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Hi, everyone, Welcome to the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week. Well, we got another round of closely watched US economic reports this week on inflation, retail sales, and consumer sentiment to name a few. Bottom line tim the data really continuing to come in mixed, also showing persisting inflation and a miss on retail sales. So with that is our backdrop, Julie Van Allen, chief Revenue Officer over at Rakatin, stop by with some thoughts on the US consumer.
Plus Boeing in the news again this week as many questions remain and it continues to face a fallout over a January accident in which the panel covering on an unused door on a Boeing seven thirty seven Max nine blew open during a flight. Those Boeing struggles giving Airbus a chance at aviation dominance.
Yeah, headlines right, just continuing to cross. All right. The Chip War also on, as you know, as tensions escalate between the US and China. Chris Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Chip War, The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology, will be with us later this hour.
All of that to come. We begin with a quick check on the US consumer courtesy of the free app and a browser that provides coupons and discounts where shoppers are in cash back on purchases. More with Julie Van Ollen, chief revenue officer at Rakkaton, who we got up with just before this week's weaker than expected retail sales report.
I mean, the trend continues where we got to wake up every day and see what's going on. It is still our moment is still that of pivoting and understanding what is the consumer doing today? And what I can say is that inflation continues to increase, as we all know, particularly in areas that impact the consumer gas, energy rent prices, and that really highlights a potentially negative impact on retailers as these consumers effectively look to save money. Now, saving
money can come in all sorts of different forms. As we know, Raqutan offers a really valuable offering to our retailers and brands by way of giving value to consumers
as cash back. Right, so we're very well positioned for a moment like this that we're calling cautiously out shopping last year is what we're seeing on our platform, largely driven by the fact that consumers do still seem to be interested in spending and from what we see actually out spending last year, but very much associated with categories and brands who are offering them the value that they're looking for.
What are some of those categories, What are some of those brands if you can dig a little deeper into the data.
Here, So the categories who have really leaned in heavily understanding that the consumer of today is looking for value and who have increased cash back rates over last year. We see the pets category doing extremely well, having grown over one hundred percent in trips year over year. We also see appliances in hardware, they're seeing an increase of twelve percent in average order value. Marketplaces also doing extremely well.
Home and garden and travel is a real standout because typically Q one is a very promotional period for travel, and they spend quite a lot to lower consumers their way in Q one anyway, and this Q one has kind of not been too different, except there's even more leaning into those higher cash back rates to achieve the high price point purchases that they're looking for. And the travel has increased twenty two percent year over year for US in terms of trips.
So when you say they're leaning in more to get that spend, I guess in their basket to get the cash back. So does that mean the retailer who's ever offering up the deal is in the driver's seat or is the consumer in the driver's seat because they're pushing for a better and better deal because they kind of need to.
Well, it's a great question, and it's two sides of the same coin, you know. I think the consumers are if you look at this data, they're very clearly saying I have the money, and I will buy from retailers
and brands who are willing to deliver me value. And I think the categories and brands who are doing well like the data we just reviewed, are the ones who are listening to that message and are reacting by offering higher cash back rates because it really is within their power, the brand and the retailer's power to use Racketin to offer more back to their shoppers.
What typically proceeds a slowdown in consumer spending? Like, what are the signals that you could be looking for right now in the data that you have that would say, okay, well, the economy is indeed slowing down.
I would say, which is something that we're not seeing today, is that if you are in a challenged economic moment where inflation continues, and you have a brand like Racketon, who has an offering that allows retailers to provide the value to the shoppers that they're looking for and that isn't working, that would probably be a sign that consumers really are pulling back. But we see the exact opposite that versus last year, brands are investing and shoppers are responding and outspending.
Julie Van Allen, chief revenue officer at Racketin.
All right now to a week that was also chuck full of news on Boeing. The full rundown, of course, can be found at Bloomberg dot com. Of note, though, the US Federal Trade Commission Chair Lena Kahan saying in a speech that Boeing became too big to fail after bought up domestic competitors and became the country's largest commercial
aerospace maker. Meantime, Bloomberg News reported the Justice Department this week convened a grand jury as part of a criminal investigation into that mid air blowout.
The controversy has become an opportunity for the company's loan major competitor, air Bus, and this is the topic of a story in the current issue with Bloomberg BusinessWeek. BusinessWeek Assistant managing editor Jim Ellis joins us with more.
To change aircraft makers is a big deal for the airline, But we've gotten to a moment now where there's so much bad news. There's a lot of questioning about the quality of Boeing's equipment right now. That it comes at a particularly bad time for Boeing simply because a lot of people are starting to think of a lot of airlines are starting to think about the next generation of aircraft, and you know, a lot of people say, well, you know things are happening now, everybody's going to jump and
run to Boeing. It's very run away from Boying. It's very difficult to do simply because you know, as you said, your crews are trained on that, and you've made these multi billion dollar investments. But what's at stake here is the next generation of planes. What happens is that because in the airline business you can use a piece of aircraft for decades, you don't make these decisions to change lightly. So instead it's time to think about the next generation.
And so what Airbus is doing now is they're going to have some room to go ahead and say, I'm going to come up with a new plane at a time when Boeing is so, you know, sort of troubled, and so can consumed with thinking about how can it deal with its quality problems? How can it also deal with its balance sheet problems. I mean, Boeing is in the point right now where it doesn't have a lot
of financial flexibility to build a new plane. And so Airbus, however, is probably about a fifty billion dollars advantage over it from a dead standpoint, and so they can move ahead and start planning for the next generation and sort of seal this dominance that they're probably going to have with the aircraft business.
Jim tell us how fortunes can change, and I love how the story starts and you guys go back to nineteen eighty seven. If we can all remember back then, it's a while. It's a while, but talk about what happened and how that may be set the stage for where Airbus is today.
Yeah, I mean what happened is a lot of people thought when Airbus decided to bring out it's a three twenty narrow body airline airliner. The people thought, oh, we're gonna do that. I mean, we've got the seven thirty seven. The seven thirty seven was rules the skies, and they come out with this A three twenty. They have a great party, they have, you know, sort of Prince Charles at that time with Lady Diana. I mean, it's big, big deal, fireworks and everything, and everybody says that's not
going anywhere. You cannot beat them. They and at that time Boeing had ten times as many seven thirty sevens popping out than A three twenties. Fast forward to today and the A three twenty has become the best selling commercial aircraft of all time. I mean, that's that's a big deal, given that Bowe had commanded that market for so long, and the seven thirty seven has been a major player in aircraft for almost a half century.
How much of that is the mistakes and problems that Boeing has had. How much of is it just folks started to kind of really like the A three twenty and shit their ordering books.
A lot of it is that the A three twenty just sort of came in with a lot of innovations that you know, customers connected with what they call fly by wire, that sort of joystick, sort of all electronic cockpit, the idea that it was a slightly larger plane, which then set off this whole thing of continually making these planes bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
I'm measure how big my seed is.
I don't know about you guys that I know it turned out that they were in the right place at the right time. But they were also extremely you know, because they didn't have an older model that they were basically just retrofitting, they could think differently. They sort of took it and they ran with it, and now they're in a position to think about the next generation of airplanes that can find on sustainable fuel, that can do all sorts of you know, sort of electronic things in
the cockpit. But also can take structures of airliners in a different way. They're planning a plane now for this next generation that has a wing that's shaped like a bird's wing that can actually change its shape and flight. And also because airports weren't built for these new giant planes that we're building now, they're going to have aircraft with the wing tips that fold up so you can still put it in the same place. But you know, and then we pulled away from the onto the Tormac
flip the wings out. It's I mean, they are basically taking advantage of what they have right now, wh's a lot of money as well as not the look of all the stock markets saying, oh my god, you're a terrible company, you know, which is what Boeing has to deal with right now.
