it turned out to be almost the exact opposite. According to Key Reporting, take us through. You know, one of the one of the ways that you write about the assalts were able to win people over, I'm thinking

very messy jobs people. This idea sometimes like norm Moray, that affect to union organizers, someone who stands on a table by themselves and gives a speech. And what it made the campaign at Starbucks effective, among other things, is that you had a group of workers, about fifty of them,

go public together and on the way there. One of the things that was talked about at this inside organizers school that I've visited, where people gather to discuss how to organize and in particular how to solve One point that one of the organizers made is about the importance of taking on thankless jobs on the job, like unclogging the drain at the Starbucks. That doing so is something that makes the company less likely to fire you or suspect you of disloyalty, and it's also something that builds

trust with your coworkers. Something that is not always realized by people outside of union organizing world is that workers tend to be more interested in hearing at union organizing from coworkers if they think those co workers also are serious about their jobs and are good coworkers that they

can rely on. I also love the anecdote from your story, Josh, about workers or salters applying for jobs and really pouring it on thick, making up stories about like my mom really loving the Starbucks cream and how that just changed the way that they view the working world. Is just so it's to get the job. It's just such a good anecdote. It's so it's such great reporting from you. But can you talk about any instances in which this form of unionizing might backfire, not just on the psalters,

but on other employees as well. So there are employees who have said to me or to others that they felt burned or upset when they learned that people they have been working with were salts and they hadn't known it. There are situations where it becomes a talking point for management. Of course, sometimes it's a talking point for management about

people who are not in fact assaults. There is a cat and mouse game sometime where as we get into in the story, an executive, According to one of these workers organizers, an executive told a new hire, you should be careful about trusting this person or this person or this person because they could be undercover operatives for the union.

And the person who was told that then went back and talked to a worker they did trust, who in fact was someone who again got and hired at that job with the intention of organizing it, and that person

had been a barista many times before. And one of the things that this piece makes clear is often people who are assaulting are people who also need a job and are already in the industry and are coming in seeing and understanding themselves and being understood by their coworkers even after they tell them that they were salt that they're making a choice about getting a job at a particular place because they see an opportunity there to organize.

And sometimes that means putting up with loneliness and stress from having to conceal things. Sometimes it means moving across the country. And there are people who found it harder than they expected, and there are people who, by doing it, discovered that they want to spend their life in the labor movement. Based on what you saw and you're reporting, what does it kind of tell you about either the

fragility or the strength of the labor movement? Well, this new influx of people who want to salt it reflects the allure of the labor movement and how for many people who care about all sorts of equality and progressive issues in society, they see transformation in the workplace as key to broader social change and broader fairness. It also reflects the desperation of labor organizers in the US in

their sense that the deck is stacked against them. The number of people interest in insulting shows a certain energy, particularly among young people, and a certain commitment and a constituency that is willing to go to real lengths and make sacrifices to be part of this work. That said, the prominent victories of the past year and a half, whether it's at Starbucks and Amazon or places like Chipotle or Apple or Trader Joe's, none of those has led

to a union collective bargaining agreement yet. And these companies that fought unsuccessfully in many cases to prevent people from choosing to unionize may not easily agree to any kind of contract that the union would organizer schools who knew? I mean, I feel like I learned so much in this story, and it was just the anecdotes are so good. Absolutely all right, Well, that's of course. Josh Idelson, Bloomberg News Labor Reporter, Bloomberg Business Week Editor, Till Webber. We'll

be back in the next hour. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Up next, more on our workforce, this time with a view from the top, specifically help wanted chief financial officers. We'll explain when we come back. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenovec from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Master with Madison

