♪ coming up on "bloomberg best," the stories that shape the week in business. continue to ride the roller coaster. another drop in china's exports. yahoo! set a direction for its been off plan. -- tradea will share under the ticker tape -- >> this could be the biggest year yet and we hear from the -- tasked with turning around --

and success on the cloud, unicorns, and more. the word quality. >> it is all straight ahead on "bloomberg best." ♪ >> hello, i am a bondman, welcome to "bloomberg best." we begin with a significant decline in the price of oil, which is where we start our review in the week's line. >> we start with oil, the big story, down the most in seven years. oversupply will carry forward after opec abandoned to limit prices. david covers oil from our bureau in houston.

let's go back to that decision. it was a decision by consensus. it is every member of opec for himself. what is saudi arabia trying to do? think that people they are going after shale. they are going after the competition in the market with the shale producers here in the u.s. the crazy thing about that is the shale can respond very quickly to price movement. what might be the affect is it what have an effect on areas around the world who are more -- where it is more expensive to drill oil. offshore, everywhere around the world. sequestern attempt to the market share. it may have an effect on many other markets. the latest rate data from china confirms the slowdown is continuing. exports fell for a fifth month in november. a slump in imports means a trade

balance. we have that surplus coming out of china. economics is an asian correspondent. think this picture for us. paint this picture for us. it is hard to see circuit breaker. they suffering from deflation on one hand. demand from japan and the eurozone whose economies are not in the best light at the moment. on the import side, there is a pricing impact. some sense of a pickup in demand as well that is helping to drive imports. taking together, the trade data

story out of china is reflecting a down global economy. >> yahoos has scrapped it's been off of alibaba shares after pressure from investors with risk associated with the deal. shares are currently up. they are exploring a reverse spinoff where acid and assets and -- liabilities. >> this is a mirror image of what we have proposed before. alibaba trades -- shares will trade under a new tickertape. >> it is another beautiful euphemism and a mirror image that before they could do something with the rest of this business, and now they are saying they cannot do something with the rest of this business. what can be done with the assets?

one, they can try to go through their turnaround plan. they had not been very successful. potentially try and sell the business. cable companies, like comcast, verizon, could be easy acquirer's of yahoo!. >> what could and acquirer of yahoo! do? -- the ad said business is the gym business over there. the ad business -- platform is the gem. yahoo! has been caught up in t-like.mlet

this is the battle of yahoo!. every single ceo has struggled with this decision. you see the company have a success and technology and struggles in content and everyone on the outside telling them what they should do. it is a business that is possible, yet not growing. >> bank of england left record low interest rates saying low oil prices installing wage growth would keep inflation under control. john nicholas, you spoke to mark carney not long ago and that these conflicted monetary policies globally. it is not like they can make a decision in a vacuum. claims they are just looking alone. betweennuinely stock

two huge forces. you have yellen going into one direction and mario draghi going into another. you are waiting to see what the americans do. there is another element to this. >>'s mario draghi giving them more flexibility? >> a little bit. and gives them a little bit of cover. >> i agree. >> they might as well take a timeout and see what they want to do next. the other dilemma is that they are not very good at irony. they really haven't got the joke that seven years of loose monetary policy created the boom cycle in energy. winds is coming

from -- that is a consequence of coming from all the investments blowing up from the energy patch. dupontdow chemical merger. they will create a $30 billion in the largest merger ever. dupont chairman, welcome. explain to us the rationale behind this merger? listen, maybe it was a moment in time, both of our companies, we have known for a long time, fit together. it just so happened that are stocks were basically trading on top of each other from a market cap standpoint. tax efficientvery transaction to our shareholders by merging first, capturing all

the synergies, and then doing a three-way split up. it is very efficient from that standpoint. what happened was that we did not create the world leading ad company, but we get to create a specialty company that will trade with high growth businesses. andrew, with the dow business, if the parts of dupont that always fit with his business. we strategically created three of the perfect platforms that will fit together, and all the synergies on top of it. it is a pretty incredible opportunity for both of our companies. >> industrial logic of this was from theul, that doubt beginning, the coincident that we are here this week. i couldn't pull off that coincidence. no one could. this is great for all shareholders. ♪