Well, just like in the late nineteen eighties when Airbus was the upstart against Boeing, now there's another upstart out there that should have what, for practical purposes is a duopoly between Airbus and boone right but may not be forever. Enter what China has.
Komac, China's aircraft company, which a lot of people in the West don't know because it has only so far built planes for Chinese carriers. But the thing to remember is that Chinese carriers have become major purchasers of Western aircraft. Most of the aircraft flown by the big three Chinese airlines are you know, Boeing or air Bus, and however a big percentage of the order books for these American
and European companies come from Chinese airlines. Now China has decided it wants to be a player in the aircraft business. It feels like, why are they giving all this money to the West. They want to take that doopoly and make it into a triopoly, and that has got to be a frightening thing for Boeing especially.
Can they pull that off outside of China in that wood regulators in the US and Europe well foreseeably approve.
That's the question. And part of that is, you know, safety issue. Part of that is just engineering issue, and part of that is a political issue, you know, in the sense that you know, can China build an aircraft that flies? I mean they're doing it now, I mean the doing it for Chinese airlines, and they finally have gotten non Chinese airline though it's to bed air you know.
That's but then they are also marketing it now to Western aircraft and they will find some sales there, but the issue becomes one of whether they want to take more of their own cares and sort of persuade them to buy Chinese and if they do that, that takes away a lot of the sort of extra stuff in the art books of the Western aircraft makers.
Are Thanks to Bloomberg businesswek Assistant Managing editor Jim Alis. You can read this story and more out on newsstands now, on the Bloomberg terminal or at Bloomberg dot com.
Slash BusinessWeek coming up, how global companies are fighting for the world's most critical technology, Navigating the chip boards with Chris Miller, author of a book by the same name.
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All Right news this past week, the Pentagon pulling out of a plan to spend as much as two and a half billion dollars on a chip grant to Intel. This is Chinese Premier Lee Chiong made the rounds of China's top AI and chip equipment firms over in China, calling for accelerating investments in those areas. The back and forth continued. We should point out Intel still gets money from the government under the Chips Act. But things are changing a little bit.
Yeah, they certainly are. And then last week the US government pressed allies to further titan restrictions on China's access to semiconductor technology. Always a lot going on in the semiconductor space, you can count on that. And so we recently caught up again with Chris Miller, Associate Professor of International History at Tufts University.
Timmy always remind us Chris was way ahead of the curve when it comes to the global battle in the chip space. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Chip War, The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology. The book came out in twenty twenty two. We began our conversation with Chris, like most do these days, on the growth of artificial intelligence and why chips semiconductors serve such a critical role.
AI has really transformed the ship industry. It's the key demand driver going forward, and the big question hanging over AI is when will we start to see large scale modernization, How soon will that happen, and at what's scaled? Because ultimately, the reason why all the hyperscalers are investing tens of billions of dollars and building up AI infrastructure and buying lots of video GPUs is because they believe there's money that will be made at the end of this process.
And that's why questions like well, how much does Microsoft makeoff copilot or what does open AI's revenue look like? These are the key indicators that investors are looking at to assess what will be the implication of AI for corporate profits.
Well, Chris, how do you distinguish between the names and the space? You've got the once giants or leaders. I'm thinking of Intel, Texas Instruments, the new leaders, Nvidia, AMD has come so far, the company that seems to stand alone, TSMC, the semic and depwork companies, the equipment makers, Like, how do you distinguish How should the Bloomberg audience be thinking about a space that's got a lot of different names in them.
Well, the good news is that as AI advances you actually need more types of chips in larger quantities to take advantage. It's not just the AI processors that you need that in Vidia produces. It's also more memory, especially the high bandwidth memory produced by companies like Skahi x or Examsung. And you also end up needing more mixed signal and analog chips because these are the chips that collect the data that's then being processed by AI systems
and semi autonomous cars, for example. So that's why the boom and AI has benefited most companies in the industry, even if they're not directly producing the GPUs that are at the center of AI. And it's also why it's not just the chip designers themselves, it's also the tool makers from ASML to apply materials that are benefiting as
chip making companies buy even more tools. But ultimately all of these do depend on their end customers continuing to invest in more and more semi conductors, and that's where the capital expenditure decisions of the big tech firms Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others will be e to sustaining this level of investment going forward.
Chris, I want to go back to monetization and I'm so glad you brought it up, because it's something that we talk about a lot. We understand the beneficiaries on the chip side of AI, but at the same time, we do see company stocks near all time highs for companies investing in this type of technology, including meta platforms,
Microsoft on the private side, Open ai, and others. What are the indications to you that we are seeing monetization at this point and when, in your opinion, do you think we're going to start seeing real efficiencies as the result of AI.
Well, I think the news is that if you look across a much broader cross section of companies take the four to five hundred in aggregate, most companies on that list are at least exploring ways that they can use AI, either to refine their products or to drive down costs.
And so the key it's not going to be I don't think any individual company or even any individual sector it's going to be and many different sectors learn to apply AI for many different use cases and that makes it harder to measure, but it also makes AI probably more sustainable in the long run if it's not one or two killer applications, but rather a lot of uses that end up being a creative either to company's profits
or to driving down their costs. But for investors looking at this base trying to understand how real is this and how sustainable is the investment, it means you've got to look at a much broader cross section of companies to ascertain where is AI actually gaining traction and how.
Do you roll into something like you know, Apple's making tips, Microsoft alphabet Google. Right, I think it's just kind of getting crowded, you know, more crowded if you will. I mean, how do you roll those guys into the already established players. Do you see them in the near future or in the longer term as being really pretty formidable in this industry?
Well, I think they are in some ways already competitors to companies like AMD or in Vidia and companies that
are big enough to have scale. The data center business like those that you mentioned, have a strong incentive to design their own ships, both because they can own their design so that they specifically match the workloads that those companies are running the data centers, but also because the more choice they have both in house design ships and externally designed ships, the more pricing power they hope they can win Visa be their biggest suppliers companies like in
Nvidia for example, and so there's a market rationale as well as the technical rationale for companies to design their own in house ships. And what we've seen that, as you said, as a trend where almost every big tech company is now designing not just often once for themselves, but multiple different types of chips for their own data center efforts.
We want to move on to the actual chip war, which is what your book was all about, because we feel like it just is picking up tensions. But before we do, which among the semiconductor companies that are out there do you find most interesting that you think we must I think about the investing audience. Bloombrick must always keep on your radar.
We know a lot of people who are only paying attention to the space and alongside the rest of the tech sector, don't often focus enough on the tool makers, the companies that make the tools that make the chips possible.
But if you look at the extraordinary growth and the industry over the past several years, it's not just the chip designers like in Video or AMD, it's also the companies that produce the tools, ASML or Land research or applied materials that are benefiting just as much from a lot of the growth in this industry.
The US China battle for tech supremacy, chips are certainly at the top of the list AMD hitting roadblock because of US rules. Take a step back and just give us your impression about why the US is now pressing allies to make sure that China doesn't get its hands on certain types of chips, Like big picture, what's worst case scenario here? Like why does the US and its allies want to keep China from getting this technology?