Mills this week. So, as we mentioned earlier, this was another big week when it comes to data on the US workforce, and our next guest has some keen insight on one particular area of employment that's seeing strong demand yep. Amelia Tiagi is the co founder and CEO of the executive talent consultant Business Talent Group, which is owned by the executive search and consulting firm Hydric and Struggles, and

right now things are looking robust for the firm. So we do a study every year tracking the trends that we're seeing across the market. We literally study thousands of inquiries that we hear from all sectors of the economy. We're seeing broad based growth and we're actually seeing that as the economy gets choppier and there's more uncertainty out there, that folks are really turning to on demand solutions because

they want that kind of flexibility. They still need to get things done and they need it fast, but they don't want to necessarily make long term commitments. The big story though, is the rise in demand for the interim CFO. We saw demand for an interim CFOs double over the

last year. So what is that of that, because because typically a CFO and if anything I've learned, you know, coming off the financial crisis, the Great Financial Crisis, is that CFOs were crucial to keeping companies running, making sure those balance sheets are sound and solid, and he has had money same thing during the pandemic, right, we know that this is an important position. So tell us about why this trend is happening. You're exactly right. It's a

critical position, and I think it's getting harder. I think that's what's happening is that the CFOs office is under more pressure and as there's more uncertainty in the economy, we're seeing turnover in the role. There's some burnout among CFOs. There's a lot of companies also that are experiencing changes in what the skills are that they truly need in that role as there shifts in the economy, So people pull in an interim CFO. Often when the old CFO

goes out, you need somebody in really fast. You can't have any time with that role vacant, especially in this kind of economy. That's so interesting to me because I've always thought of the type of person to pursue a CFO role as someone who would not want to quit when things get tough and when the economy gets a little bit tighter. So I guess I just I would not have anticipated that being the type of role where you see a lot of turnover, just given some macroeconomic headwinds.

Some of what we're seeing is some skill realignment out there, you know. I think the traditional skills of a CFO just sort of those financial skills, oh, I think a ticket to play, and the CFO is increasingly being asked to wear a number of additional hats, especially in this kind of environment. In some situations, they're being asked to raise money and others. They're asked to manage cash in

a whole different way. They're asked to help with restructuring, they may even be asked to assist with big IT projects. It's a lot of hats and with that skill alignment, I think you're finding different changes going on in the role. We also find the other trend that's happening behind the scenes. We work with a network of over twenty thousand professionals who want to be independent. They've chosen a different path. They don't want to be in a traditional role five

or ten or twenty years. They like going from project to project. There's a lot of people who enjoy that and who are seeking it out. And we're seeing growth on the talent side as well, and changes in what senior level talent really want. That's Amelia Tiagi, co founder and CEO of the Executive Talent consultant Business Talent Group. The unit is owned by the executive search and consulting firm Hydrick and Struggles. Amelia is also the daughter of

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. We just thought that was a fun fact, right, I throw it in there, Yeah, just throw it in all right. Well, that wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Ahead in our next hour, we head to Hollywood for some new developments, both on screen and

behind the scenes. Yep, one major studio is hoping a new blockbuster hit can help ease the pain of an old multi billion dollar mistake, while a looming writers strike threatens to bring the US entertainment industry to a standstill. Will explain. Plus we've got a breakdown of the six trillion dollars ocean economy. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Mattie Mills. This is Bloomberg Busines this week. Stay with us. Today's top stories in global business. Headlines are coming up right now.

This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine. Plus global business, finance and tech news as it happened. Sloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenevec on Bloomberg Radio.

Karl Masser here with Madison Mills this week. Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including how I blowout opening of John Wick Chapter four, you know, the latest installment in the hyper successful action film series is yes, great for Lionsgate, but

still not going to fix its streaming service, Stars Horse Stars. Plus, we've got the CEO and founder of C three AI on a short seller's claims, also protecting the six trillion dollar economy that employs hundreds of millions of people, and what you see when you and a year inside America's most vulnerable important profession. It's all in a new book, Carol. I love that, and actually it's pretty upsetting in terms of what's going on, but we'll get to that a

little bit later. On First up this hour, a couple of stories from the world of media and entertainment from our team at the magazine. One on a streaming service that lions Gate is yep, still looking to unload, and another about a writers strike that could impact our binge watching. Carol, what is your heart like skipping? I mean, my heart rate is really elevated right now. I can get bloom without it. You'll get through and you'll get through it

