this is business live from bbc news with sally bundock and jamie robertson. china's two biggest and most valuable companies get ready to give us their latest results. what will they reveal about the state of the world's second biggest economy? live from london, that's our top story on wednesday 15th of may. alibaba and tencent are both wealthy and powerful, but they could still feel the impact of china's trade war with the united states. also in the programme. losing face. san francisco bans public agencies from using facial

recognition technology. we'll assess the impact. making the personal assistant virtual. we'll speak to the boss of one company using al to streamline back office services. and san francisco has become the first us city to ban the use of facial recognition. we want to know is this the right decision? are we too close to total surveillance for comfort, or is it for our own good? let us know — just use the hashtag bbcbizlive. hello and welcome to business live. we start in china, where the country's largest and most valuable corporations — alibaba and tencent — are set to release their latest results today — which will offer

glimpses into the world's second—largest economy. alibaba is china's largest e—commerce platform, and its latest fourth quarter profits are projected at around $13.5 billion, up nearly 50% from a year ago. the company has close to 700 million monthly active users, and has grown 5% in three of the previous four quarters. but china's economy has been slowing and that could have an affect on alibaba's business. hong kong—listed company tencent is best known for its wechat messenger service which in 2018 had over1 billion daily active users. tencent is also the world's biggest gaming company. but last year the chinese government unexpectedly froze the approval of new games. it's last quarterly results saw profits slide 32% to $2.1 billion. both alibaba and tencent are

competing against their us rivals. with us now is spencer crawley, co—founder and general partner at firstminute capital. good morning, spencer. tencent and alibaba are huge, aren't they, in mainland china and coming out with their numbers today, what will it tell us about how they are doing? thank you for having me back and it's worth remembering how big the companies are. they are 20—year—old companies are. they are 20—year—old companies with half $1 trillion of market caps and the key today will be how much they are prioritising earnings over expansion. they have been diversifying away from some of their core business lines and they have also been going international. for tencent a big part of the business is wechat used by a billion users in china and alibaba we know it has another amazon, for us outside of china, and it's a massive

phenomenon. in terms of their international ambitions, what are they and how will they go given what is going on between the us and china at the moment? it accounts for 6096 of chinese e—commerce, alibaba so the two main pressures are in the cloud service business and if we ta ke cloud service business and if we take the amazon parallel, that accou nts take the amazon parallel, that accounts for 10% of their revenue so they are doing a huge push on that infrastructure and the other is their express service which is a marketplace that allows chinese goods to be sold internationally and alibaba has goods to be sold internationally and aliba ba has announced goods to be sold internationally and alibaba has announced they will take goods from the likes of russia, italy, turkey, to sell on the platform so you are starting to see them encroaching into amazon territory. tell me about their relationship with the chinese government because particularly in the case of tencent it has proved a little fractious. they seem to have had problems in the last year and also alibaba, if you are going to succeed, you have to get on well with the government. you do and there was pressure on tencent in terms of the types of games, and

there was criticism about how this had impacted teenagers in china. i think tencent is pretty robust, the largest gaming company in the world and one of the largest social media companies in the world. they have adopted their games to suit the government. they have and they are starting to look at that now. it's worth remembering how big an investor they are globally. they have investments in 700 different companies and many of them are billion dollar companies in themselves. are they seen as a tool of government? one of the games they brought in was about the chinese people liberation army. will we be out there playing games wary cheer on the liberation army? they are still predominantly businesses that are focused on the domestic market andi are focused on the domestic market and i don't think the impact will be felt here. these are not trade war stocks. they are not like industrial manufacturing sectors that will get ha rd by manufacturing sectors that will get hard by things like tariffs. so no

is the short answer. spencer, thanks very much. when we get the numbers from the two companies we shall make sure we update you. spencer, thank you. let's take a look at some of the other stories making the news. us president donald trump has suggested the federal reserve could support the us in its simmering trade battle with china. the trade dispute between the world's two largest economies escalated this week with tariff hikes on both sides. in a post on twitter, mr trump said china would move to stimulate its economy to deal with the fallout. the us may be about to ramp up the pressure on chinese telecoms giant huawei. according to a report by reuters, donald trump will sign an executive order this week barring american companies from using telecoms equipment made by the chinese firm. elsewhere, huawei says it ready to sign "no—spy agreements with governments", to erase security concerns. a major blow for uber drivers in the us, after the national labour relations board said that they are independent contracters, and therefore

shouldn't be entitled to traditional labour protections. traditional safety measures include things like having the ability to organise unions and secure a minimum wage agreement. last week, uber drivers across the us protested against the ride hailing app over working conditions. let's talk about the story that we'd like your opinion on today. now let's turn to the west coast of the united states where the city of san francisco is set to become the first in the country to ban facial recognition technology, following a vote by its board of supervisors. public agencies, such as the police force and transport authority, will not be allowed to use the emerging technology. opponents of the measure warn it could compromise safety. dave lee reports from san francisco.