The US strategy, I think is pretty straightforward, and the dilemma of the US faces is this, by any metric, China will quantitatively outproduce the US in terms of military systems, whether it's ships or missiles or drones. China already has more and it will have even more of a quantitative
edge in the future. And so the US is hoping it can retain its qualitative edge in terms of defense and intelligence systems by applying advanced computing and AI to defense, and doing so requires having better advanced computing and better AI than China. And that's at the core of what
the US is trying to accomplish here. It's laser focused on AI chips and the machines that are capable of making cutting AGI chip with the aim of restraining the growth of China to AI, something keeping a technological edge that the United States have had for the past several decades.
With that in mind, and I keep thinking about TSMC, you know, the ultimate fabricator. I mean, people can design chips, but ultimately they go to TSMC to make them and spit them out. How critical is it for the United States or other countries, you know, to back off of their dependency on TSMC.
Well, I think you see a lot of interest in the US and Europe and Japan and elsewhere to have a more diversified manufacturing footprint, which is partly why TSMC is building new plants in the US, in Japan and in Germany. But the reality is that when it comes to AI processors in particular, like the GPUs that in video makes, almost all of them are manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan. So thus far we haven't actually seen much diversification at least when it comes to these ultra cutting edge chips.
So how critical is it for the US to reduce that dependency.
Well, I think you see that the United States spending a fair amount of money trying that Chips Act is going to spend forty billion dollars precisely on incentivizing firms to build factories in the United States, and Japan and Europe are doing the same thing.
Does it go far enough here in the US because we have seen some prominent players pull back on and scale back on some of these plans in the US.
Well, I think it's never going to be easy to see supply chains shift in a big way over a short period of time. The chip supply chain and the role of SMC was built up over many decades, and so it's just implausible to imagine the shift is going
to happen quickly. And it's not going to happen quickly, both because it's hard and slow, but also because the reason TSMC has such an entrenched position is because its economies of scale have given it a technological edge, and so it's not just about any individual type of technology
or subjody for any individual factory. It's the entire business model that gives a TSMC its position, and that's why the SMC is going to be very hard for any of its competitors to dislide the top of the foundry market. And why I really think most of the industry is expecting t SEC to remain the dominant player for a very long time to come.
Is it realistic to think that if the US is successful in cutting off this technology to China, that China will not develop this on its own. I mean, after all, last August we got the news that in this Huawei phone there was a chip developed that was more than a generation ahead of where the US had sought to halt China's progress.
Well, I think China is no doubt going to try to keep developing. It's both the microductor and its AI capabilities, and there are a very large number of very well trained, intelligent people in the country who are going to be focused on this effort. I think the question is really what's the technological gap between, for example, the tips that can be made in Taiwan and the tips that can
be made in China. And what you find if you look closely, is that for certain types of chip that gap has closed someone but there still at least four year gap, maybe a five year gap between theating edge Taiwanese capability than the most advanced capabilities today in China,
and we'll see if China can close that further. But the US is trying to prevent that, both by incentivizing it companies to race forward technologically via the tip back than other R and D funts, but also by making it harder and harder for China access cutting edge chip making tools.
Chris, forgive me if I sound naive. I mean the stakes I understand as you lay it out very high. We know we've been reporting all the stories for countries, for companies right this tech battle for supremacy. Why does it have to be a fight? Why is it a fight?
Well, the first ships that were invented were emerged essentially for use in guiding nuclear missiles more accurately, and since then, militaries and intelligence apties have seen computing as core to
their ability to produce next generation systems. And at a time when you see every major defense ministry, whether it's in Beijing or in Washington or Tokyo, anywhere on the world, they're all right now trying to deploy AI to military systems to make them more capable, more efficient, more accurate. And this means that AI is not only going to
be powering systems like CHATGPT. It's also to be use in military and intelligence cases as well, and that is a sphere where there's a really severere competition right now between China and the United States.
You're also a consultant for several different firms or in depth several different capacities. I should know what's the number one question you get from executives at the companies you work with.
The key question companies are asking is both what's next in Beijing and also what's next in Washington in terms of the types of regulation that we're going to see either from Congress or from the next presidential administration.
That was Chris Miller, Associate Professor of International history at Tufts University. His book Chip War, The Fight for the World's most Critical Technology.
All right, speaking of battles, up next, what one individual says is our biggest fight? A former owner of the La Dodgers and longtime businessman, Frank McCourt Junior on reclaiming liberty, humanity, and dignity in the digital age.
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Carol.
I've been doing this thought experiment lately. It's a very informal poll, it's anecdotal. So what I do is I ask parents who have teenagers, neighbors, colleagues about a proposed TikTok ban, and I've heard the same thing from all of them. I hope this thing goes through. My kids spends way too much time on TikTok.
That's amazing, So they're definitely in favor of a band well, Tim. The option could be on the table after the US House of Representatives pass to bill this past week to ban TikTok in the US unless it's Chinese owner sells the video sharing app. In response, China called on the US to stop unreasonably suppressing TikTok.
It's not just TikTok that has its critics. People have a fraught relationship with all different types of technology. Think about it, hardware, software, apps, you name it.
So how did we get here? While thinking a lot about this and on a solution to technologies grip on everything we do in the data controls is Frank McCourt, junior, Chairman of McCourt Global, a company with interest in real estate, sports, technology, media and more. Frank also the founder and executive chairman of Project Liberty, which in its own words, is advancing the responsible development of the Internet of tomorrow, designed and governed for the common good.
Frank Mcott Junior also the author of the new book Our Biggest Fight Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity and Dignity in the Digital Age. We began by asking how this former owner and chairman of the La Dodgers, owner of a French football club, who worked in construction, real estate technology, went on to spend so much money and time fighting the Internet as we know it.
So I wrote Our Biggest Fight to really shine light on Project Liberty, which is a five hundred million dollar initiative to reimagine how the Internet works and you know, and really take back control of our data, which I would say is really our personhood in this digital era from the kind of the machines of big tech.
Right, Who're the machines?
We are connected to the Internet by an IP address, so let's start right there. Okay, the Internet is not you and I connected, it's our device connected. It was built to connect devices, machines, and that's how the Internet came into being. And then thirty five years ago Tim Bernersley created the World Wide Web that was to connect data. We have never been connected as people on the Internet.
So what I put forward in the book is now knowing how powerful the Internet is and how dependent we are on it, and how everything we do virtually is digitized, we need an Internet where we're in charge, or we're owning, in control, so to speak, our data, and we reclaim that personhood.
Well safe to say we didn't know we were giving it up, right, We just thought, Wow, this is a really cool thing, and look at all the things we can do. And many would argue right at the same time that the Internet and that connectivity has allowed us to do so much more and learn so much more about the other. But then there's the dark side and bad side to it. Can we kind of regain our digital identity? Can we go back? Yeah?
We must, we can, and we must, And I do want to focus on something first before I get to that solution and so forth, and I do think we are learning more and more about the harms, right, We hear them every day and.
We talk about it all the time, and it's.
Just going to get worse. As a generative AI enters the picture, because a broken technology made more powerful will just make the problems worse. But I want to just highlight one thing you said, you know, there are a lot of good things and then some bad things. I hear that a lot that we kind of somehow think of this tech anology differently than we would think of For instance, let's say we were sitting here and some
municipality had a water system. They're putting water in a million homes, and you were reporting that four hundred thousand of those homes were getting toxic water, that we're making the household sick and killing some kids.
Okay, would we sit.
Here and say, well, yeah, but it's putting clean water in six hundred thousand homes, So kind of on bound? Why are we so tolerant of the harms of technology? Look at the Internet is ours, it's our data. We should be in charge. Why would we want machines to drag us into a future we don't want. Let's just take them inute fix it and then make it more powerful. And we fix it by putting individuals in control. I'm happy to talk about.
So in this case, in this analogy, what's the toxic water? What are the harms being done?