all right. Well. Bloomberg News reporter Thomas Buckley works in our La bureau. He's smack in the middle of all things Entertainment, Thomas joined us. The editor Bloomberg business Week, Toll Webber back with us again as well. So what's at store for lions Gate? Who really has has bet the house on john Wick? Well, let me tell you what I mean. First, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that you're going to be absolutely loving john wickfull when you go see it. Enjoys upon two and the

three I'm coming up, can't wait? Yeah, exactly. There are actually no plans for a seque when john Wick one came out, sis tremendous feet to have gotten this far with the franchise. It's exactly right. And and john Wick has really moved into one of them Lionsgate's largest franchises of late they will so you own the rights to the likes of Twilight and Hunger Games. And what's interesting, it's struxtaposing the strength of that film studio against some

of the weakness in its streaming service operations. And that's precisely why the company is seeking to demerge Wishes and effects, say Unwind Emerger that they created in twenty sixteen from the acquisition of Stars for four point four billion dollars. The acquisition has not delivered for them. The combined market CAB of the company now is around half that, and so they're exactly and their feeling is once they unwind the two distinct businesses, investors will see more value in

each rather than the sum of the parts. Why didn't streaming I mean, come on, help me out here, Thomas. I mean, streaming supposed to be all the rage, and I know we're kind of getting some full during of that, I feel like over the last year or so, because we do have so many different services. But why did it not work out? I mean, Stars was the home of an Outlander. Didn't we know that that was kind of a huge as well, and some other things. Yeah,

but why did it work out? So? Yeah, right to a last sense, streaming was all the rage, dealers all the rage. The issue is that investors really have shifted their focus from what used to be, you know, entirely subscribe the growth to now profitability with the rights of interest rates and seeing how a lot of these tech companies adapt to this new normal. In streaming, there is

an enormous cash burn associated with the business. I mean, you saw, for example, the departure last year of the Disney chief executive officer Bob Chapec as a result of a one point five billion dollar loss in a single course run streaming. So I think that now the attention has turned to that side of the business a little more, investors a much more favoring you know, solid studio operations that can be arms dealers rather than prioritized shows for

their own streaming operation. Well, it seems like Lionsgate didn't exactly help the Stars case here based on some comments that you got from a source who basically said that a John Wicks spinoff was pulled from the Stars lineup after Amazon and Comcast Peacock streaming service offered Lionsgate one hundred million dollars for the show. That seems tough. It seems tough for Stars. And this is what's quite interesting.

I mean, it's tough for Stars, but great for Lionsgate because I think that there when you have a real you know, equity story for the studio going forward, as they can farm out you know, very high value, high price properties like this to the highest bidder, that highest bidder is unlikely to be Stars for any of its show is going forward because it starts, you know, relative to likes of Netflix, is you know, under a fifth

the size of Netflix and you know, fellow competitors. So I think that, you know, going forwards, it is going to be tougher for Stars to compete. And I think that you know, the people who run Stars have said that of their own volition as well. But it puts signs get in a great studio wherein they can you know, sell as I mentioned, to the highest bidder and and

do very well from their existing franchises. Okay, so there's some other stuff happening in Hollywood, like a potential writer strike, and it's we've seen that before, but it's been a little while. So what what the timeline look like here and what are the you know, the issues because I

think streaming comes up yet again in that whole conversation. Right, yeah, absolutely, So the last time we saw a significant right strike, as you mentioned, was probably in two thousand and seven, when the strike lasted about one hundred days, give or take, and it costs the LA economy, you know, anywhere between two and three billion dollars. That's because all Hollywood productions shut down during a writer strike. I mean scripts have

to be finasted and reworked during production. Obviously, that can't happen if all your writers are picketing the lines at the moment. What's the stake is really, in part residuals from streaming. A number of writers feels their conditions necessarily as good as they were ten years ago, and the rise of streaming has really affected them in that regard.