this is a promotional video from amazon, heralding the capabilities of its facial recognition software. but in san francisco, the use of innovations has now been outlawed thanks to new rules passed overwhelmingly by city supervisors. ordanance is passed on first reading. the landmark ruling will make it illegal for any public agency, including law enforcement, to use facial recognition software and any purchase of surveillance equipment of any kind, such as a camera, must be approved by city administrators. the ban will not apply to san francisco's air or sea ports, as they're operated by federal agencies rather than local. the move was enthusiastically backed by local civil liberties groups. this is a system that is too dangerous to deploy because it allows the government to track who we are, where we go and even who we associate with. there are also concerns that the technology is unreliable, particularly when accurately recognising women or people of colour. those against the measure said they recognise these flaws but said...

it's of course highly symbolic that this decision was made in the heart of the us technology industry, but this is a city that increasingly sees itself as the starting point for some incredibly important conversations about the future of invasive technology. dave lee, bbc news, in san francisco. a lot of people tweeting about that and we will talk in more detail later on. just look at the markets, we have had a almost the same amount in percentage terms, a little bit of the bounce back we saw from the anxieties over the weekend about trade wars and various tensions between the us and china. that seems to have gone away as there has been a bounce back and we have seen it reflected here. as for the us

markets, samira has the details of what's ahead on wall street today. on wednesday the us commons department will release the latest retail sales numbers for april. back in march there was a big jump in retail sales as people spend more on clothing, furniture, gasoline and autos. that said, economists don't expect to see a similarjump in april, estimating that retail sales numbers for the previous number —— month will have gone up by 0.2%. speaking of retail sales, macy's will report their earnings and the late arrival of the spring season will have likely led consumers to spend more on discounted winter gear rather than goods from the spring and summer line—up, so investors will be keeping an eye out for the spending appetite of consumers. joining us is simon derrick, chief markets strategist,

bank of new york mellon. there is a lot going on and i think i say this most days. it's an exciting world out there. i want to get your take. we have had news out of china for the domestic economy with factory orders weaker and every bit of noise coming out of china, eve ryo ne bit of noise coming out of china, everyone assumes it is to do with the trade war, so what is your take on all of the above? i think it is possibly more in the trade war and the slowdown has been building for a while. it wasn't just the the slowdown has been building for a while. it wasn'tjust the industrial production numbers today it was the retail sales numbers and it comes against a backdrop and of course the trade war has an impact on that but overall we have had seen slowing growth generally. it's interesting because what is happening now is that we see pressure coming to bear on the chinese market and currency and it's been weakening and every time the currency has weakened over the course of the last few years, the course of the last few years, the us has responded to try and stop

the us has responded to try and stop the dollar appreciating, as in 2016 when the central bank started making interest rates easier and you saw a not dissimilar story in november and then mrtrump not dissimilar story in november and then mr trump was speaking as well that they should match china for whatever they do to keep the currency easy. that is what i wanted to ask. it cannot officially use the fed to do that but will we see tensions? if anything he is muddying the waters. with who? president drum. he is muddy —— president trump. he is muddying the waters. the federal reserve has proved happy to ta ke the federal reserve has proved happy to take action that keeps the currency competitively priced. he is actually making it harder for them to do what they would naturally do anyway. 0k. thanks, simon. we will get back to you more because we are

going to talk about most of our stories with you. facial recognition. serial returners. that is not frosty is an cornflakes, it is not frosty is an cornflakes, it is people who return things a lot. that kind of cereal. you might be one of those. how personal assistants went digital. we'll talk to the boss of one company using al to outsource back office functions — and ask if we're losing the all important personal touch. you're with business live from bbc news. broadband, phone and tv customers must be told when their contract is coming to an end, and shown the best deals available, under new rules announced today by ofcom. providers must alert customers between 10 and 110 days before their contract comes to an end. here to tell us more is one of ofcom's consumer directors, lindsey fussell.

