♪ emily: coming up on "bloomberg best", the stories that shaped the week in business around the world. another staffing change rocks the trump west wing. the boe keeps rates low, and a stronger u.s. job report. >> the u.s. has a strong economic report, but i do not think it moves markets much. alix: the dow breaks through 22,000, so, where are stocks going from here? >> dow 30,000 is going to happen. >> the time to sound the warning is when everybody is making a lot of money. alix: from financials to pharmaceuticals to commodities, it is a peak week for earnings season. >> we are comfortable that there

is a profit stream and earning stream that is going very well. >> we have the momentum, it is working. alix: and i ask lloyd blankfein how goldman intends to fix its problem. >> there are several reasons in retrospect that we can look at and say, gee, we may have messed up. alix: all of that ahead on "bloomberg best." ♪ alix: hello and welcome. i'm alix steel. this is "bloomberg best." your weekly review of the most important business news, analysis and interviews from bloomberg television around the world. the week began with a spotlight, once again, on the white house and a high-level shakeup in the trump administration. >> anthony scaramucci has been removed from his job as white house communications director just 10 days after he joined the

team. president trump removed him from his post on the recommendation of his new chief of staff, john kelly. >> it is certainly high drama, but on general john kelly's first day on the job as chief of staff, he seems to have decided that a little bit of drama on the front end will save him a lot of drama on the backend. pretty swift and decisive decision, prompting the exit today of mr. scaramucci after an incredibly short and tumultuous time on the job. >> i think that the scaramucci, supernova over the past week, has really been a huge distraction on capitol hill. i remember when the drama was going down on the health care bill, senators were reading his comments in "the new yorker" and shaking their heads. if john kelly comes in and actually has the authority to run the white house, that would be a change that i think would

be welcomed, frankly by both parties on capitol hill. >> apple reporting third-quarter results just a moment ago. let's collect a feed here. that's a beat here. coming in at $1.67. the consensus was $1.57. the real focus that we need to look at here was fourth-quarter revenue estimate numbers. the estimates are coming in as $49 billion to $52 billion. the estimate, $49.1 billion, and this gives us a sense for the flavor of what they are expecting in terms of sales and timing for the new product, the new iphones. alix: i just got off the phone with apple ceo tim cook. everybody wants know about the next iphone. that is why the guidance of $49.52 billion is important that is at or above consensus. emily: he would not talk about future products of course, but when it comes to the guidance, he said that we are happy with

it. we like with for the beginning of the back to school season. services setting an all-time quarterly record. he told me that over the last 12 months, the services business has become a milestone that we had projected. he said this is an objective to meet, but not this soon, but we are thrilled, that we have achieved that. we could not be happier. let's talk about china. i asked him, are the winds changing in china, are you starting to see a turnaround? he told me, the results are very encouraging in china, and we thought we would improve some, but we improved a bit more. he mentioned max sales in china. they had a record june quarter in china, ipads business is really strong. iphones sales flat in mainland china, which was in line with projections and ultimately, he said that they feel really good. ♪ >> president trump has signed a russia sanctions bill into law. however, in a statement, the president says he has many concerns about it, writing, the bill remains flawed,

particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch's authority to negotiate. congress could not even negotiate a health care bill after seven years of talking. by limiting the executive flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the united states to strike good deals for the american people. >> really, his complaints are in two categories. one is encroaching on executive authority, and the second is that everyone from afghanistan, to germany and e.u. could be impacted by this sort of downstream in terms of application of the russian sanctions. and that the u.s., as a result, could be impacted in its ability to work with allies and to work in a multilateral fashion with allies. the president is making this argument, particularly that germany has also spoken up. in the longer term, the president is doing two things. he is trying to give a pass to congress to rescind this and revert to a version of the sanctions legislation that gives