And what's interesting is there is some parallel. Give them the two thousand and seven writes a strike the main point of contention that happened to be DVD residuals, and we're seeing the same sort of thing. Now. You said something it was like a technology interpretation. Please do you not remember those? Ye? What does that mean? It does

no good. No, it's just it's so interesting the DVD thing in comparison to what I was thinking about reading your story as someone who's I shouldn't bring up laser discs then either, huh, I guess I'll be like laughed out of the studio VHS is I mean all of it. But it's so interesting because one of the things that the writers are thinking about is the performance of their shows and whether or not they should be getting a premium if their show gets a lot of clicks or

makes it into the Netflix Top ten. As someone who works on our social team mainly, I would never want to be judged the clicks, because that can also be a bad thing if it doesn't go well. What are

your sources saying about that? Yeah? Absolutely, And this is a fascinating thing, right, I mean I think that previously writers who are writing for TV, I mean, when their shows were widely syndicated around the world, you know, they would benefit from that very consistent income and could plan accordingly.

Now I think you know, if a writer is paid upfront for a show and it happens to then break into the top ten, and there's very limited upside for them because the performance based bonus is that much smaller than it is for, say, by comparison a big film released in theaters and how well that doesn't the box office. I think a lot of them are thinking, We'll look, we're seeing our shows breaking in the top ten, racking up you know, hundreds of millions of hours worth of viewing,

and we're not being compensated fairly for it. So what are the goals that the Writer's Guild is seeking out for? So basically they are working under a current contract that expires on May first, and so they've sat down there with the studios and promotans and you know, perhaps that loggerheads not making much progress yet, but what they're seeking is a number of assurances, certainly as regards to residual compensation, so that they're better paid for that shows going forward.

You know, it does feel like, you know, we constantly see this as things change, especially in terms of how we consume content. Thomas is that, you know, it's got to kind of catch up right with the players in it, so that they are just like compensated. I'm curious what outside observers are saying that. Do they have a good point that it makes sense because things are changing exactly it is changing. I think that, you know, it's interesting because as I think about this story, it can sometimes

feel a bit like inside Baseball. But the truth is there are some real world, you know, ramifications for us of you as I mean, certainly during the last writer strike you had shows from the Simpsons, the Desperate Housewives that all had to make do with far shorter seasons

because Hollywood just ground to a halt. So I think that, you know, even though it might feel like inside Baseball at times, we will be affected as fans of these shows, if they don't find a resolution in the coming weeks, what do you think the potential impact of that is going to look like? In which specific shows don't worry

like watching things Maddie's terrified specifically? Can I'm sorry, let's just and finance succession, right, because it's already done and that's the that's the only thing that I live and die for. But what are what are the other ones in production right now that we need to worry about, and what's the timeline? Like, let me let me read that back to you. Every US movie and TV show is stopping as writer strike CLOBs like, truly, this is

an existential one, right, Thomas, exactly, It's it's pretty pervasive. Um. What I will say is that you know, hopefully what happens in the situations and they can't find a resolution and people do go on strike, you know, the risk are very very high profile shows, you know, being outright canceled.

It's probably quite low. I think that what we saw in the last Right to strike is that, you know, the shows that were canceled are probably you know, shows that the studios weren't necessarily that event on renewing anyway, Um, so there is a comfort there. And also put any fan of reality TV that you know that a genre

doesn't necessary you know, that much writing at all. If any I think you know, their appetites will be satiated and the thank god, yeah, I hope you like reruns though it could be a little bit right like and remember last time, the part of the joy was like, you know, people took a little break, and I remember more than a few actors who looked a little different when they came back. There was the continuity. Folks were like, wait, wait, wait,

wait a minute, we got a problem here. Okay, So timeline May first, exactly, so that's when the contract expires. And so currently negotiations being had between the two parties. And I hope that resolution before May first, all right, And and are you hearing anything moving on that front at the moment, I'm not hearing a lot of resolution. I'm hearing with our talks, and that is it our thanks to Bloomberg News reporter Thomas Buckley and Bloomberg BusinessWeek

editor Joel Weber, you're listening to Bloomberg business Week. Still ahead, the promise of artificial intelligence meets the intrigue of a short seller's allegations. Publicly traded C three AI takes its biggest stock hit ever at a time when the demand for its tech is at a fever pitch. We'll talk with the CEO next. This is Bloomberg. Please sees Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebec from Bloomberg Radio.