♪ welcome back to "bloomberg best." i'm yvonne man. it has been a week of compelling conversation on bloomberg television. our round of test interviews starts with the volkswagen ceo. he spoke with half nichols about the road ahead for a beleaguered company. to put all non-essential spending on hold. help me understand that. what is being put on hold? >> for the moment, we have to tighten the belt, as they say in this country, and that affects all different areas. this has something to do with the fact that we should be more

modestly, savings is important. as far as investments in the volkswagen group. euros. be 12 billion we're going to scrutinize all projects and we will revisit them. we are quite confident. in the incoming years, we will be spending less money. >> can you get through this crisis without job cuts? topict is an important for volkswagen with stuff security. it is to in this time of crisis that we want to keep the workforce. that is a very important task for us. we have always been committed to that target. models, brands, 300

should we expect any trimming of models or brands? 12 quite excellent brands i should add. they make up the volkswagen group and we are very happy. nothing will change in the coming years for sure. when you talk about the variety of different models or the complexity within the volkswagen group, it is true to say that we to see some adjustments in our portfolio. we just have to see that we have engines/model combinations that make our life harder when we work through this crisis. be quite sure we have to look at a number of andtions related to brands the regions of the world.

and when it comes to our specific skills, we will be better coordinated. just a fewthat in years we will see a more successful, more excited company then we see right now. >> brands including assets like , will those stay within the volkswagen family? >> these are all very successful and there is no reason whatsoever to consider to get rid of those assets. debate to me about the on the last day. why didn't you cut rates today? >> there is no reason to change monetary policy. .75 basis points negative. you have to look at the

inflation forecast. it is roughly unchanged. the international environment change. is that wes outlook expect 1.5% growth for 2016. >> you seemed a little more upbeat than i have seen you before. the economy, you say, is better than the data suggest. is the economy much more resilient to a stronger swiss bank? has that diminished in the last 12 months? >> a large portion of the economy remains very difficult. exports are under pressure because of import companies. the swiss bank remains overvalued. that means a difficult situation here it nevertheless, firms are starting to adjust with this environment and we are hopeful

that it will be able to adjust to the situation. >> there have been times i had to get on the phone with really big managers, who have really been clients, and tell them what the downside was for the beating their product off of spotify. leaving you are missing out on a big audience and you are missing out on the revenue stream. you are ignoring the future. hurricane katrina is coming. you know what i am saying? and you are staying in the house right now. >> to do talk to taylor swift? >> no i did not talk to taylor swift. >> so how does spotify get over the taylor swift problem? >> i don't know if bona fide needs to get over the taylor spotify i don't know if

needs to get over the taylor swift problem. when youlawed argument say that i don't want my music on any surface on something free hen freealready -- w already exist. >> a lot of television is on-demand in an increasing amount, whether it is dvr or a server or cloud. or whether they are going and watching digital video another devices. >> as we see this transition takes place, we call it board cutting. verizon -- what does that mean for cable companies? it will change one revenue stream, but make another one more important. >> there are a couple things going on here. just because it is on-demand doesn't mean people are going to cut the cord. it just means they may not want from day one. i think there is some cord

shaving and cord cutting, but some of it is overstated. cable television will be around for the longer term. as you point out, cable itself has two revenue streams, a digital stream and a stream from video. i am bullish in that business. i don't think it is going away. ♪

you are watching "bloomberg best." a host of companies made headlines this week, some reporting good news, some reporting setbacks, some just

making deals. here is a sampling of the week big story. >> anglo-american shares thinking -- sinking. minas are among the biggest on the losing streak. the disposals selling at the bottom. there is a lots of stories outside of the dividends. >> in this environment, you are going to see a real reorganization of these companies. we know a certain amount of it already. no surprise that the dividend is cut. it will go for a slightly different dividend policy going forward. side, you have the likes of bhb with a much more lower castoffs. dividend, on the where is the line in the

standard? -- where is the line in the stance? >> they are going to want to set themselves apart. they are a lower cost producer and are better focused and commodities. they are a safer place for investment. anglos is more diversified and carries more risk. with that, there are more opportunities. you have more exposure to south africa. think mark is done an amazing job here it looks like a better company. announcing new financial targets. they are cutting debt targets. week in thea brutal markets. >> investors clearly liking these new goals for debt reductions. saidstatement, glencore

$18 billion to $19 billion. the previous was in the low 20's. glencore's debt right now stands more thanlion, is anybody has in the entire industry. tolearned how they are going achieve that. $1.2 billion getting. back. the previousles, target was to raise about $2 billion in asset sales. today, in a presentation, they want to raise $4 billion. >> you wonder how he has held hostage with the demand side of this story. there is a plot that is out of his control, isn't there? >> yes.

