Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
This is the Bloomberg dayba qu At podcast. Good Morning is Wednesday, the eleventh of February. I'm Caroline Hepkeitt in London.
And I'm Stephen Carolin Brussels. Coming up today. At least nine victims are killed in one of Canada's deadliest school shootings, with the suspected perpetrator also dead.
The European Council President tells us that European Union leaders are finally ready to fully integrate their markets.
Plus a one trillion dollar flex, Polish companies expand into Western Europe with a focus on Germany. In an M and a boom.
Let's start with a roundup of our top stories.
A shooting at a school in the Canadian province of British Columbia has left eight people dead, including a woman who police believed to be the shooter. Authority say two more people were found dead at a nearby home. British Columbia Premier David eb told reporters that police officers reached the school within two minutes. He spoke at a press conference after the shooting.
It's hard to know what to say on a night like tonight. This is the kind of thing that feels like it happens in other places and not close to home in a way that this feels for so many British Columbians and Canadians.
David eb was speaking as police say they are not yet releasing the identity of the suspected attacker. In a statement on social media, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he was devastated by the mass shooting, which is Canada's deadliest since twenty twenty. Carney's office said he's suspending a planned trip to Germany for the Munich Security Conference.
The European Council president has told Bloomberg that the EU must review its powerful competition rules to boost the bloc's economy. Antonio Costa was speaking ahead of a gathering of EU leaders this week, which will focus on improving competitiveness as the region faces challenges from the United States and China.
We need to.
Look at our competition rules because it's clear that we need to at the same time protect our consumers to ensure a vibrant competition in lawer single market, but at the same time allow companies to scale up to be competitive in the global market.
The European Council president was speaking after the German and Italian government's warned you must act now on reforming its single market. In a paper circulated ahead of tomorrow's leaders meeting, they called, among other things, for the EU to loosen merger rules, allowing European companies to scale up and rival America's tech giants.
The European Parliament is moving closer to approving the ease trade deal with the United States. Senior lawmakers have agreed to back the deal ahead of a vote, but they've added a sunset clause to the pact, which was he'd expire in March twenty twenty eight, in an effort to force the US to lower its fifty percent tariff on steel and aluminium products. Months have passed since both sides agreed to dial down trade tensions, compromising on a fifteen
percent tariff on EU goods entering the United States. The deal has faced a rocky path to approval in the European Parliament. A vote is expected on the twenty fourth of February.
Emails released by the US Justice Department show Elon Musk's brother Kimball Musk, was connected with at least two women through Jeffrey Epstein, several years after the disgraced financier pleaded guilty to sex crimes. The emails show that the director at Tesla and Epstein discussed party plans, relationships, and a
possible visit to Epstein's island. Kimball Musk released a statement saying that his only meeting with Epstein was in his New York office during the day and that he never went to his island.
The US Commerce Secretary Horod Lutnick has also come under fire for his appearance in the files. Lutnick said he did visit Epstein's private island in twenty twelve, after Epstein was convicted as a sex offender. Here is an exchange between Lutnick and Maryland Senator Chris van Holland, did.
You, in fact make the visit to Jeffrey Epstein's private island. I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. My wife was with me, as were my four children and nanny's I had another couple with They were there as well with their children, and we had lunch on the island.
That Nik has face and calls to resign over the relationship with Epstein, since the files show his ties to disgraced financier were more extensive than he previously revealed. The White House said that President Trump has no plans to remove Lutnik from his post.
Investment in the UK FinTechs plummeted by more than twenty percent last year to the lowest level since the start of the COVID nineteen pandemic. Bluebog's EU and Parts has the story.
The UK's financial technology sector attracted just shy of eleven billion dollars last year, down from about thirteen and a half billion dollars in twenty twenty four.
The numbers come from.
A KPMG report citing pitch Book data. In total, four hundred and eighteen fintech deals closed last year with a blockbuster of four billion dollar fund raising by Revolute at evaluation of seventy five billion dollars, making up a big
chunk of the total raised. The UK's fintech sector was dwarfed by the US, which accounted for close to half of all cash raised globally, but to unline the country's relevance, UK fintech's attracted more funding than those in France Germany, Belgium, the Nordics Island, China and Brazil combined In London, I'm ewing pots Bloomberg Radio, and.