So?
Yeah, so where to begin? Right, So let's think of about this. Let's think about it this way. Okay, I'm the head of the postal service, and I come to you and say I have an idea I'm going to give you. I'm gonna I'm gonna deliver your mail no stamps for free, So no more stamps. So you say, okay, I'm gonna listen. Maybe I'd be a little bit suspicious, but i'd listen. Then I'd say, okay, here's the deal.
I'm gonna put cameras in every one of your homes, every one of the rooms in your house, in your car, in your workplace, and so forth, and I'm just going to surveil you twenty four to seven. You kind of be creeped out by that, right, and then say, well, yeah, but it's free. And then I say one more thing. I'm going to open your mail. I'm going to read it, and everything I learn is now mine. Okay, your relationships,
your ideas everything else. And then you say, well that's I would never Why would I do that?
That okay?
And yeah, okay. Then I say, well we do it.
Well, one other thing. I'm going to read your thirteen year old daughter's diary and now I'm and I'm gonna learn she's a little concerned about her weight. She's thirteen, she's insecure, a little vulnerable. I've got some stuff I want to sell her, and I'm going to profit from her insecurities.
It's sick.
It's not something we should be putting up with. And so my point is that we have a decentralized internet, something that Tim Bernersley wrote a letter. He said, I created something that was decentralized, that was intended to empower human beings, you know, the proverbial tie that lifts all boats, and it became something very centralized. And these big apps are scraping our data and they're applying algorithms and they're doing things with it that are not good for society.
You're obviously so passionate about this, and I've got to ask do you have any sort of dog in the fight here? Like, is there do you have any sort of financial interest in creating a more open internet.
I hope that our tech people will eventually build things in this new world, like with millions of other people. But our focus right now has been to put forward a piece of infrastructure, like digital infrastructure. We'll call it a protocol level piece called DSNP, which we've gifted to the world. It's basically like Tim Bernersley gifted HGTP. No one should own the Internet or own our relationships. That's the point we're trying to make here, and then we
can all build on it. I would also add that we need to be creating a commercial ecosystem here that people will build on or all. This just is a nice idea that will never happen because these are huge, huge platforms. So I think, you know, we're sitting back and I'm seeing and feeling the same things that you all are about. Something's wrong. We're seeing the harms to kids, We're seeing our information ecosystem is completely contaminated. We're seeing
democracy struggle. So we need to fix this. And so normally you go to these big tech CEOs and say, the problems are obvious, We've had hearings, have to hearing fix it. They haven't and they're not incentivized to fix it in the pre digital world. Then you go to your elected officials, you know, you go to Congress and say, look at the harms. You need to regulate this or have some new policies. We've see now for several years
it's theater. Right, people show up, there's these big hearings, and Zuckerberg and the rest show up, and then nothing happens. Why our politics is impacted by this very same technology that just polarizes everybody and causes that paralysis.
Well, that's it feels like that. I mean, it feels like every opportunity for a lawmaker to do something outrageous is an opportunity of them to create a click and raise money.
Well, the whole thing that's going on with TikTok, I keep asking the question is it politics or policy that people are concerned about? And it just feels like people aren't concerned about politically what they can say and how it looks. TikTok ban. Should we ban it?
Well, TikTok for sure is a problem for two reasons. One is again this surveillance aspect of it, where it's collecting all of our information and in TikTok's case, exporting it. The Chinese Communist Party has all this information on all
of US American citizens. Of course that shouldn't happen. But the other point I want to make is the model of this extractive, exploitive, predatory technology where we're being essentially surveiled and our information is being scraped, is the same model that American apps are using, such as such as Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and Google and Amazon and so forth. It's all about our social graph, which is
essentially all of our personal data. And that doesn't just mean where we shop or buy shoes, it's everything.
Mark Zuckerberg has talked about this for years. He's used that term publicly, the social graph. I mean, he tried to get it sort of an iteration of it to take off in the Facebook news feed gosh back in like twenty twelve.
But how do you get away from it even in the platform that you are offering up, Because in a digital world, doesn't something live somewhere always?
So yeah, that's a great, a great question. First of all, I'm not offering up a platform. I'm offering up a roadmap. And the title of the book is not my biggest fight, it's our biggest fight. This is not going to happen unless we bring really millions of people into this conversation. And so what we're suggesting is we have a problem with the infrastrucure. Look, I'm a fifth generation builder. We build infrastructure.
We have an.
Infrastructure or engineering problem that we can fix and then build great stuff on it. But if we don't fix the tech, we're going to continually be spending all of our time and precious tax money and resources and so forth on putting out these fires and mitigating damage. Why not just fix the problem and then go start solving the other problems that the Americans want to see solved.
So we need now not just to have a tech project, and Project Liberty is also a project that brings in civil society and brings in social scientists so that the next generation of the Internet is not just designed by technologists.
Do you think this problem can be solved with the free market alone or the government needs to get involved?
Another great question. I think we can definitely solve the tech problem with the free market alone, and we can build out the new let's call it the improved in channel.
And that's a David and Goliath story, because you're talking about a startup essentially going against the biggest companies in the world.
I like our chances if it's millions of people getting involved here. I don't like our chances if it's a little if it's an a David against a Goliath story, I don't like our chances. If it's a million Davids against the Golias. We will change this, and so I think this all can be changed eventually, once people see that there's an alternative to this, it doesn't have to be this way. Then I think the government will step in because they'll have to to make sure they facilitate that.
Tell us what you would like to leave our audience.
With, socialize this issue. Talk about this issue. I know there are millions of people out there seeing and feeling the same thing I am and you are, and so let's get it to the kitchen table. Let's get it to the sideline of the soccer game for the kids soccer game. Let's get it to the school board and to the parents in school. So let's talk about it
after church. Let's socialize this issue, because I think we're going to find that millions and millions of people once they realize how their data is being used and how it's being turned to hurt them and harm them and harm their kids. They're going to be outraged.
Our thanks to Frank mccot, junior chairman of McCourt, Global founder and executive chairman of Project Liberty, his new book, Our Biggest Fight, Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age. Catch the full conversation on our podcast feed at Bloomberg dot com.
And that wraps up our first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio Head. In our next hour, we talk luxury from fine lines to mighty fine and expensive South Florida real estate.
Plus speaking of fine flying privately courtesy of the president and CEO of Sentient Jet, how it's going, and what he makes of some of the blowback against some celebs and others flying private jets quite a bit, you know. Taylor Swift gets a lot of flak for this.
Yeah, but she's not alone, not alone, all right.
This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Tim Stenebeck and I'm Carol Masser.
Stay with us, everyone, Today's top stories in global business headlines coming up.
Right now, you're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including buying into Florida's luxury real estate market. What's hot and who's buying and how much they're spending.
Yeah, and also if you want to get to that pricey Florida real estate, Carol, you're gonna need to jump on a plane, perhaps if you're not there, maybe even a private jet. We're gonna talk private aviation with the president and CEO of Sentient Jet, Andrew Collins. We'll hear from him in just a moment.
Plus fun for me, fun for both of us as we went deep into the world of wine with Line and Spirits magazine editor in chief Josh Green. And guess what everyone younger generation drink and wine not so much?
Yeah. First up this hour, the you surprivate jets skyrocketed during the COVID pandemic as wealthy people look to limit exposure to public spaces, and airlines curtailed services on many routes. Demand, however, slowed in twenty twenty three as economic uncertainty sparked concern and carriers began restoring schedules back to pre pandemic levels.
All right, So for checking how the industry is faring the outlook for the year, we checked in again with Andrew Collins, president CEO of Sention Jet and co CEO of the parent company, Flexjet. You got right to it by talking about demand.