in the presentation, glencore made it clear that they will cut production and cut costs further if necessary. shares of chipotle falling yet again. the mexican food chain closing a restaurant in boston after dozens of students got sick. local officials said to be leaning to nora virus and not e. coli. it doesn't matter at this point. craig, get us up to speed? 80 students getting sick. including members of the basketball team. the company coming out quickly to say let's not rush to judgment. nothey said there has been new e. coli cases since november 7. the point they are making is yes, we have's -- this issue started in portland, oregon. this is a new incident. this is another bad headline. they have -- they had another nora virus incident.

it is not a good thing for aaa. -- it is not a good thing for chipotle. you heard comments from chipotle where they said it has been unusual the way cdc has been reporting it. ofittle bit of frustration the way it has been handled. until cdc comes out and says, we know what it was, all clear, aaa can't move on. there is no closure. it is an incredible risk in the stock market. for thedoes it mean company's bottom line to implement safety measures you are talking about? >> they said we will pay whatever it takes, so it will be something to watch when we get on new report in the next couple of quarters. this is a company that had questions about growth even before this food safety stuff hit. yvonne: it has been a tough your for ipo's with deflated ideas.

and -- what made you guys decide to go public? >> we have been preparing this for a long time. but the less four years, we are making sure the company is ready. we have a very disruptive model in the business. we want to go public when the company is ready, rather than the market. >> some want to hold you up as an example. the unicorn, you did it right, you have been profitable for several years. have you felt additional pressure? >> we can't make any comparisons. we feel we built a unique company. we help teams collaborate and be more productive, and that is

really different as well as our business model. we spent a lot of money on research and development. all the way through to our 10 years of profitability. i don't know if you can use our company for other tech ipos. since the 2014 world cup, the arrest of dozens of executive in a corruption investigation. there has been a loss of $100 million. isking at the challenges jeffrey. latestto talk about the headlines when alibaba joining us the first officer in two years. was not an easy sell. or you surprised? -- were you surprised? >> they need to have the right

platform. alibaba is not tainted by the past. less of alibaba using this platform. yvonne: we will bring you stephanie ruhle's exclusive conversation with ceo mark. one of silicon valley's most thoughtful executives, coming up. ♪

yvonne: welcome back to "bloomberg's best." stephanie ruhle recently sat down for an interview with salesforce chairman and ceo marc benioff. he leads the most successful cloud computing software company and his leadership style has brought him attention and acclaim. conversation begins on the topic of salesforce and the cloud. stephanie: the cloud has been your signature for so long, that

without an infrastructure platform, do you think you have the full offering? marc: i think the exciting thing about technology and technology changing in the industry and in san francisco, where i live and the only constant is change. the technology week started with and started the company with 16.5 years ago and the technology today has changed. social,out cloud, mobility, the rise of the smartphones, it is about incredible changes in data science and artificial technology isbut always changing. the number one thing that will not change for your business is your important relationship with the customers. that is our job at salesforce, whether in sales, service, marketing, building communities, and everything that we do, we are focused on customer focus.

stephanie: when i look at other day tech companies, microsoft, microsoft seems to have lost their groove. everything is about san francisco. if you are a mature tech company like microsoft, what can they do? to realize the world has changed. you can see that just walking around the streets and talking to customers. conversations are radically different in this post-2008 world, or the most prized commodity is growth. every ceo i have met with once growth.re growth,y do not have they do not have market capital improvement. this is a serious issue for every one of the major ceos. it does not matter what industry. that is a precious commodity.

simplece to them is very . let's talk about what is your vision between now and 2024 your company? what is your vision to connect with their customers in new ways? what is your customer growth strategy? for every other tech ceo who walks into that office and meeting with the same ceos, they differenceses with to sell, financials, computers, smart phones. we only sell one thing, how do we help you grow and connected to customers in new ways? it is a simple mantra. stephanie: we have seen oracle and sap start to have good cloud numbers. is that a threat to you? marc: we are not about the cloud, we are about customers. stephanie: you are about the cloud. marc: we have been crystal clear on the future technology and that part is clear. and we have done a great job

using the cloud to grow our business, but our sales force is not about the cloud. it is about being number one in the market, number one in sales, service, marketing, though the customer communities, customer, the next test customer analytics, and customer apps. our focus, and the cloud is imported. we are one of the very largest of the enterprise cloud providers. it is the vehicle that we did that, but no casino that i meet with today, did they ask me any questions about the cloud. they want to know how to grow their business. that is what they really care about. they have never really asked me about the cloud. if i went down to the ip department or the cio, they might want to talk about the dates and the bites and i could around all kinds of buzzwords but that is not where we are today. the are in a world where growth is the precious commodity that

everybody seeks and that is what we want to help companies acquire. stephanie: all of these buzzwords that make some of us feel tech is in a bubble, social, distractor in the valley, and they start to feel him a key. when you think about who is the ultimate distractors are, it is activist investors. from your perspective, you are an actual operation got. you are a creator. you built a business and you are a founder perry is it fair that founders like you have to deal with activist investors knocking on your door saying, try this and do that, and they had no requirements in their holding period? arc: back in silicon valley, we other dreamer of dreams. stephanie: that is nonsense. that is giving silicon valley too much credit. marc: this whole country is based on the concept of ideas and innovation. that is what makes the united states great and different.