I'm Carol Masser along with Madison Mills. This week, artificial intelligence everyone is talking about, even Jamie Diamonds, CEO of JP Morgan Chase mentioning it in his annual letter to shareholders this past week among many other things. But AI was in there. AI was in there, and one player in the space is AI developer C three AI, whose customers include the US Department of Defense, Raytheon Technologies, and

New York Power Authority. Shares of the company's sword about a month ago, following a revenue forecast and comments by the CEO that we're both upbeat and led to more than a handful of an US raising price targets on the company. This week, though Mattie was a little bit different. The stock dropped the most ever in a single day after short seller at Kerrisdale Capital alleged quote serious accounting

and disclosure issues at the enterprise software developer. Well, for some clarity on the business, we cut up with Tom Siebel. He's the founder, chairman and CEO of C three AI and the firm's third largest shareholder. Well, I think this was a enormously creative and successful effort by a notorious short seller who it's widely reported as under investigation by the Department of Justice in the SEC okay, and has drug and alcohol convictions. And it's highly creative, highly successful

to issue this screed that contains not a word of truth. Okay, short the stock published this letter knowing that would move the stock. And I think this person made an excess of one hundred million dollars. So it was very creative, very successful, attempted what appears to be successful stock price manipulation. So John, that's the story. So Tom, so the charges

or allegations of this short seller. That's saying that you guys, are you know, presenting yourself as being in a high margin SaaS software service businesses rather than one based on lower margin consulting. This is the letter they put on are you a consulting company or are you a software as a service business. About eighty five percent of our revenue comes from software subscriptions in fifteen to twenty comes

from consulting services. This person of this short seller alleges that we report to get your ninety nine percent profit margins off of our largest customer, VANGE, which is Baker Hughes. And there is nothing in any financial statement that we'll support that. It's a complete fiction. And he says, because it's ninety nine percent margin, there's something must be something wrong with it. Um, well, he's you know, he's subtracting apples from oranges to try to come up with some

sort of nefarious act. He alleges that the fact that we have unbuild receivables is very serious, suspicious, and good software companies don't have unbuild receivable holes. And in the neglects to mention you know, the many many companies like UH Salesforce, Data, Dog, IBM, adobes, An, Alterics, SAP, all of which have many many, you know, very large unbuild receivables.

Unbuilding receivables is just um, you know, something for which you've recognized revenue for which you haven't submitted the invoice yet. It's very common in the industry. It's well understood, and he's trying to imply that there's something wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. It's proper accounting. But the guy succeeded. I mean, sometimes crime pays, and it's paid off for this person in a big way. So we you know, we after our hats are off to him.

So UM, and I want to get into what you guys are doing in terms of AI because that's initially why we asked you to come on UM. In terms of your accounting. Deloitte Touch they're the one who got the letters. You're comfortable with their accounting, You've talked with them. You're comfortable with their disclosures. Our disclosures are correct, our accounting, our accounting is absolutely correct. We have we have unqualified

opinion statements from our independent auditors. We have best practices in terms of accounting, in terms of audit committee practices, and that I mean, this is just a bunch of poppy cock. This is a trick that this this character played on the market. And you know, he made somewhere between one hundred and two hundred million dollars at the expense of C three shareholders and so and no regulators have reached out to you or the first that firm hasn't reached out to you. Uh, they have not reached

out to us. And while it's widely reported that these guys are under investigation by the SEC and the Department of Justice for stock price manipulation, we've not been approached by either of those regulatary bodies about this firm. And have you been buying any of the shares on the downfall? M me personally or C three? Uh? Both. I have

not been buying stock in the market. As you know, the stock is up about I think one hundred percent year to date, Okay, and it's been you know, we've reported in our earnings announcement that you know, business is quite good and the business's climate is quite good. And my only hope is that these this short seller in particular, and the short sellers short sellers out there, hold on to their stock because they're going to get in my opinion,

they're going to get crushed real quickly. And then we'll pivot to AI A promise. How do you refute the short seller's argument that part of your success and gains is related just to the ticker name and the overall hype around AI right now, I think, I mean, that's just a silly statement. I mean, is I think the name AI. I mean, I think there's no value probably attributed to that. The fact that we're in the AI market.