just tell us more about this and how you expect providers to respond. are they ready to take action on this? good morning. we want everyone to get a ccess good morning. we want everyone to get access to a failed deal for their communication services and thatis their communication services and that is why we stepped in require all providers to give you information about when your contract is coming to an end and they can offer you a deal if you choose to stay with them. we think it is a powerful intervention that will give powerful intervention that will give power back to you and i and to all customers to make informed choices and to have the right information at the right time to enable them to do that. one of the things i find interesting about this is that these companies produce some really good deals to lure people in but don't tell existing customers about them. however, if they are forced to tell customers about them they will not have such good deals and if you want

a really good deal, you won't be able to get it. we want all companies to be able to offer us a really good range of deals and it does include discounts for customers to win new business and that is an important part of a competitive market. the owners of today's announcement is to give us the opportunity to understand the range of deals available to look at that, shop around and make the right decision for us. very briefly, why has it taken so long? some of these things are terribly obvious and we should have done this years ago. this is a top priority for us and we've already made it easier for people to switch their broadband and from july you will be able to switch your mobile service with a simple text and it's a broader programme of work we had under way to ensure fairness for all customers. thank you so much. do you turn to the bbc

business life page as there is a story about asda. it is considering listing itself on the stock market after it merged with sainsbury‘s was blocked. do have a read. china's biggest and most valuable companies are getting ready to give us their financial results which should give us an financial results which should give us an insight into the state of the worlds second biggest economy. it will also tell us of the companies have been impacted at all by the trade war with the us. let's look at the financial markets in europe and quite a week, and you can see they are all low although the ftse 100 quite a week, and you can see they are all low although the ftse100 is flat, to be there. that is how they are trading at the moment. a drop of 0.01% won't upset anyone and our pension funds are safer now.

we live in the age of the consumer — so customer services can make or break a company. a survey of organizations around the world from dimension data found that 88% of companies value their customer service above all other factors in attracting and keeping customers. and in fact research from customer experience consulting firm walker has predicted that by 2020 customer experience will be the thing setting a company apart from the pack, above price and products. but can automated assistants keep up with the human experience of customer service? plenty of companies in the dimension study reported challenges in implementing digital assistants, with nearly a third finding them insufficient. cana can a robot replace a human, that is what it comes down to. with us is moneypenny‘s co—founder ed reeves. he has been sitting patiently while we read through the information.

welcome. please explain moneypenny, a company you started in 2000 with your sister. that's right. what is that? it came about from the personal lead of rachel and i doubt the quality of answering services we re the quality of answering services were questionable at the time and we thought we could do it better. you we re thought we could do it better. you were running a business and using another company to provide your answering services and you lost clients? exactly. the person on the other end of the phone, the client tried to send them a fax and followed up the facts and the phone call and asked somebody to put paper on the fax machine and the person answering the phone said there was nothing i could do, i am the answering service. what would have happened if your people had done that? the first thing we did was to save anybody rings up about this case, what you need to do is say try this number instead and they received a fax on their behalf. but oui’ received a fax on their behalf. but our staff positioned themselves as being part of our client's

environment rather than hours. so they represent the client, work with they represent the client, work with the client but happen to be located at moneypenny. your clients are people like mitsubishi, so tell us about your clients. you are business to business and those digital customer services. 5096 of moneypenny is supporting small and micro businesses. so not mitsubishi. the other 50% are the big ones. a large proportion of the legal market and the housing market use us and what happens is these companies basically don't have receptionist in their office or if they do they have fewer than without us and then we take the overflow calls and provide them with people to handle the calls are now increasingly we are providing them with the technology to take those calls as well. tell us about this

technology and how it works. instead ofa technology and how it works. instead of a call going through to a real person and the real person is attributing the call, if say sally we re attributing the call, if say sally were to call the estate agent we would look at the data and we gather that data over many years and we say, right, what is sally or a person like sally likely to want from this estate agent and we can look at it and say that you have called the company three times before and you are speaking to jeremy and you are 99% sure that you will ask forjeremy again. when sally says the computer, effectively says, how can we help you today, sally will say i would like to speak tojeremy sally will say i would like to speak to jeremy and even sally will say i would like to speak tojeremy and even if there is loads of noise in the background, we can pick that up. so it is voice recognition software, that kind of thing andi recognition software, that kind of thing and i must admit, i don't know aboutjamie, i'm a bit of a

technophobe. when i ring up organisations i want a human and i cannot bear ringing up an organisation like the bank and a robot says to me, can you tell me in one word why why you are calling. it drives me round the twist. one word why why you are calling. it drives me round the twistlj one word why why you are calling. it drives me round the twist. i totally get that. there is a way that the market is going with this is that it is not going to be that sort of broken down approach. it's about giving you an experience that is better than you would have today.“ you can do that, what intrigues me is, as you develop the technology you get really good technology, but your business will be who has the best technology so how will you differentiate yourself question what you will have the same technology and you say convincingly to sally, how can i help you? quite right. we call it the opportunity to wow. in the case of sally, she rang up the estate agent or law firm and said i'd left my umbrella in your reception, with all the will in the