them a little more wiggle room on waivers. he is also trying to send a signal to u.s. allies and russia, in fact, that this was not his idea, and that he is kind of stuck with it. >> the bank of england keeping rates on hold, a record low of 0.25%. the vote was 6-2. the asset purchase program remained unchanged at 435 billion sterling. the corporate bond program remains unchanged. 10 billion sterling. in terms of the forecast, they cut their growth and wage forecast quite aggressively. >> in the forecast, uncertainty about the eventual shape of the u.k.'s economic relationship with the eu weighs on the decisions of businesses and households and polls -- pulls down both demand and supply. >> they cut the growth forecast and the wage growth forecast, which was perhaps a bit more surprising out of the two. the market had been expecting cuts to growth forecast. elsewhere, you had mark carney

saying they have seen no material evidence really from households and businesses. if they were expecting anything, but a smooth brexit. then, of course, you would assume that if they were expecting these cuts to the forecast that that would predicate perhaps more dovish different stance on policy, but instead, we could see more tightening than what the current pricing in is of the market. >> independent counsel robert mueller has convened a grand jury in washington in his investigation on the connections between the trump campaign and russian government. >> it is a sign this investigation is intensifying, expanding. he is looking at trumps businesses, trump's son-in-law jared kushner, as well as his campaign manager paul manafort. there are a number of different links being investigated, but a sign that this investigation will continue, and there is going to be a cloud over the trump administration for several months to come. >> this is a really big deal, obviously.

and, you are crowding out some really important policy decisions. the question will become, are there going to be any leaks from this? what else are we going to hear going forward? i think the issue will become a -- will be, how does the president respond to all of this? >> the job report as follows, headline numbers are 209,000. 180,000 was the estimate. 4.3% on unemployment. the forecast for the unemployment was 4.3%. average earnings comes in 2.5%. but in line with the previous month of 2.5% year-over-year. tom: a little bit of enthusiasm in wage growth. is it a wage growth that is enough to change janet yellen's dialogue into the september meeting? >> well, maybe not. .2.s opposed to point to -- but why did it not change? obviously, that is a positive but not much. jobs above 200,000 as you mentioned is more than what was expected at this point in time.

it does show a rather strong economic report, but i do not think that it moves markets much. >> we would obviously like to see some wage inflation in the system. wage inflation means we are putting more income in consumers' pockets. when consumers have more income and we lower tax rates, they would have more money to spend, driving more economic growth. so, that is what we really want to see. we need to create jobs. we need to create the jobs by getting rid of the regulations that are bogging down industry. we need to reform the tax code, so that we can incentivize companies to invest in america. that is what we are trying to do. we are totally committed to doing it, and we feel confident that we can get that done between now and the end of the year. alix: still ahead, as we review the week on bloomberg best, exclusive interviews. the ceo of stock chen explains how his stock is bracing for -- his bank is bracing for brexit. also, italy's banking system,

and my conversation with goldman sachs chairman, and ceo, lloyd blankfein. and coming up, more of the week's top business headlines. july was another slow month the u.s. auto sales. >> we do not see double-digit drops very often. alix: this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ alix: this is "bloomberg best." i'm alix steel. let's continue our top business headlines with the announcement of a media merger a long time in the making. >> discovery communications has agreed to buy scripps networks. the parent of hdtv and food network. the deal is valued at $14.6 billion, including debt. the acquisition, negotiating leverage with distributors and

expanding internationally. they tried to get this deal done three years ago and they could not get together on price. what has happened between now three years ago, but scripps family probably said this cord cutting thing is a risk to our business and the benefits of getting scale with another player really makes more sense and is clearer than it was three years ago. i think that was a big issue. price helps, too. they are getting a full and fair value here from discovery with a mixture of cash and stock. this is a great transaction, i believe, for both companies. ♪ >> softbank's ceo is said to be continuing his pursuit of charter communications, after a proposal to merge the cable provider with sprint was rebuffed. he is now said to be considering a plan to buy charter outright. he really wants it to work. >> he does. he wants to do something with sprint. he has failed to turn it around in the years he has had it. and he fails to invest in the company, as i said before. he is refusing to put money into

