carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. david: and i'm david gura. in this week's issue, could exxon be liable for allegedly misleading the public about climate change? how canada's prime minister is a little bit like donald trump. carol: really? david: sort of. carol: and does vladimir putin prefer hillary clinton or donald trump for the white house? david: all that on bloomberg businessweek. ♪ carol: we're here with the editor-in-chief of bloomberg businessweek, ellen pollack, and we have a story in the market finance section. if you look at tech companies that want to provide all the

storage for wall street and financial information, what going on? ellen: the sec wants to put together a database of millions and millions and millions of trade so they can look at what is going on in the market. they want to know what causes these flash crashes. to do this diagnosis, you really need the data in a way that you can manipulate it. to do it by hand is incredibly time-consuming and we need a lot of storage. so, both amazon and google are bidding for this work. there are a lot of players and -- on wall street against this. in part, they feel like maybe the data on be completely -- won't be completely secured. carol: they will have to give it

up to some extent. ellen: they will have to give it up to some extent. david: the private prison industry, president obama saying he wanted to reduce the reliance on private prisons. and what this article looks at is how this industry is adjusting in light of changes in demographics and perception of private prisons. ellen: as soon as the justice department said they might reduce their reliance on companies for prison services, you know, the stock of at least one of the companies went way down. their idea, if they can diversify and halfway houses and other community-based systems for helping prisoners transition from actual jail sentences to real life as we know it. carol: let's talk about opening remarks. there is kind of a freaky picture. david: a freaky picture. carol: merging the head of prime minister of canada and donald trump. they are alike in some way?

ellen: it is a fabulous photo. it's much better when my child merges my photo and hers. it is a little freaky. it's about how both trump and trudeau have used social media. carol: trudeau is really good at it. ellen: he's really good at it and social media loves him. every time he takes off his shirt, which happens on a regular basis compared to most heads of state, he's all over social media. he knows how to use it. now the question is -- would donald trump do that if he were president? it's an interesting question. it's more apples and oranges at this point. but the story makes the case that this kind of celebrity and this social media virality can actually help a leader govern. david: from one shirtless head of state to another. vladimir putin sat down in

russia for a very long conversation and a rare opportunity. ellen: it was two hours in vladivostok. a far ranging conversation in which they talked about everything from the u.s. election to syria to iraq to disputed japanese islands. it was a pretty major interview and a really great opportunity. david: and we talked to john about that interview. john: it came about because vladimir putin had this forum that he wanted to promote and was going to the g20. and he wanted to talk about that as well. but the only rules were we had

to ask him about those, and after that we could ask him about anything. it is more typical of the new vladimir putin. he is much more willing to converse, especially with western folk. he is feeling confident about dealing with these things. carol: and it was a wide range of topics. john: there was no prohibitions. david: you asked about the presidential election and the hacking story, which continues to have legs here, the allegations that russia had the democratic national committee in. what did he have to say about all this? john: one thing about how ready he is to engage. on one hand, he says, we don't care who wins. we are not involved. this is all a rather strange show. and not entirely healthy is the way he pictures it. on the other hand, there is a desire for russia, repeatedly, to be treated as an equal. their politics should be watched as avidly as america's, so they have -- this is coming from a british person -- they still have the hangover of once being a superpower and now being a regional power, but not at that level. carol: was he reluctant to talk

about anything? john: he avoids questions and will, at different times -- i asked at the end if i had a choice between watching the "godfather" and "doctor zhivago." and what would be the better guide to modern russia? he went on about the russian spirit and the need to understand modern russia. he avoided the question. i said i thought he meant "doctor zhivago" by that and he smiled. to be fair, hillary clinton has been occasionally been known to avoid questions as well. david: there's a bit of endurance involved with this. you set down with them for two hours. was he ready to answer any and all questions? johnny: yes, he was ready to not answer every question as you know and that's part of journalism. there is some tendency with putin to think he's particularly bad at that and i don't think

that he is, really. if you are interviewing him in english, you have the slight delay of a translator so it's hard to interrupt. i think to some extent, he's not that used to being challenged on bizarre topics. carroll: you did kind of challenge him. you did push back on some things. john: his people at the kremlin said he wanted to be challenged. which is interesting. he finds it boring if people don't confront him. it is part of his personality. i met him a couple times before. always kind of off the record things. there, he's probably even more direct. there is a degree of the kids machismo, you only have to look at one of them. a picture of david emerging naked on a horse. there are many of me in a similar position. his whole personality in this -- is to challenge you, but actually in this particular interview and other ones, to be

fair, he is more relaxed and more cautious if those things don't sound contradictory. wasl: do you feel there where he was more revealing than he has been? john: when you land a blow, he smiles a bit. the question about gazprom, the value of it has gone down. he tried to defend it and i said he would be unlikely to keep a general that lost 4/5 of his army. and he did smirk a little bit. and went on talking. he has some degree of -- he likes combat, putin. you think of the obvious things. that is part of his personality. david: what is your sense of how he regards the united states? there was a moment he talked about the relationship between john kerry and sergei lavrov, his foreign minister. they see each other fairly often. the dialogue seems very robust.