world, no computer or ai system is going to resolve that. immediately that will fall over to a real person and that is where moneypenny stands head and shoulders above that we have extraordinary people and we will resolve the situation instantly without delays or, can you say that again scenarios customer we are out of time. we cannot challenge you on that final point. it's really interesting. voice recognition, facial recognition is much the talking point in the programme and we will get to that in a moment but first we want to tell you one man's story and his efforts to make a freezing arctic town more sustainable. ben vidmar is producing homegrown vegetables in the world's most northerly human settlement. he lives in the town of longyearbyen on the svalbard

islands, around 800 miles from the north pole. he wants to reduce plastic and food waste, but can he make a difference? this is for the dreamers, don't give up this is for the dreamers, don't give up on yourdream, this is for the dreamers, don't give up on your dream, keep going, keep fighting. we have the highest co2 output per capita in the world and i started to get concerned and think that we had to do something. it's important to have local food it's to do something. it's important to have localfood it's important to do something. it's important to have local food it's important to have local food it's important to have less plastic and now all of our vegeta bles have less plastic and now all of our vegetables come wrapped in plastic and we open them and we have to ship it back to the mainland. it's very tough here because we have 24—hour is of darkness for three months and

then 2k is of darkness for three months and then 26 hours of light. we have to have two places, an indoor place and an outdoor place. i wanted to create my own fertilisers and that is where the worms came in. we started to use the worms came in. we started to use the worms came in. we started to use the worms to make compost and fertiliser that we use in the dome. we are trying to create as many of the circles as possible. i have created the story here because people need help all over the world so we want to start this and then help people all around the world. simon is back as promised and we are talking about a story that

dave lee has been covering, san francisco the first city to ban facial recognition mainly because they do not believe the technology are sophisticated enough to get this right. simon, your thoughts. san francisco, home of the tech industry that was originally pushing for the individual but over the course of the last 20 years a huge push back against technology which has become big business and san francisco was the place where google glass failed with people pushing back against facial recognition and the same story here and what happens in san francisco tends to happen everywhere else. but what if somebody has an accident and you cannot change 1's face? what if you forget which faces on the file, happy face, a sad face and things can change. william says, sally and jamie, facial recognition is four —— fraught with problems. what if somebody has an accident.

it's balancing the needs of the many against the needs of the individual. thank you, simon stop thank you all,. see soon. goodbye. good morning. if you like the warm and sunny weather you will like the forecast again. we have more of the same. yesterday in northern scotland we got to 26 celsius. today it is likely to reach about 25 other many of us the temperature will be a degree or so higher. high pressure still in charge and moving across scandinavia and it will be breezy in the south coast of england and on the south coast of england and on the eastern coast, a little bit fresher impaired to elsewhere but as you can see, not a lot going on and there is a bit of cloud developing and some fair whether cloud but for most of us blue skies. temperatures

are between 19 and 21 celsius. we could reach 25 degrees in northern scotland. through the evening and tonight, not a lot of change but this little area of cloud in the north sea will drift close to the shore of north—east scotland and that could bring a bit of cloud and mist first thing this morning and we are looking temperatures between five and eight celsius. starting sunny similar to the last few days but we will see cloud developing and drifting westwards and for all of us it will be a tad cooler and today will be the warmest day of the week. temperatures down to 15 or 18 degrees. an easterly wind brings more cloud across parts of the uk, a more cloud across parts of the uk, a more unsettled feel with showers

affecting areas and there could be showery rain across eastern england, the midlands, wales and the south and a few showers across northern england in the afternoon. some showers in the north—east of scotla nd showers in the north—east of scotland and those temperatures could be a bit lower, between 13 and 17 celsius and a different feel on friday compare to today. going into the weekend we continue with the cool and cloudy feel and there will be some showers but also some across western areas. temperatures will rise by sunday and into next week as they go a bit further as well. the weekend is not a wash out by any stretch of the imagination, just a bit more cloud and a few showers. goodbye.

you're watching bbc news at nine, with me, annita mcveigh. the headlines: the government announces another vote on brexit in earlyjune, but there's no sign of a breakthrough in cross—party talks. pressure mounts on itv to cancel thejeremy kyle show, following the death of a man who appeared on the programme. a bbc investigation finds four children have been killed by a parent with a history of violence in the last five years after being granted access by a family court. i was completely naive about the family courts, i assumed that they'd see to enable a violent man to have a relationship with his children, contact needed to be supervised. the behaviour of payday loan companies

is criticised by the industry watchdog