that is what makes silicon valley great and different. what i love about my job is creating value, but i have to tell you where the dreams come from. you can be the dreamer of dreams, but the dreams come from the customers. the reason why i go to new york, london, tokyo or any major city and meet with the customers is to listen. listen deeply to our customers and to ask, what did they want, what are their fears and anxieties, what other plans and what are they focused on? some do have activist investors and some have incredible product visions in the future. our job is to partner with them wherever they are in their evolution and say, let's figure out how we are going to get you to have that one-on-one relationship with the customer. that is what they are going toward. they're going to that point where we can have that level of customer, as i said, fidelity, customer intimacy that they may be do not have today.

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yvonne:: you are watching "bloomberg's best." let's return to stephanie rules conversation with salesforce chairman and ceo marc benioff. sales force has been a publicly traded company since 2004. what does he think of investment, valuation and growth in silicon valley today? stephanie: your stock is trading at an all-time high, in large part because of your massive growth, because you have the apps, internet of things, the buzzwords -- marc: and the revenue and market shares and the customer satisfaction. stephanie: this takes me to the tech bubble. around you, there are so many businesses that talk about who is on their board and all the

money they raise. does this mean we will see a lot of that uniform in 2016? marc: you will seek some unicorns that are dead, sick, falling over and doing fine. it is an amazing time in san francisco. stephanie: in a good or bad way? --c: a badly and a good way in a good and bad way. first and a good way, the level of innovation, creativity starting that is unprecedented. in a badly, the unicorn thing, i have been saying this for a while, it is not great. it is not necessary that the companies are not worth this much money -- we do not actually know because they have manipulated the private markets to achieve the evaluations and i do not think a day goes by today that i do not get a call of the company raising money at $1 billion or more, and this is unheard of.

i think the reason why this is now, it has become a self-esteem issue for entrepreneurs that if the company is not worth more than $1 billion -- let me tell you, and salesforce went public, i think we work between -- we had barely $1 billion in 2004. it has been an incredible run for salesforce from 2004 two 2015, but at that level of market cap, i am like, that is amazing. personally, i am not investing anymore in companies with $1 billion or more violation because i do not believe in that unicorn. anymore. i think it is a bad thing. i tell you what i tell those companies, if you think you are at eight $1 billion valuation, get out of the public markets. stephanie: how would you compare it to 1999? the difference between 1999 and today, those companies

were going in the public markets and getting rationalized for good or bad. that is what needs to happen today. you will see great companies are much. we were just talking about fitbit. i was an early investor and it is fantastic. rationalized fitbit. it is a publicly traded stock, the ceo has to have earning calls, run his company in the same way i run mine and that is my advice to these other cios. they need to get into the market, run the companies with the right level of governance and let the market rationalize the valuations. stephanie: how much easier would your job the sales force was private? i don't think easier, i think harder. i think eating a public company is good. my friend michael dell might disagree. in our case, it is good for us. it forces us to make sure that we keep -- you talked about how we are number one in sales

automation, customer service and support, -- we have to keep our eye on the ball. where are we in those quadrants and market shares in revenue by market segments? what does our performance matrix look like? how are we doing across geographies? we have public investors to answer to. that is what is so exciting about being a public company. there is no reason why these companies can claim to be worth billions of dollars and making billions of dollars to stay private. they should get out into the public markets. stephanie: some of your largest shareholders, fidelity, blackrock, they have gotten involved in some of these private companies at late stages when valuations are skyhigh. have you told them they are making a mistake? marc: i am telling them now that i think we have gone involved in certain companies at different levels of capitalization, but

today, this has turned into a mania. stephanie: they are dangerous. i agree and that is what i am talking to you about this, stephanie. here we are in this unicorn -- we never had that word before. bikers iesco, we did not talk about unicorns. stephanie: i always have. : the rest of us were not talking about unicorns and that is what everyone is talking about now. a few months ago, i tweeted, get ready for dead unicorns. i am a fan of the public markets. and i am a fan of public investors, like fidelity, blackrock, great investors. of course, the going to make bets on private companies, that is appropriate. as i said, the mania, the unicorn mania is dangerous for our silicon valley economy.