that and building it out. really, it shows that he is dressing it up for sale than anything else. his plan has been to merge it or sell it to t-mobile's usa, but that has not gone anywhere, so the next plan really would be to merge with charter, but charter hand rebuffed them. -- charter had rebuffed them. then, the idea would be to use the merger with charter, to then go on and merge with t-mobile usa or do another deal from there. sprint alone does not do much for anybody really. he needs to bundle it with some other kind of company. the current idea is charter. >> china's official factory gauge, dialing back a notch in july. this is after authorities urged to curb financial risks. >> 51.4 was the number, a pmi

manufacturing number four july, as you said, missing marginally. this is down from the june number which was 51.7. we also have the nonmanufacturing pmi number. these numbers we got this one and suggest that the momentum moving into the second half is growth, possibly falling to some degree, but not any major red flags at this stage. ♪ >> the u.s. has sanctioned venezuela's president, nicolas maduro. it is the office of foreign assets control within the treasury making this announcement here. again, he is being personally sanctioned by the united states. it freezes any of his assets that are subject to u.s. jurisdiction. it prevents u.s. persons from dealing with him. >> this is an individual sanction versus what a lot of people had been speculating about the possibility of broader economic sanctions. it is a big escalation.

it is a sanction of a president of another country and at the same time, so far, we have not seen any broader economic sanctions, specifically against venezuela's oil sector. and that is what had a lot of people worried with the rising default possibility, for example. >> the specter looming large is whether or not the u.s. will do anything about oil imports, is that where there could be a shift in economy and what effect would that have for foreign for investors? >> would it be a complication? yes. would it be a hit to the administration? not necessarily. because i think that maduro can portray this as an attack against the country, so that is why i think the u.s. government has replied well with the sanctions because it is showing is concerned about the situation, but attacking and giving maduro even more arguments i think would be not rational. >> the saudi-led alliance that

severed ties with qatar, and reinstating a list of 13 demands it says must be met. it comes after fresh economic data highlights the impact of the unprecedented boycott of the gulf nation. while qatar has been forced to open new and more expensive trade routes as imports dropped 40% from the same day a year ago. it seems that they are going backwards and forwards, but there was no resolution in sight. >> yes, francine, at first glance, the latest news causes confusion because you had the original 13 demands on the list, which were boiled down to six, people thought the mediation effort was getting traction. wait, scratch that, throw it out and we're back to the original 13 demands envisioned. you mentioned the economic pain. that is continuing to take a toll on qatar's economy. we had the international reserves for the central bank down 30% in june. again, one of the first real

cues in terms of what has happened the last few weeks. >> automakers could be facing a tougher second half. u.s. auto sales in july came weaker than expected, but japanese automakers like toyota, honda and nissan beat estimates. >> overall, the rates are pretty good, but these are some of the worst declines we have seen. it was a big surprise. we do not see double-digit drops very often and for gm to see it on their silverado, and the sierra, full-size pickups which are money machines, was very surprising. maybe it is a blip, but this is a pretty ugly month for the detroit automakers, while everyone else is doing ok. ♪ >> bloomberg has learned that wall street regulators will rewrite the volcker rule. the five agencies that originally wrote it with their own capital begin working together on a revision. what did you learn about what they are planning as part of the volcker rule?