I think that, you know, a rising scene kind of lifts all boats, and so we're clearly a leader in enterprise AI. Enterprise AI looks like a half a trillion dollar addressable market in that room many years C three, AI is in a position to establish, if not the

leading position, a leading position in that market. So there's no question that some of the upward pressure on the stock is due to the realization of the size of the addressable market opportunity that C three phases and quickly here I just wonder, as CEO, how do you not get C sick on these market moves because you had all these games then obviously a tough couple of days here, what is your thinking around strategizing for your long term goals despite the market vaults. It's very easy I ignore

the market and focus on the long term goals. Our business is to build a great company, have satisfied customers, have a cash positive, profitable business, market leadership position, and you know, if we do that, we can just look. We have I think last of last quarter or something like eight hundred and fifty million dollars in the bank. So we are unquestionably and ongoing concern And I think if we focus on the big picture here, stay focused on the big picture, I think this will work very

very well for the shareholders. But we don't really look at day to day or minute to minute, or even month to month. I think, you know, as far as we're concerned, the market could closed for five years. But I think this is going to I think this is going to work out very well for the shareholders, the employees, and the customers in the long run. And that's my job. So the reason I don't get seasick is I don't look at it. So Tom just got about thirty five

forty seconds here. So I mean, what is the big win for you guys in the next six months that you say, hey, listen, Churchsellers, you've just so got it wrong. Oh, I think that if you're on the short side of this year. I mean, our business is good, okay, and we're in a position, you know, we trans recently transition to a consumption based pricing model. That's really well received by the market. We expect to see you know, you know, as the fad when the fad gets ready to take

its foot off the brakes. Okay, as it relates to dealing with inflation, I think you're going to see C three as a very rapidly growing, market leading enterprise application software company that's profitable, cash positive, and that'll be reflected in market valuation. Tom Cebell, thank you so much of C three A eyes we said, a lot of analysts

upgrading the stock last month. Still to come on Bloomberg Business Week, a dire warning about the health of the world's oceans and they're multi trillion dollars impact on well just about everything. More on building up one of the world's most valuable assets. This is Bloomberg. Please sees Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevic from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Master with Madison Mills. This week. Well, there

was a few stories over the past week. Actually I'm sure there was a ton more, but here's two highlights. One about the dealing with the rising waters around Venice. This has been a chronic problem, but they're now using sea walls to protect the city, but in doing so, it's impacting the local fishing industry and you know, possibly leading to dry canals, which creates a whole other bunch

of problems. Yeah, and another slew of stories about those storms resurrected what was once the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi River a long time ago, back to the ice age, setting the stage for a disaster, this sprain and upending agriculture supply chains, all of it, Carol. Needless to say, there's a lot going on when it

comes to the Earth's ebbs and flows of water. Doctor Debrah Brosnin is head of the international scientific consulting company that bears her name, and the firm addresses environmental risks and climate change. She herself is a marine scientist and environmental risk expert. She joined us from her work in the Caribbean. So, believe it or not, I am out here in Antigua and Barbuda because we're working on exactly

the issues you've been talking about. How do we create more resilient coastlines, how do we create more resilient communities? And what we're doing is we're leveraging nature. Carl Reeves break ninety five percent of a wave's energy, and they protect the shoreline from storm search but they also keep

sand on the beach, which helps tourism. So we are doing a major reef restoration project with a man called John Paul Lagoria called Ocean Shot, and we're also restoring dunes to provide a barrier, and in doing so, we're providing training and local jobs as well. So that's why I'm out here, because we're advancing those projects and it's

very exciting. Yeah, No, John Ball Djoria, I'm interesting. So what I want to ask you, as someone who has done a fair amount of diving and seen how our coral reefs have really been ruined over the last decade or so, tell us what you're seeing. First of all, like where we are when it comes to coral reefs around the world. We hear the stories about the Great Barrier Reef and the bleaching of the reefs. So talk to us about kind of where we are and how

we can get our way back. So I think it's fair to say that we are in a fairly dire situation with coral reefs, and coral reefs have been declining. There's an estimate we've last between thirty and fifty percent of reefs already and that we may lose another thirty percent if we don't intervene. So around the world, and