If you look at it from a fractional ownership standpoint, there was a lot of selling that happened and a lot of pent up hours that happened. So we just have the most flying we've ever had in company history over President Day weekend.
Right.
If you look at it from a jet card standpoint, which is Sentient Jet, we did see it kind of start to soften, and in the on demand market it's really getting back to kind of a it's still growth over twenty nineteen, and you're still seeing some of the people retain from the pandemic, but it isn't like twenty one and twenty two where I think everybody was running around with.
Their hair on dig into that demand over President's Day holiday where their deals Like, I don't know how you met it was industry, So what was it all about?
No, it's it's you know, I'll tell you what. In twenty one and twenty two, it was long hours, long days, and every day felt like what we call a peak day. It just felt like everybody wanted to fly persistently. It used to be that like a Monday or a Tuesday or you know, you get a break. There was not a lot of breaks. Now what's happening is you're having high concentration days. And so in the fractional world, when somebody buys for a five year time horizon into an aircraft,
they've bought the hours they're going to use that. So the owner demand for that spikes on certain days, and so collectively we've we've got the most hours under management we've ever had at a company. And it unlocked on President's station.
How much as an inventory those hours? Like I'm always curious, like do you guys look at that of like, Okay, this is stuff that people have paid for, have to spend and use.
Yeah, No, it's actually one of the main major keeps in our business. It's called hours under management, and you have to look at it by product, by aircraft, and you have to think about it. And that's how you do your demand, your demand shaping, how you think about capacity planning and everything else.
How much visibility does it give you right now?
It gives me very good visibility. Like the forward looks really.
Good, twelve months, still good, twenty four months.
Depends on how our year goes. From a selling standpoint.
Interesting pilots having trouble getting pilots.
No, I think the challenge for us. So we probably hired four hundred pilots at the flexjet level in twenty three. We'll do the same this year. I think what you have to think about is number one, we actually try to hire the best of the best pilots. We don't look for just any pilot, right.
So, where are they coming from? Are they coming from regional carriers? Are they retiring from No.
They could be coming from a competitor, They could be coming from a regional carrier, they could be coming out of the military. Okay, But what we found is you want to make sure that if you're hiring somebody, you're hiring on a track where they're going to stay through three years. They stay through three years, they're in for a career. We want it to be a career destination.
We do find that. Excuse me, we're actually competing more with commercial airlines than we are any other competitor because the commercial airlines are really putting out large sums of money and large capes.
They're unionized, and they're unionized.
But what people forget is the history of commercial right where there's furloughs and things happen, and so you know, and so so it looks very rosy right now. I think we've got a pretty methodical plan and a pretty good destination for you as a career type. So yeah, we've we've put a lot of money into recruiting our pilots.
It was an ideal pilot in terms of age and hours that they've already got.
So you want somebody that's got the time and type. You want somebody that's experienced. You want somebody that has at least a minimum of three thousand hours. You know, he really has. Like we actually increased it recently as opposed to decrease it. Most people are decreasing it. That's why I wanted to ask you percent And that's actually a good bell weather for us. That just shows you the strength of who we are. We're trying not to fall into the trap of, you know, recruit at all costs.
We're trying to get the best of the best.
Can you remind us on pricing, give us an idea of like if somebody wants to take a trip and have you up in the last roe so.
Like my mother, So I let me speak to it at the card level, because that's that's where I had a lot of experience. At the end of the day during the surge, when everybody wanted it, we the market would bear anything, right, and for us, we had to keep up with the market and keep pace and make sure we were living up to the consumer promise. So we had to augment pricing. So we augmented pricing probably
by thirty five percent. It's the biggest jump I've ever seen and we've kept it there and the market is bearing it. It's it's our cell through is probably about ten to fifteen percent less than what we were doing, but we're very happy with the clients we bring in.
Got it.
Hey, I want to talk sustainability A little bit, because sustainable is not something you think of when you think about private air traps.
And I'm going to tell you we're going to get a million of emails of people like you're talking private jets sustainability.
Come on, you're burning dead Donalds.
Come on, I'm happy to do it. It's my favorite topic.
Are you following Elon's jet or.
Yeah, I know all about it.
Seriously, how do you think about it?
I mean, you guys hit a milestone recently, but it's carbon offsets, right.
No, it's more than carbon offsets. You want to do full emissions. So this is the big mistake that people make in our industry, and we're trying to actually lead the pack. So we do three hundred percent offsetting and it's built into the pricing. It is no cost to the consumer. This is a choice we made three and a half years ago, and even during the time when we had to pay operators lots of money during the surge and really think about things, we never wavered on this.
This is really important to us. You do a full emissions offset, it's not just doing carbon you know, a carbon offset, you're getting water, vapors, aerosols, you know, every imprint that you possibly can. You're factoring that in, and we work with a partner who's gone through and certified a lot of different projects to help us with this, plus registering our offsets and everything else. So it's really
important to us. We've probably offset about one point three one point four million metric tons of carbon DIX set at this point, and we're going to keep going and we've got millions earmarked for it. We need to get to a world of sustainable aviation fuel and we need to get this electric kind of world to happen, and it's going to happen further out than we hoped ten seconds.
How quickly can we get there?
Seven years?
Seven years?
Yeah, it used to be five. Everybody would say five. I think mass consumer, mass passenger. You'll see some hybrids, but I think it's about five to seven years minimum.
That was Sentient Jet president and CEO Andrew Collins, also the co CEO of parent company, flex Jet, And that's what's going on with the exclusive world of private flying and Carol speaking of the luxury world, Yeah, I guess you could say we're going to get another check on it, specifically South Florida real estate and how well it's doing.
Yeah.
Case in point, remember we just we recently talked about it was a Wall Street Journal story. It was about one hundred and twenty million dollar ocean front penhouse in Miami Beach, said to be in contract for north of one hundred and twenty million.
It's so expensive.
Yeah, if you have to ask, what did we say? Yeah, tenaford some that would make it the most expensive condo medium ever sold in the Miami area. This according to people familiar with the deal. The previous record was half that price. This is again according to the journals reporting.
Okay, the migration down south to Florida, it's not anything new. We've reported on all the financial folks heading to Florida. Citadel's Ken Griffin and others now calling South Florida home and pushing up demand and prices of commercial and residential real estate as a result.
And so with all this in mind, we spoke at Dinette Golden Tayer, executive director of sales over at Douglas Element. She joined us from Miami and says, well, the season definitely busy.
Our market, as they say, is calliente and there is no sign of a slow down for the ten.
Million plus marketplace this time.
Last year, we in fact had a much slower high season, high season being defined as the months of December, January, February, March April, when the snowbirds will want to be here. And this year we're having the type of high season that we had hopes for last year, which is pending sales almost every other day for high quality assets that are appropriately priced.
Who are the buyers right now and how are they buying? Are these all cash buyers? Where are they coming from? Give us insight there, They're.
The usual suspects. They are coming from New York, from other Northeastern states, They're coming from California and other Western states, and they're coming from Canada. The European buyer has slowly trickled back into the marketplace post COVID, but they're not as strong as they were in prior years.
What about buyers from Asia and buyers from Russia.
No, and no, And the buyers that I'm working with are not getting mortgages, or at least the deals are not finance contingent.
What's a typical deal on the high end of Miami. You used ten million dollars as a price point. Is that kind of the median give us an idea, because I know that they can go a lot higher, especially if you do something like Indian Creek Village, which Bloomberg has written about as being a place where millions don't matter. It's all about billions and billionaires.