diplomatically, how strong is the relationship? john: he has a sense that he remembers the world when russia met america. for all the things he says about america, all the dismissals he has, it is still the core of the way he would like the world to be. it is a little bit like a jilted spouse or a jilted lover. carol: getting the perfect image to capture vladimir putin's conversation with bloomberg was the job with creative director robert vargas. david: we talked about the coverage. let's start with the u.s. cover. a portrait of putin. clearly, among other people. what was the philosophy behind using not photo? >> when we shoot heads of state, and we did the same when we shot obama, we want to approach them more as people. david: less posed. robert: yeah, less posed, just catching them in a moment that feels natural and authentic. we felt that this photo actually does that.

he was aware of this being shot, but he seems to have his guard down a bit. he's not confronting the camera. not too aggressive. carol: he's not smiling. robert: he's not smiling. which i think is the default, to not smile. carol: did it go smoothly? robert: once we got there, it went smoothly. if he wanted to walk off on us, he could walk off on us. he has every right to do that. so we were kind of preparing for the worst. we did not expect the airline to lose the photographer's equipment. and so, after that happened, it was a bit of a panic. he found the one lighting set up in vladivostok. which is not known for -- it's sort of -- you know -- in the end, he did figure it out. and it all went well after that. david: the other cover is icier. robert: we liked it for the tone. it is a tone you don't see a lot. with this type of or church or.

-- portraiture. carol: did you create the tone afterwards? robert: the photographer created the tone afterwards. it was shot -- in the situations, lighting did not go as planned. a little darker than usual. when he lightened it up, he got this blue tone. it was a mixture of doing it in post and a happy accident. we ran with it and the framing is a lot more traditional but the color gives it a different feeling. not what you would expect. david: up next, hospitals give patients a dose of virtual reality. carol: dozens of lawsuits challenge the alleged obsession with youth. david: and thanked the cloud. tv pushes the backlog. an effort to win a new generation of fans. we have a handy guide. carol: that's ahead on bloomberg businessweek. ♪

♪ carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. david: and i'm david gura. you can also listen to us on the radio in new york. 1200 in boston, 901 fm in washington, d.c. a.m. 160 in the bay area. carol: hospitals using virtual reality is a painkiller. david: we talked to caroline. >> this is still pretty new right now and it is still in the early stages. they are trying a new technology to see if it can help relieve pain. the theory behind it is that our brain can be distracted. when we think more about pain, when we ruminate on pain, we actually we feel more pain. they have seen this in the mri. on patients, when the more you think about it, the more pain

there is. the basic theory behind using virtual reality for pain is basically the same as meditation. we want to take your mind off of pain and transport you elsewhere. so you're not thinking about the pain. david: you profile a number of patients. let's start with a burn patient who had a pretty horrific injury. how was virtual reality used to help her in treatment? >> we talked to a teenager who unfortunately was in a bonfire accident. ended up being pretty severely burned. one of the things they have to for burn patients is basic need skinsically take the dead off of the wounds. that is obviously extremely painful. they gave her this virtual-reality software called snow world. using her head and the focus of her eyes, you throw snowballs at penguins. the idea is to take your mind

off the pain. so, they would give it to her during times they would dress her wounds as a distraction. carol: another patient waiting for a vital organ and the use vr to take this patient's mind off of the waiting process. >> yeah, so similarly, he was playing this game which involves throwing balls. they all seem to be chucking things. it took his mind off the pain he was experiencing and also to help him hopefully reduce the amount of pain medications he was taking. he was able to go somewhere else because he had been stuck for so long in a hospital room. it started to feel like he was in a prison cell in a way. it lets the patient go somewhere else, not be staring at the same four walls day in and day out.

david: older workers in silicon valley are fighting alleged ageism to keep their jobs. carol: we talk about jobs in silicon valley and a lot of people go there often. multiple jobs. multiple offers and all that good stuff. if you're older, it's a different experience. >> that's right. carol: what did you find out? >> it is very hard to be older and admit that and get a job. if you want a job in silicon valley, you have to pass for younger. david: talk about how people are doing that. starting with fashion. as you detail in this piece, there is acute awareness of how young people dress and you found young people modeling themselves on that. >> that's right. the uniform is jeans, t-shirt, sneakers. if you're 56 years old, you might feel funny doing that. but if you show up in a suit or

even baggy trousers, you will look really old. and so people we met were going to parking lots of places they were interviewing at and checking out the fashion and figuring out, ok, maybe i'm not going to go for the jeans, t-shirt look, but i will wear slim fitting khakis and a polo shirt. carol: and it makes a difference? >> absolutely. carol: that's interesting. you write about one woman, i think was 50 -- and she was looking for a job. adjusting her wardrobe, talking about the social media she got involved in. >> she made sure she had a ton of connections on linkedin. she got really familiar with sites so that she understood what millennials were reading, what music they were listening to. celebrities they liked.