I've seen it in my lifetime too. When you go on the ocean one of the areas we're working on, only two percent of the stony corals are left on the reef, so two percent cover so and that pattern has been repeated time and time in different parts of the world in the tropics. But what we are seeing, and here's where the good news comes in, the situation is bad enough that people are really understanding that we've got to start taking action. So we're seeing action in

several places. One is in trying to grow resilient calls that are resilient against temperature rise, for instance, and several groups are doing those. We have resilient calls called Beta as a company that's working on them. So people are investing, literally investing money in growing resilient calls that can then be outplanted on two weeks. We ourselves are actually building reefs that will provide all of these services I spoke about.

And so we're seeing around the world and interest in restoring coral reefs but not at a small scale, at the sort of industrial scale that we need to be intervening. So both calls and the restructure itself, we're seeing a lot of effort on that, and that is the hopeful sign. So we're starting to see in some places a call to begin to come back naturally, but a lot of

it through human intervention. And on that human intervention, can you talk about man made coral reefs and to what extent those can be effective as kind of a replacement for the real thing. I think we've got to be honest and say we're going to have to help nature, and that means doing man made coral reefs, and they can be effective. We've studied coral reefs enough to know what's the secret source, and basically that is the structure of the reef itself that it looks like it kind

of looks like Manhattan. You know, there's a penthouse for certain species and the basement for species like lobsters. So when you create a reef, you want to create all of these different all of these different habitats, basically, all of these different layers, and that creates the opportunity for

biodiversity to come back. And so we know how to build those now we also can model the effect that they have on maintaining sand on the beach, so we know where should we put them, how big should they be, how white should they be. So we do have the science and technology. What we need now is both the investment and the action to do it. How quickly does

a reef come back when you deploy these efforts. It's a slow process, so it's called grow relatively slowly, but in the right conditions we can get growth of a few of several inches a year, which is with a lot of calls, that's actually pretty good growth. That's why we need to actually build the reef structure itself, so we give the call a foundation to growth, so we

actually get the reef back a lot faster. So within a few years or even immediately undeployment, we can start to see the benefits of reef and over time we build up the biodiversity. If I can just follow for a moment, I do wonder, with rising sea levels as we build these reefs, is it a case that we're going to have to kind of increasingly be building the reefs closer and closer to what was land but is now new rising sea levels and can you keep up or can we as a world in society keep up?

Now that's a good question. So I think what we when we think about restoring coral reefs or building reefs. We have to build reefs for the future, not for what the reef is, not for what our conditions are today. But if we get one foot sea level rise, where a three foot sea level rise, where do we need those reefs in ten years, in twenty and fifty years time. So we build the reefs. We start the reefs so that they will be the kind of reefs we need,

you know, through climate change. And can I back up like completely here, doctor Brosnan, because I wonder if you can just explain maybe one example of how coral reefs impact our environment in a way that an everyday listener or viewer would be able to understand, who may not have had a touch point with coral reef resch research previously. Yes, how many of your listeners like to walk on the beach?

I'll put probably everyone. And if you're walking on a tropical beach, the sand that you're walking on is sand that was made from a coral reef, from the erosion of the coral itself. Secondly, the reason you can walk on a very beautiful tropical beach is because the reef itself keeps sand. Not only makes the sand, but then it keeps it on the beach. So every time you go and lie on a tropical beach, say thank you to the coral reef. No actually said, no, it's so

perfectly said. So when you talk about a reef to coming back, you said a few years. So is it five years, is it three years? Is a ten years or more? Yeah, it depends on the longer the reef exists, the better it gets. So if you build the structure of reef and you put the reef out and if you plant calls on it's for instance, we have caral nurseries and we're growing calls just like you would growth ball plants in a nursery, and then we plant those

calls out on the reef structure. So now our reef is starting to come back quickly because we're getting fish and we have corals. So effectively we have a reef. We have a functional reef, but over two years, five years, ten years, into the next hundred years, the biodiversity on that reef if it stays. Health will increase, the fish life will increase, and so within I mean we're seeing within four months, we've already seen in one of our reef modules twenty five species of fish have moved on

to this reef that we build. Now, that's amazing. So and these fish aren't there. The calls are doing fine. So the system is beginning to regenerate. All we had to do was give it the fighting chance and give it a reef in the habitat. That was doctor Deborah Brosnan. She's a marine scientist and environmental risk expert who heads the international scientific consulting company that bears her name. You can listen to the full conversation on our podcast feed.