Ten billion gets you a nice condo, It gets you a nice house, a very nice house, not in the water, an average house on the water. Twenty million is where it's at if you want something better than nice and my twenty million plus product. I have the shortest days
on market than any other sector that I represent. In fact, it takes me longer to sell properties five to fifteen million than homes that are over twenty million, where I average about one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty days on market.
Do you know who's selling right now, who doesn't want to be there, and who wants to sell for these prices?
Sure?
I mean that is a broad question because people selling don't necessarily not want to be in Miami. They may be expanding their family, or they may be going through a divorce. A lot of the people that for whom I sell, or they are staying locally, just in a different asset class like downsizing or upsizing, or moving from a house to a condo or vice versa.
You know two was asking earlier Diana about who's doing the buying, and we've talked. Do you know Bloomberg has done a lot of reporting about kind of Wall Street South and the amount of financial folks that I've moved down there, not only to live or buy a second home, but to actually set up shop and do work, and that has certainly had an impact on the Eric. Give us little bit more color if you can around what you were seeing on that front specifically. Is the pace continuing,
is it picking up? Is it slowing down at all?
I think if we compare the pace to the COVID times, it will always feel like a slowdown. Now Miami and Miami Beach, where I specifically focus on, has found a new rhythm. We continue to have an influx of the Wall Street types and other financiers from around the country.
They are still taking prime positions at the schools for their children and the top reservations in town because we have pretty much the same restaurants that New York City does, if not better right now, so the pace is healthy, It's just not a COVID pace, and to compare it to that would always look like we're in the run.
What about folks with backgrounds in crypto right now, especially given the rise in crypto that we've seen last year and in recent months.
I'm glad you bring it up, because crypto certainly had a great couple of weeks. But I have not seen the complete return of the crypto bros. And in fact, when I did work with that fire class, they always paid cash.
Well, yeah, but cash is cash, Yeah, got it, Yeah, no problem here, easy close, quick closed.
But I haven't gotten a few calls lately asking if a seller would take crypto, so it is starting to come back as a subject point.
Yeah, and I guess I was more interested in just the crypto Bros part of it. But I'm surprised that you know, you haven't seen the return of crypto Bros Completely that we saw a couple of years ago.
No, and even you know, they're already down here, they've already established residency. So if they're going to be perhaps upgrading because they're Crypto's high great, I'm excited to work with them again. But they're not the conversation at the height of the topics that are being discussed around town.
That was Dina Golden Tayer, executive director of Sales at Douglas Ellman.
You're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Coming up, we talked wine, We sample wine with the editor in chief of Wine in Spirits magazine.
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At the beginning of each year, Wine in Spirits polls what it considers the best restaurants all over the US to get a better understanding of where the wine industry is and where it's going. Things such as the most popular wines at that given time and more.
The results of the poll they're not out yet, but we did get a little sneak peek with Wine and Spirits magazine editor in chief Josh Green. He joined us in the Bloomberg Studio, where he started out by giving an overview of challenges facing the wine industry.
Things are a bit of a struggle in the wine industry right now. In fact, I think that the supply issues never really balanced out, and that in addition to a lot of changing demographic trends, have really hit the
industry pretty hard this past year. We saw it in our poll and we also saw it in some data that was just released by SIP Source, which is part of WSWA, the Wine Spirits Wholesaler Association, where they look at polesalar depletions and in year over year twenty two to twenty three, volume was down by eight point one percent. And Nielsen, I.
Think story was taken down because of a lot of how.
Many it's really people don't really know exactly what. I don't think people know exactly what's going on. I think that people say that young people are drinking less. Whether young people want to be drinking less or just simply can't afford to be drinking at the prices that wine costs now is another question, and that's something.
Dollars bottle of wine they're great. Twenty dollars bottles of wine they're great, they're grete. Twelve dollars bottles are one.
Yeah, exactly.
I think there's no We've talked about this a lot, but there's no question that the younger demographic is not drinking at the same rate that previous demographics were. Athletic brewing, you know, the non alcoholic year Love, which they are the top selling beer at Whole Foods right now, including all the alcohol inclusive beers too. So I think that speaks to sort of a changing shift and how consumers are thinking about it. But it's interesting to hear that about Whine too well.
And in our poll, what we did this year was quite different from how we've done it in the past, because I think polling has really radically changed across the board. I mean, I just heard something on the news this morning about how respondents used to be like seventy percent of polls and now it's one percent if you're lucky, So you think it might be some issues with the data, not with no what I'm saying is that we did
it completely differently this year. So what we did was we called we literally called an interview to one hundred people, and we selected who were going to call, and we had twelve people on the team doing it, and we asked them all the same questions right down the line, and so we gathered the information differently than we have in the past, which was having people fill out a form in the past, and so it's it's less data than we've had in the past, but it's a very
different We're asking very different questions.
More nuanced or more do you feel like, more specific in terms of the way you guys did.
It, it's more it's more nuanced. And it's also that we were able to do a lot of follow up questions with people on the spot, you know, when people would tell us that they were that they were moving in this direction or that direction, that we could really then pin them down to why and what was what that was about. And it really what what was fascinating to us is that it filled it mirrored exactly what
you're talking about, Tim with. I mean, we heard so much about non alcoholic wine and non alcoholic cocktails, which we've never heard about before in our polls. Ever.
Yeah, a lot of people who are doing tasting menus with pairings would traditionally do like they've now turned to doing a tasting menu and a vegan tasting menu or a or vegetarian tasting menu. Plus they've turned to doing alcoholic pairings and non alcoholic pairings. And I'm just trying to find that I think it was Stephen Schaeffer at MAGO in Oakland. He said that they sold the same number of non alcoholic pairings as alcoholic pairings for them all.
That's so surprising. That was a quick shift completely.
What does it mean for the wine industry.
It means it's going to be a lot of soul searching and there's going to be a lot of change and what to me, what's interesting about the results of the poll this year is that we spoke with the really creative leaders of you know, the people who are trying to find ways to connect with their guests about what they want to be drinking. And so we heard a lot about what these creative wine directors are doing to deal with this trend of people drinking less and
the volume is down. I haven't seen numbers about the value. So the industry may not be hurt as badly on value as volume.
Meaning raising prices in order to compensate for lost volume, meaning that the wines that are selling not necessarily raising prices, but the wines that are selling are at a higher point price point than you know that there was a lot of wine being sold in this market at you know, there was two buck chuck right, and now now now people are looking at twelve dollars wine rather than tubuck chock.
It's funny, my husband who loves ra there's Josh there you go. I think would much rather have a bottle of really expensive or a nice, really nice bottle of wine, maybe less frequently versus maybe not as expensive and maybe not as good. I hate, I hate to do price and quality because I do think you can find some great inexpensive wines. But you know what I'm saying, like, make it an experience and be something.
I think people find a lot of value in that, in that experience, and I think that the industry is moving in that direction to provide experiences.
A lot of Yeah, a lot of younger people appreciate buying into an experience rather than just buying alcohol. So there's a lot of a lot of what's going on in the transitions in the industry are developing these kind of experiences for people.
And Josh and we want to talk a little bit more about kind of some of the trends that you're seeing. As we do this, we are going to have Stephen Schmitz is here with us, who came along with you and he's going to open up a bottle of wine for us so that we can sample a little bit. I think the first wine is a white wine from the Azors.
Okay, nice pronunciation.
How do you say it so that we all know?
Well, in the United States we say as but in Portugal would say.
That was not trouble.
Is that one of the trends that we're seeing in terms of wines that people are either asking for or restaurants are playing with. What are you saying?
So?