carol: kim kardashian. >> and superheroes. she checked out urban dictionary a lot which has a lot of millennial slang, she knew not to mention things like the sound of music. you will be ancient. you've got to get rid of a lot of references to your favorites when you were growing up. you've got to replace them. she did that. david: are companies in silicon valley aware of this? you quote mark zuckerberg talking about people being smarter, more ambitious. lending to the belief that young people driving silicon valley where it is today. what do companies have to say? >> publicly, they say they are age diverse and privately admit they prefer younger people. there are all sorts of reasons for that. people tend to hire people like themselves and you have so many companies out there founded by 20-year-olds, 22-year-olds, and

hiring a 56-year-old seems really hard. carol: i kind of thought after the financial crisis, a lot of older individuals lost jobs after the financial crisis, and i felt like the last couple of years, companies are serving to appreciate the experience older workers had and welcoming them back. that is not the case in silicon valley? or what? >> they have the enough young people and they have enough people from that u.s.. college grads, people overseas coming. carol: they can pick and choose. >> i don't think they would turn away old people that are qualified but they are not looking for them. carol: how family connections can muddy is this relationships. -- business relationships. david: and some call foul on the new soccer stadium. ♪

♪ david: welcome back to bloomberg businessweek. i'm david gura. carol: and i'm carol massar. in the markets and finance section, a bank you may not have heard of. businessweek. david: nick and stadium naming rights bought from a soccer team you may not have heard of for $100 million. carol: we spoke about recent criticism of bank of california. >> bank of california has been making tons of loans and it has grown tenfold and bought a few smaller banks in california. and also a bunch of assets from banco popular. carol: and stephen sugarman is the man behind the growth of this bank, correct? zeke: yes. he was running a hedge fund. he wrote a book called "the forewarned investor." it was about how to find potentially fraudulent companies. it turns out his new bank, one of the red flags might apply to

his own company. david: let me ask you about his aspirations for the company. there has been this rapid growth. it is still very much a california-based bank. zeke: he says there is a tradition of midsized banks finding success staying focused on the state. there are billboards around l.a. and he just made a deal to name a new soccer stadium. he really wants to build his brand in the city. carol: it is a successful bank, right? zeke: profits have been growing and it has the best stock performance of any midsize bank the last couple of years. he's been doing really well. david: you mentioned the red flags and the stadium. let's start there. this bank signed the deal upwards of $100 million for naming rights to the mls stadium in los angeles and things get thorny? zeke: about $100 million. the highest price paid for mls naming rights.

this is for the second soccer team. so, kind of surprising it would be so valuable. it turns out steven sugarman's brother jason is a minority owner of the soccer team. carol: a lot of alarms go off here. how does the bank get to do this? where's the board? where is the oversight? zeke: they say the brother had no involvement in this deal and anytime they have deals that involve related parties, independent board members look at it and sign off on it. but it is hard to imagine two brothers wouldn't talk about a deal like this. carol: especially that the $100 million they are going to invest in mls club is more than or

equal to the profits, you point out, to tweet 14 and it's a lot of money. zeke: it is a large amount to spend on advertising. a huge amount to sink into anyone deal. david: steve and his brother, part of a very influential family. whether anything untoward is happening or not, there are a lot of members of that family in positions of influence. zeke: right. the brother's father-in-law is a famous movie executives who is the lead owner of the soccer team. and the brother also ran an asset management company or consulted for an asset management company that the bank acquired. so definitely, their relationships have been big as they grow. carol: there are a lot of cases about these related party deals. what does sugarman say about this? zeke: now he says the board has vetted it, everything is independently valued, and it was impossible to avoid given his relationships in southern

california. in the book, he wrote that disclosure does not make the transactions ok and it could be a sign of problems down the road. david: speaking of oversight, oaktree, the big investment firm, they've invested a lot of money in the bank itself and there is a relationship there some would see as questionable. zeke: yeah, so after oaktree invested, the bank lent money to oaktree and oak tree paid fees to subsidiaries of the bank for asset management services. since then, oaktree sold their whole stake. just to make this web a little more complicated, the president of poetry owns the best will team with peter guber, the father-in-law of the brother. more people that know each other.

david: up next, is exxon liable for climate damages? the ongoing investigation and controversy. carol: ahead on bloomberg businessweek. ♪

♪ david: welcome back to bloomberg businessweek. carol: we are inside the magazine's headquarters in new york city. david: what exxon said about climate change and why it matters. carol: take a cruise ship through ground zero. david: and why some women are bailing on the veil. ♪