Those are your top stories on the market. Zero stocks fifty features are flat at the moment. Forty one hundred fatures are two tents of one percent higher. We did see Asian equities hit a record high earlier at the MSCIS Specific index outside of Japan by one point one percent. The Blueberg Dollar Spot Index weeker ahead of today's US jobs data by two tenths of one percent. The Japanese yen is eight tenths stronger as one fifty three twenty two.
Those are the markets. Now, let's get an updates on the mass school shooting in Canada at tumbler Ridge Secondtry School in British Columbia.
Joining US now for more.
And this is Bloomberg's Washington Deputy Bureau Chief, Lord Davison. Good morning, Law of what do we know so far about this shooting and about the perpetrator?
So this shooting is is summing up to be one of the worst in Canada's history. Ten left dead, including the shooter, as well as twenty five or so that have been injured in this attack. There are not a
lot of details yet about the shooter. According to a public safety alert that went out to residence in the area, the shooter was identified as a female with brown hair wearing a dress, but the authorities have not given any other names so far about who this could be age or if they have any connection to the area.
What have we heard from the Canadian authorities? The Prime Minister is suspending a plan trip to Germany.
Yes, there's really been an outpouring of support from leaders at all levels, from the province level, local level, and of course at the national level. This is a big deal for Carney to spend this trip this, you know, sort of as an indication of just how seriously everyone across Canada is taking the shooting. You know, he was scheduled to go to Germany for the Munich Security Conference
here in just a couple of days. This is really a notable time for Carney because he you know, has just in recent days taken a very strident approach against the US, giving a very powerful speech at at Davos, and you know, kind of really taking a big place on the national stage as there's sort of the the powers are rebalancing here between the US, Asia and and and Europe, and so this is a big deal for him to step back from this.
M Mass shootings do, sadly occur in the United States. They're far less common though in Canada.
Yes, this is you know, uh, unfortunately for Canada and unfortunately for the US, has been you know, a trend that's been going on for some time. A lot of experts attributed this to differences and how gun laws are in between the two countries.
Guns are prevalent, there are lots.
Of gun owners both sides of the border here, but in the US it's treated as a constitutional right. It's and into the US Constitution, and that's made it very hard for US policymakers to be able to restrict gun ownership and put other limits on gun owners. In Canada, for example, they have a lot more restrictions in terms of these red flag laws that allow guns to be taken away for people with mental health or other concerning
behavior issues. There's a national registry and there's just more sort of protections that a lot of experts have credited to lessening the number of unfortunate gun incidents, including mass shootings like we've seen just recently.
Okay, Laura, thank you very much for bringing us up to date on the latest. That's our Washington Deputy Bureau Chief, Laura Davison. There now to.
A significant conversation our attention moving to Europe. Could this be the moment that European leaders take decisive steps towards showing up their economy. Antonio Costa, who chairs the meetings of EU leaders, has been speaking to Bloomberg ahead of an informal summit that's taking place tomorrow, which will focus on trying to improve competitiveness in the face of the US and China. Our chief correspondent Oliver Krook spoke to the European Council President and he joins us this morning.
Hi Oli. So it's been eighteen.
Months since the DRUGI report that talked about a reform being existential, a year since Donald Trump took office and started threatening tariffs on the EU. Is this the big moment for the EU to boost its own economy?
I mean, that's certainly the point that Antonio Costa is making, and really the ambition that he is trying to lay out as EU Council President and trying to advance a lot of these very clunky, very complex, but very important reforms within the European Union. He said, basically last year was all about defense. They managed to do last year in a couple of months what they've failed to do
in a couple of decades. What he's referring to there, presumably is the NATO spend, for example, getting European NATO countries to about five percent of spending three and a half percent of that very clearly on defense, but also on trade deals. He managed to get forward two massive trade deals that were basically in the works for twenty years, in India and Mercer Source, so those are going to
be the victories. Now it kind of gets more complicated on competitiveness because that's when you get into very thorny issues, you know, m and A, across borders, all of those sorts of things. And he said that if last year was about defense, this year is really about competitiveness.
Have a listened to what he had to say about that.
We need to focus this year on competitiveness with the same energy that last year we focus on defense. And for this we need to approve as soon as possible a roadmap to complete and deepening the Single market that means that we need to create a real single market on energy, on telecoms, we need to approve the so called twenty ACE regime to have a simple and single company law across all the European Union. We need to remove several internal barriers that remains in the single market.
We need to continue to cut red tape. The Commission has already is ented ten package to remove red tape, but we need to do more. And we need to also to tackling our external dependencies on critical row materials, to secrize our supply chain and of course to find new markets to export. Because the the European Union powerouse own trade. We are by far the largest economic block on trade and we need to build on this to increase our competitiveness.