What the main trend that we saw in the.
Poll was that a lot of the leaders in the in the wine director industry, you know, the Samia industry, they are looking for alternatives to the big name wines and the high priced wines, and they're looking for legitimate alternatives to them because these are very A lot of the restaurants we poll are very high level restaurants with a lot of they're not inexpensive.
But one of the things we asked was what new category or region did you add this year that got the most traction on your list and the more people So thirteen out of one hundred people said Portugal that was the most of any region. That people respond, why is that well, many people said that it's because people are traveling there. Everybody's going to port So my parents are going to Portugal in a few weeks. Everybody's going to Portora.
So it used to be that the people would go to Tuscany come back and want to drink kiante, and now people are going to Portugal and coming back in wanting to drink Portuguese wine. And so this is a Portuguese wine that we brought, and this is like this killer wine. So we actually brought two wines from our top one
hundred event that we just did two weeks ago. In we say, so this is from the Azorsh and it's from a Rinto dais Orsh, which is a white grape, and the vines are more than one hundred years old, so it is very concentrated. Yeah, it's also in a place it's very windy, so that deepens the concentration of the wine even more because the wind is drying out the the grapes a bit. And it also has a lot of salinity because you get all of the ocean
spraying salt into the land there. Yeah, so really it's really good.
I really like this. I love this wine.
I'm not a huge fan of white wines. This is lovely.
What's what's the what's the varietal of this wine?
So the Vrietyl is a Rinto, but it's a Rento of the Azores. Okay, so this would be obviously much like crisper and finer if it's colder. But we like to show the wines at sort of cool room temperature so you can actually really taste them. And I think length on this wine is extraordinary.
Ah.
We also then seeing I'm assuming as people are traveling and bringing, you know, what they find overseas or in Portugal, that restaurants are responding in terms of expanding what's on the wine list a little bit.
Yes, the offerings.
So what was fascinating to me, Steve, and you can go ahead, and I know he's got another. We're going to move from white to red in a moment, So Steven's going to open up.
You've done with your white, We've done. We've pulled these restaurants for thirty five years. We've never heard a peep about Portugal, not like barely a mention in any description of wines that they were selling. And this year Hawksu kim at per Se was talking about it. Although some at La Berna, Dan was talking about it. Across the country, people were talking about it. Yeah, it was really surprising.
That's recognition. I mean, you're talking about your top restaurants.
Well, although although was saying that he has a wine called Kosh from a producer called Newport in the door and there's a wine that is made in a similar style to a white Burgundy, but it's obviously very different grapes and it's a very different climate, but it gives you the same It sort of scratches the same mitch as a white pergony would. And he poured it for a couple of collectors who had come in that don't know about Portugal wine at all.
They loved it. They wanted to buy a case of it. When they left, they were completely enthralled with it. Carol just poured the red.
The red. I just poured the red. We're going to pass it around. In terms of pricing, I mean, like I said to you, I have expanded my mind a bunch over the last.
Few years ago, but not all the way to tubuc Chuck.
No, not to two buck check. But in terms of talking to folks like you and others and really kind of learning in that I'd like to try things. And it's amazing the amount of variety that you can get in terms of the cost of wines. And just because it's less expensive doesn't mean it's a bad wine.
No, these two wines are not less expensive because they are from They are two of the best wines we.
Tasted last year. Don't spill in other so yes, so they do make a less expensive wine from Orientto and also from Verdeo that's beautiful as well, but it's not as concentrated and rich, and it's lighter and fresher, but it's from much younger vines, not one hundred year old one.
That's the real difference usually typically or.
What what you get with an older vine. I mean, it's interesting. I brought the magazine with me for you guys to look at after, and I have an article in here about old vines in Austria.
I talked a lot with people over there about what they're getting from old vine fruit that's different from younger vine fruit, and how they're sustaining their old vines to do that, and you get the concentration that you wouldn't otherwise get. You get a different maturation process during the growing season. So what Kathy Corson, We're drinking Kathy Corson's cabernet. Now, what she's done is she's sustained very old vines in Napo Valley. She is probably the oldest cabernet vines in
one block in Napo Bally seventy two. I think they were planted. And this is from her own other grapes and from some purchase grapes, but all in that same area.
That was Wine and Spirits Magazine editor in chief Josh Green.
All right, mister Stenovick, speaking of fine wine and dining, how about a sandwich to go with a nice bottle of wine.
You can pare anything with a bottle of wine, Carol. I don't care what people said.
I thought you're gonna say you could pair anything.
With You can't pare anything with a good sandwich. That's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried about people being like, Okay, you know you can't have this wine with this sandwich. Just eat the sandwich, Okay. Well, we've got the most sumptuous choices in London, along with the Rodeo that's changing lives for young black wranglers, Bloomberg Pursuits as straight Ahead on Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
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You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern not Apple Car Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business And you can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa, Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
All right, Tim skiing and Scandinavian. I would love to surprise, surprise, howbout a wild ride courtesy of the Bill Pikett Invitational Roadie.
I can ride horses. I could do this.
Okay, check check, and one thing I know is a slam dunk for you for sure.
Sandwiches say no more, Carol, the Key to My.
Heart eats one in the four o'clock hour of our show. Every day.
A Sandwich Day keeps the doctor a little live on the radio. Yes, I do well.
During a break, she's got a too quick before we get on air. All of this recently being covered by our Bloomberg Pursuits team, led by the Editor Pursuits, Chris Rouser and Chris Let's start with the Pursuit story on the best sandwiches found in and around London, courtesy of the top chefs there, and brought to us by none other than the food editor Pursuits Kate Creator, who also joins us from London. Kate, Hello, Hello, Hi, Hi.
Which is I hope you're reading a sandwich right now?
You know it depends on what your definition of a sandwich, which is Kate, because there's a lot of debate about this.
Well, you're speaking from the right place to have that debate, because in New York State, the Department of tax Station believes that really could have a buttered roll like anything, any piece of any kind of bread that has some at least some butter on it is a sandwich. And Bloomberg Pursuits says no to that.
By the way, going to guess it regulator, Where was a kid? I thought that was a sandwich? Chris, come on in on this. Kate does such great stuff? Love this? What did you want to know about sandwiches?
So we do this series periodically where Kate talks to top chefs in different locations, different cities, and she asks them what their favorite restaurants are, what their favorite pastries are, and she pitched doing the best Sandwiches in London a while ago, and it has been a long germinating story because there's a lot of sandwiches on this list. Agreed, and it actually we have to send people to take pictures of them, and it kept taking long time and
kept being like, Kate, this is a high priority. We need to know the best sandwiches in London. And I'm just thrilled it came out because they look extremely delicious.
I'm just going to tell you guys that I read this going home and it was like after eight I was starving and I'm like, oh my god, I just want them all. All right, So Kate tell us where we should start here.
Well, the thing that's cool and why you guys should come to London and broadcast the show from here is that London really is sandwich central. And you know, people talk about a sad dust lunch all the time, but the sandwiches here at places like Predamanjay and even sort of supermarket chains like Mark and Spencer are really good and they are i have to say, better than like
the average sandwich you would get in New York. And in fact, top chefs agree and we have we have a chef called Tamir Tnisia who picked a Tesco sandwich. Tesco is like a really like really supermarket chain, Like it's sort of like as all purpose as you can get. He picked a Coronation Chicken sandwich and it costs less than three three pounds, which is less than four bucks as his favorite sandwich, which I think is kind of fantastic.
DDE.
I wish you could see Tim's face as you were talking about how Tesco sandwich. You stand by this, right. You think these sandwiches, these like big chain sandwiches are legit.