♪

yvonne: welcome back. as we wrap up our show this week , more of stephanie rowles exclusive interview with marc benioff, chairman and ceo of salesforce. they turn to the accountability and responsibility at the ceo. stephanie: is it dangerous for companies, for ceos leading the companies with activists? you have fidelity and blackrock, but they are not writing public letters. look what marissa mayer is going through. can you do your job when you have hedge fund managers in new

york behind desks, pointing fingers and shouting accusations? marc: yes, that is your job. you are right -- you are running a public company and answering to public shareholders and you have to answer to customers also. if you want to be successful today as a public company ceo, being advice, move from focused on shareholders to stakeholders. activist shareholders are a key stakeholder, but let me tell you another, customers, employees, partners are stakeholder, the community you live in is a stakeholder, your k-12 schools that your employees have their kids in, women are keep stakeholders in silicon valley. you better be ready to run a multi-stakeholder dialogue. that is the key. you canan read, if

manage -- if you can read, manage, run a multi-stakeholder and you have to do all that, but you have to be evolved to a new level. that is the key. andou get tunnel vision and it is all about activist stakeholders, that is fine, but do not forget about everything else that is key to being successful as a ceo today, and that is the key, the fundamental key. stephanie: that is like 17 different locks that have 58 different keys. our other ceos in america and around the world sleeping? of thesetalk about all verticals view need to be on top of, i do not know how there is time to do it and i do not hear other ceos, who are not just preaching this, but you are doing this and delivering it. marc: i message is if you want to be successful today, stephanie, and you -- whether it is successful financial,

technical or whatever it is -- you need to think about the .orld holistically, everything i think ceos today and business leaders are as important as political leaders and that they have a role to stand for something. i think this is important. when things happen in the world ast you do not agree with, the ceo, you have the responsibility to say, i do not agree with that because it does not support my employees, customers. you also have a role to do things -- you saw this last month -- pay women the same as men. stephanie: why weren't you before? why do you have to do this exercise to right things? marc: mostly we were, but we were not on the tip of the t that we had to hold ourselves accountable to. every company today has an hr

database, and they all know the names of the employees and salaries. can you say on the public stage, words, aor the "e" quality. can you say, i stand for equality? andwalk into headquarters into these beautiful towers and there is always a plot close to the elevator that says, this is our value at the company -- integrity, honesty, hardware, team play, but i did not see any plaques with the word equality. i think we have a call to arms for ceos that it is time the corporations add to their core value system, their core value system, the word equality. that starts with women, and you can see where we have an hr database with everybody's name and we know how much everybody is taped, hit a button that says, are all men and women paid equally? and say, we stand for equal pay. stephanie: we talk about ceos

the compensated well. does the ceo deserve to be paid millions of dollars in the company is not doing well? i look at hewlett-packard, the ceo being paid $23 million for a stock that has gone in one direction and a product people don't want to buy. stephanie: i think they has to be linked performance. mostly critical with the ceo and a great way to do that is make the vast majority of the ceos package linked to the stock price. if the stock goes up, the ceo should be awarded because he is performing for all shareholders and stakeholders, and if the stock does not deliver, the ceo should be removed. stephanie: do you think marissa mayer -- do think we are too harsh on her because she is a woman? marc" i love marissa mayer, i think she is doing an incredible person that i know. think you can be

critical for judgmental enough of somebody who is going to be a public company ceo. you have to be willing to be in the fire. that is what you are standing up for an white ceos have paid a little more -- and why ceos get paid a little more. these are her jobs, this is tough work and you are submitting yourself at a very high level of performance. she has got a great pay package, she has to be held accountable, rightat is where she is now. i have a lot of confidence in her ability to create a great yahoo! and in her ability to be successful at whatever she does. she is one of those people. stephanie: would you hire her? marc: in a second. she is amazing. completely magical. yvonne: that is all for "bloomberg's best" this week. you can always get more news

from around the world at bloomberg.com. ♪

emily: he got his start in west philadelphia, working for the fresh prince himself, and later biggie, and p. diddy. his breakthrough came in 2007, when he met a woman the world would come to know as lady gaga. troy carter helped take gaga unknown to multiplatinum, then brought in his job title from talent manager to tech investor, betting on spotify and uber. but his own path to hollywood was unexpected, coming from a tough neighborhood, with a father who did time for murder.