You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week coming up, how teaching in America has become one of the nation's most vulnerable positions. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenevic from Bloomberg Radio. Hi everyone, Carol Master here with Madison Mills. This week. By one measure, there are more than four million teachers in the United States, taking into account all k through twelve public and private schools.

Plus adult education and career and technical schools. In all, teachers make up about two and a half percent of the working population. Investigative reporter and New York Times best selling author Alexandra Robbins spent a year inside the teaching profession. It's all in her new book The Teachers. A Year inside America's most vulnerable Important profession, right, and she looked at it from a lot of different perspectives, different kinds

of teachers, different geographies, if you will. Bloomberg News Deputy team leader for US Equities, Jess Metton, and I spoke with Robins about her work. I wanted to write sort of a fast paced, fund to read book that both shows the public what's really going on in schools and also shows them that educators working conditions right now are unacceptable.

At the same time, teachers are still able to find joy and hope and optimism, and so I hope to motivate readers to fight for teachers and for teachers to feel more of a sense of solidarity. So what I did was I followed three teachers for a school year. There's Penny, a middle school math teacher in the South. Miguel, a special ed teacher out West and Rebecca and East

Coast Elementary School teacher. So readers could go behind the scenes with them for a school year and see what's really going on in schools and so anecdotally, whenever you were following them, what did you find? What is actually going on at schools? Oh? Boys, it's the public has no idea what a teacher's day is actually like, teachers

are under siege from all sides. Districts and sometimes even principles are piling on extra time consuming responsibilities on teachers that they can't possibly fulfill because they don't have the support staff, the resources, the time, or the money to do it. Students are much more disruptive than they were before the pandemic, and just one disruptive student can affect an entire class. And parents, Oh it's I think we're seeing the most accusatory and invasive parents in the history

of American education. All of this is piling on teachers at the same time as there's just just general stigma, general sense of disrespect for the profession, and that has to change. It has to So how did we get here? So, yeah, a lot of people have said, well, it wasn't like this in the nineteen nineties. There was respect for teachers in the nineteen nineties. I think a couple of things change. One is online access to teachers. We have the Internet, now,

we have social media, we have email. Grades are posted online twenty four to seven. Parents can check them, so

there's more of a sense of I guess access and immediacy. Also, what changed is in the early two thousands when high stakes testing became a thing and teachers jobs ended up hinging in some cases and their pay hinging on how well a student, their students did on one particular test on one particular day, and that didn't take a new account whether the child was well fed, whether there were attentive parents at home, whether there was a trauma, whether

they had resources at home. And it kind of started this climate of fear in schools, and I think that also has played into the strange relationship now between teachers and parents. Investigative reporter and New York Times best selling author Alexandra Robbins talking about her new book The Teachers, A Year inside America's most vulnerable important profession. Bloomberg's just met in with Carol there as well. For the full conversation, check out our podcast feed on Apple or at Bloomberg

dot com. You got to say that book to The New York Times just put out a list in the past week of top non fiction books to read, and this came up on it. So did a book by our own Ashley Vans. Just putting that we love Ashley Vans. We certainly do, all right. That reps up the weekend edition to Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Carol Masser and I'm

Madison Mills. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Monday through Friday, starting at three pm mostertime on Bloomberg Radio. You can also watch your daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Global News and we're simulcast on Bloomberg Originals available at Bloomberg dot com, Slash Originals, and streaming platforms like Roku, Amazon, Fire TV, Samsung TV Plus and more. And find our Bloomberg BusinessWeek podcast at Bloomberg dot com,

Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. The latest edition of the magazine is also out now. The double issue available on newsstands now at Bloomberg dot com and has always on the Bloomberg Terminal, have a good and safe weekend. Stay with US. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.