It's super legit, like super legit. Although I will say I'm not. I am not going to Tesco to buy my sandwiches. I mean I could afford to do. It.
Is a pret sandwich in the UK different than a pret sandwich I get in New York City.
Yes, I'm going to say yes it is. And it's better the bread like they just I think they care more about it and the quality of the bread is better. There is more filling, the ingredients feel like they're better sourced. So if you have a tun A Mao sandwich here, I will put it side to side against the one that you get in New York and you will know you will agree that it's better.
Can I just go back to Coronation chickens. I didn't even know that there was a thing. This goes back to Queen.
Oh yeah, do your Queen Elizabeth the second. If you do some research on that, you'll know it would served to her like at her coronation. It's a sort of creamy chicken curry that has become a favorite sandwich on afternoon teas and then also a tesco and believe it or not, a couple of people here because it's also in everyone's budget, went went and did a taste test. Since the story came out, I know three people here who have gone to get it and confirm that it's a good sandwich eating.
I was so eating I would eat anything on her. But I will say it, I'm a little surprised to see some of the picks on here. I mean a poor boy, which is you know, traditionally a US like New Orleans type of thing. And then something from five guys like I agree.
I was like you guys, I am on here over, I am all over that five guys recommendation, because if you read about it, if you think about it. What they do is they use an inside out bun. So they take a bun and they griddle it. They griddle it inside out and it's flattered with mayonnaise before it's griddled, and then they like melt cheese all over. It's melted American cheese, and then you can put all the toppings on it. So I know when I first saw when I first saw that pick, I was a little I
thought that was sketchy. Doctors love it exactly, Oh zempic please.
But you know, the things that were really I thought most fun for me on this list were places with really funny British names, like the Dusty Knuckle.
That is an awesome also shown up on these on these roundups that we've done. It's also one of London's premiere bakeries, so it will be the first stop when you guys are here.
My favorite was the honey truffle and Parmesan pork schabata from the Black Pig.
I had it when I was there. My daughter and I shared it, sat on a curb, went over to Borough Market. I was it proud, unfreaking believable. It was yay, so good, so good, and the line, and they have such a system, right, Kate down, like they just you're in it, like you're just they just like manufacture it really quickly and it's yours, like it's just great.
There's always a line, but the line does move quickly and so so yeah, oh my god, Carol fin Aspic. Another thing that's fun on this list I like a lot is this Jamaican patty and cocoa bread, which comes from this great chef Dom Taylor, who has a very hot restaurant in the Langham Hotel. It's called the Good Front Room. And so usually people will eat one of these Jamaican patties, which is stuff with grummeter chicken just
by itself. But Dom Taylor, who comes from Jamaica, knows that, like the key move is to put it in cocoa bread and so and they do it at this place. And cocoa bread is a little bit it's got its name because it's flavored with coconut milk, so it's like puffy and pillowey and a little bit sweet and then you bite in two. I actually went to get one, and it's so good.
I'm making Tim's Tesco face.
Comes surfin Ter precisely.
Well, icily, we're gonna all go run up to the food court after this and be like, where this average is.
It's going to bring us some when.
You come in April. We love you, We love you. This is such a great real hug. All right, be well, food editor pursuits you bet joining us from London? All right? I am certainly certainly hungry. But I also know that there's one story we really wanted to talk to you, Tim, and I've read it. Tell us about this Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo that's been around for a while.
Yes, it is the only It was founded in nineteen eighty four, the world's only touring black rodeo. And it was founded by an event promoter, this guy lou Vasson, who had gone to a couple of rodeos and saw basically that there were no black people in either the audience or on the horses, and so he was like, I'm going to change that, and he founded this and he passed away recently, and his wife, Valeria Howard Cunningham is now the president and it's really taking off. It's
been sold out for the past two years. It's in twenty rodeos annually across seven states, and it's just this amazing, wild, fun rodeo for family kids all ages, as kids as young as six can ride and compete and win prizes, and it's just like a real cultural moment.
What I find so interesting about this, Chris, is that as you and the team right and the piece, black cowboys were very prominent in the nineteenth century. Up to twenty five percent of nineteenth century cowboys were black. Yet here we are in this world where they've essentially been ignored by pop culture, and by the start of the story, people don't understand that part of the story.
Yeah, it's been I mean it's basically been written out of Hollywood films, has been written out of popular literature, and some people, including Pharrell, are actually trying to bring
this back to the forefront. So Pharrell is now the creative director at Louis Vuitton, and he went to the Bill Pikett Invitational and he saw one of the writers and he got him to come to Paris and walk in his first show, his first runway show for Louis Vuitton, Kamal Miller, who and this kid was like, wait, what you want me to do?
What?
And Farrell showed him how to walk, and yeah, it was just this crazy thing.
And I like how they're kind of helping out a younger black generation too in this. I love the story and I agree with you. I feel like as we continue to realize the American history that we've known and loved, have realized how wrong a lot of it was, and so I thought that that fact, if you will, was pretty significant. This is our gift to Tim. We've got to do a little bit about skiing in Scandinavia.
Yeah, Tim, have you been skiing in Scandinavia.
I haven't been skiing in Scandinavia, but my understanding, I haven't even actually been skiing in Europe at all. Okay, and my understanding, I've been talking about this a lot actually with friends. Skiing in Europe is actually on a whole a lot cheaper than skiing in the United States. One challenge that they're dealing with, though, that we're also dealing with, is climate change and shorter ski seasons and
a lack of snow. And it turns out people are going to Scandinavia because well, the snow exists there.
Yeah, so right now, more than a quarter of ski resorts and the Alps are closed because the season's over. I can't believe that Austria had its shortest season every You remember last year there was like there were green slopes until January in Europe, and so more people are looking to go to Scandinavia. And because they're guaranteed longer winters, more snow, the terrain is not.
As like craggy and it's surprised. That helps.
That surprised me too.
Yeah.
You think, like you know, you're like near the North Pole, it's like super rugged, but it's not really the case.
Yeah, the resorts actually tend to be more in like central North Pole. I mean that's at the top.
Of the world.
It also helps if you've got an airport nearby or you actually have to get you there, you hold a minority stake in that airport to get people there.
Yeah, So we spoke to the owner of Stoton, which is a resort about six hours from Stockholm.
Their past sales are.
Up twenty two percent this year and that is in part because they recently opened an airport which has connecting flights from a lot of European cities, so it's a lot easier to get there and people are just considering it in a way that they hadn't before.
I met Arctic Circle when I said, we lost it. Yeah, come back, come back, I'm back.
We talk sandwiches again. Attention here, No, but it's really like amazing. I feel like you guys have been covering this just the changing because a climate change like it creates problems for some areas of the world and opportunities for others.
Chris.
Yeah, and there's a new resort opening for the twenty five slash twenty twenty six ski season, which you know they spent two billion corona on and it's part of a bigger network. Like people are really investing in this area as people in the Alps and other parts of Europe are kind of struggling to figure out what to do.
The reason I said Arctic Circle is because some of these some of these series do sit north of the Arctic Circle. That's pretty cool. Yes, that's true.
Yeah, and those ones are more mountainous, the ones that are further north with tougher train.
All right, we got to rap guys. That's gonna do it for this edition of Pursuits.
And that, of course is the editor of Pursuits, Chris Rowds are. Also a big thank you to Food editor of Pursuits Kate Craator, also joining us there on the Best Stand, which is from London.
Carol, it really was good sandwich. I wanted to go back my doors, like now we're gonna go.
Did you really split one?
Though? Yeah?
It was I would have gotten another one.
You would liked it, You would like it.
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