So whatever the prescription is clear, what needs to be done UNTILIO cost laying some of the priorities there. But is there the political will to do it?
Yeah, and I think we used to sort of hasten to add that on many of that very long laundry list that he sort of enumerated there, whether it's everything from sort of telecoms between the European countries the capital markets Union, very little progress has been made, and I think something like the Capital Markets Union.
You know, I asked them at the end of the interview.
Twelve months from now, let's be concrete, if you sit down here, what will you achieved. He sort of was hedged himself a little bit because of course he doesn't want to front run a lot of these world leaders, but it seems that really his priority is going to be on cutting this red tape and also potentially moving forward on the capital market. So that's going to be
the big thing. What I think Macohn and many others and many and macohonn coming out over the last couple of days calling this the Greenland moment, and he's saying that this Greenland moment pushing Europeans together, should encourage them to basically get joint debt together to really get these programs off the ground. As you know, Stephen, this is always a very sort of spirited debate at the EU level.
But what I thought was.
Also very interesting talking to Antonio Costa, because we had that speech from Markarney at Davos where he's talking about basically rousing the Middle Powers, bringing them together, and that basically bringing a new multilateralism into being. Antonio Costa's job is to rally Middle Powers twenty seven member states for
collective action. He knows how difficult that is that is going to be, and so I asked him basically, when you hear these sort of theories and these ideas as described by Mark Karney pragmatically, what does that look like?
The way you had to say about that, Well.
I'm also pessimistic as McCarney has been, and I don't say that the rules based order is diet and we need and we need a new one of course is in the threat, but I think we are strong enough to protect the rules based order because we don't have a real alternative to the rules based order.
The alternative is the chaos.
And that's why like manded patterns like the European Union, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and other countries are very strong upholding the international rules based order.
One of the reasons because.
You are investing a lot in these trade agreements is because we need a rules trade order to ensure predictability to the economic agents. It's impossible to have a strong economic growth in with certain and we need to provide certainty. And the best way to provide certainty is to protect these international rules based order also in Traue.
So no rules based order means chaos in Costa's view, but an illustration of the complexities of the decision making that you pointed to.
Oli.
The European Parliament has moved ahead with its process to approve a trade deal with the US, but with some additional conditions.
Yeah, that's right, I mean, and again just sort of doing a sort of fast forward of the last year, because this all happened in the last twelve months. Liberation Day on in April, that's when the negotiations began. The deal was struck in July, a turn beret between the
EU and the United States. It was supposed to be ratified at the beginning of this year, and then we've got what I guess we can call the Greenland detour, where basically everything was put on hold because you can't really agree to a trade deal while you're having more tariff threats.
On the EU.
We have now at the level where the Parliament has agreed to move forward on this, to vote on this.
There was actually some doubt.
There was some debate at the Parliament whether or not to do it, but they overcome those and have agreed to move forward, and basically what they're now looking at is trying to create an escape clause to this trade agreement in order for the Europeans to be able to renegotiate it in the future in basically March of twenty twenty eight. Now what they are trying to achieve now there's sort of top priority on trades to also reduce the steal and aluminum tariffs because those are not covered
by the current agreement. So the current agreement basically puts fifteen percent tariffs across the board, you still have fifty percent tariffs on steal and aluminum, which the Europeans are very unhappy about. So they want to continue to try to negotiate on that, and if they basically can't get an agreement, they want to be able to say, hey, we're going to renegotiate this over in March of twenty twenty eight.
Now there's some issues with that because that's two years.
Away, so I don't know how sort of how much teeth that has in it, and basically saying that we know we can threaten you in two years that is also an election year in the United States, that'll be basically full election mode. Maybe not the best timing to sort of raise tariffs for a number of different reasons. A because Trump might not be there, or you know, his predecessor or whoever comes next may not be there. But also you don't want to sort of be seen
as meddling with an election anyway. That is sort of the hurdle that has been cleared. That being said, the Europeans would like to capitalize on what has been a good year for trade deals. We've talked about Mircos or Latin America, we talked about India, and now potentially in the final stretches of a trade deal with the Australians as the Australian minister comes to Brussels tomorrow to have those discussions.
Okay, Oliver Crokarchief, you're a correspondent. Thank you very much for bringing us details of your interview with the European Council President Antonio Casta, as well as those latest headlines on trade. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Daybreak Europe coming up after this.
Well, let's stay with Europe, shall we.
Poland's one trillion dollar economy is beginning to flex its muscles with acquisitions across Western Europe, having emerged from the shadows of communism into the European Union in two thousand and four and now approaching developed nation status. Joining us this morning is Bloomberg's Equities report in Poland. Conrad Krazuski, Conrad, good morning. Tell us about the acquisitions s brief.
First of all, good morning, So basically, we faced the paradoxy with Polish economy for a long time because we recognized economic success in Europe, already the fastest growing, the larger economy for many, many years. But we lack some exports orientity know, face the of this you know success, so.
We lack the foreign acquisitions.
And one of the reasons for that it could be the man of the local market is really quite large, you know, compared to the other Eastern European nations. So the posts can thinking maybe it's enough to be here in Poland and to grow the business, grow the customer here in Poland. But over the course of the last year, we witnessed some anacdotical, you know, evidence that something may
be changing, because we saw several acquisitions in Germany. We saw the acquisition large acquisition entirety, and when we made the efforts to calculate to see from the database that how many of these transactions had been in the place already will we saw that we had twenty two acquisitions.
Only in Europe.
It's most everts and it saw that showed us that maybe we are changing the the more moment and the more economic model to more like developed nation status that you know, we're not attracting the FDI suponland, but we are already big enough to start thinking about the other markets.
And of course it's it's just the beginning, but.
Coming from the regional powerhouse when the companies were expanding only to the Zecher public, Romania and these kind of you know, foreign communist nations too, now they are moving into Germany.
It's something is striking for us at this moment.
What's the overall trajectory then for the Polish economy, you know the comparisons being made with Germany. Is Poland on track to overtake your up largest economy.
For Germany.
We always look at the German as and I have something unrevolved because of the say sizes of this in nable and you know the strength of the especially in the industry there. But having said so that when we talk to some entrepreneurs in not trying to get these markets to the market. We have some strengths because we are late camera to different you know industries, We are late comeras to different you know customer in a related business,
so we can do things differently. I mean Germany is lagging behind with the technology, We're lagging behind with the kind of sin tech approach. So entrepreneurs, we talked to such a huge on a Postco that but the different big travel company in Germany and some IT businesses said,
you know, we have some advantages. That doesn't mean that we're going to overtake Germany in the next couple of years, but definitely they say that we have something to be added to their businesses, like, you know, the way we manage the ITV sphere, maybe the way we manage the customer approach with the ecommers, the way we use the financial you know technology to to just make things more efficient.
So there's a hope that maybe this kind of German economic which has some problems at this moment, that it's just lagging withto some kind of all technology. So also the industry or issues connected to something polished spirit of the entrepreneurial spirit can maybe this equation can add some value at this moment.
Okay, Conrad, thanks so much for joining us. Connor Kozerski, there are equity supporter in Poland bringing this detail of that acquisition spree that Polish companies have been on.
Well, there is just one other story that caught my attention this morning. Classic cars apparently hitting blistering highs at auction. The value of classic cars sold at the three major auction events that we've seen in January, apparently they jumped eighty percent according to classic dot Com. I was just thinking, this is all being driven by younger collectors, throw back to their youth.
Apparently, Calin.
I was wondering, if you've been shopping for classic cars on the weekend, thinking about you know, I could see you zipping around North London, all of those you know, stylish convertibles.
I love it.
There is actually a pizza joint in North London where it is also a classic car showroom. Amazing Kleizer, amazing cars.
It's good good.
There's to be overlapping interests. Is that if you like pizza, you're thus going to be interested in classic cars.
We can't put any greasy fingers on the the vehicles on display. Yeah, I love this story though about just the enormous cost the value of classic car market in the US twenty five billion dollars. And yeah, the buyers are younger. Gto was the big one that was sold in January, a white one, the only one. Anyway, one story that we were thinking about this morning. Might put a link to it in our show notes, just in case you happen to have the few billion, few million that you need to buy one.
This is Bloomberg Daybreak Europe, your morning brief on the stories making news from London to Wall Street and beyond.
Look for us on your podcast feed every morning, on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
You can also listen live each morning on London DAB Radio, the Bloomberg Business app, and Bloomberg dot Com.
Our flagship New York station is also available on your Amazon Alexa devices.
Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty. I'm Caroline Hepka and.
I'm Stephen Carroll. Join us again tomorrow morning for all the news you need to start your day right here on Bloomberg Daybreak Europe.