>> as i said, they are about to start rewriting what has been one of the major thorns on the side of wall street banks, ever since the enactment of the dodd frank act in 2010. and in the subsequent writing of this rule, which banned banks basically from investing with their own money, and also investing in hedge funds, and private equities. this marks the beginning of the financial deregulation movement that the trump administration has long been promising. ♪ >> let's turn to brexit. deutsche bank said to be considering a plan that would shift half of the u.k. workforce to the european continent. most of the 4000 positions would move to frankfurt and berlin. this seems to be a little more dramatic than some of the other banks who are moving employees, such as hsbc and jpmorgan. why is that? >> it seems like it will be half of deutsche bank's workforce, in

what still is in the future be the trading heart of deutsche bank. this is a huge change, apparently, and i think the reason behind this is they have a new strategy in place focusing more on the german home market and the european continent. so, it seems like they are using the brexit changes as a trigger to implement for the strategic adjustments, and that is why it is a bigger change than for many other banks. ♪ cleared and mazda are going to acquire stakes in one another and build a 1.6 alien dollar factory81 $.6 million in the u.s. and create 4000 new jobs. the news comes as toyota reports that first-quarter operating profit that beat estimates and raised its profit outlook. is the mazda deal, does it make strategic sense? why are they doing this? >> yes, i think it makes strategic sense. we have been seeing over a number of years, a big industry trend where manufacturers are teaming up and building

alliances, basically due to cost and stringent regulations across the globe. so an alliance or corporation enables them to share more costs across a wider range of vehicles. >> it seems an interesting time to invest and build new factories. why now? >> it is an interesting time, the market had been going down somewhat and i think they are just using the opportunity now to prepare for a stronger market recovery, when demand starts to pick up again. they will have additional production capacity in place. ♪

♪ alix: welcome back to "bloomberg best." i'm alix steel. some of europe's biggest banks

reported earnings this week and we will have a roundup of those results later in the show. we also sat down for exclusive conversations with several bank ceos, including sanpaolo, and ceo of societe generale. he told us how he is positioning his bank for brexit. ♪ >> we have a strong presence in both paris and london. and i do not think the adaptation to a brexit scenario, which is still very unclear, is a significant challenge. what we have said is that we think we are seeing between 300 and 400 people might have to move to paris, and we have said that we would choose paris for relocating these people. i don't think it is a big expanse, but let us wait for the real scenario. we have time to decide when and

how, so we will see when we have more clarity from the negotiation point of view. >> the bank is putting costs at around $300,000 per job, is that something that would be similar for your bank? >> we have not disclosed any cost. i think it is premature. as i said, we are still working on the pricing and systems. >> i just want to talk you about your bank. when you bought them, there was a lot of speculation about this putting you in a huge advantage compared to your other competitors. do you believe that that is the case? >> the point of the veneto bank, is to avoid systemic risk within the country. and sanpaolo was the only one that can remove the toll risk within the country. so, when you are told that you can move on and increase that income or reducing cost of

equity, and that is related to systemic risk. in the case of these banks, we were able to reduce the cost of equity in italy. and that was in my view, an example of teamwork within a bank. the european situation and the government of italy, and the parliament, because you know we need the approval of parliament to finalize transactions. >> what are the implications? it was not a bad deal, it was a good deal are you? is that fair? >> it was a deal that allowed us to have capital neutral, dividend per share neutral, and great acquisition. the point of the deal is for sure a good deal. it was a deal that can allow us

to change also part of the story into restructuring, growing revenues, transforming business models and now we can add the story of reducing cost and restructuring. so, i think that in the end, it is a good deal for shareholders, but also for the customers of the veneto banks and also for europe as well. because the systemic risk in italy could also be considered systemic risk in europe. ♪ alix: up next, more of the week's most compelling conversations. oaktree's howard marks presents a forecast for equities. and i talked to lloyd blankfein this week about big picture topics. like deregulation and business sentiment. we also got into the details of goldman's trading troubles. >> the expectation is that we will do better, because

historically, we have, and we really haven't. alix: this is bloomberg. ♪ ♪

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...on the hotel you want. trust this bird's words. tripadvisor. the latest reviews. the lowest prices. ♪ alix: this is "bloomberg best." i'm alix steel. the dow keeps hitting new heights, breaking 22,000 for the first time on wednesday. but how long will the bull run continue? wharton professor jeremy siegel and billionaire investor howard marks expressed differing opinions week. marks preached caution in a conversation with erik schatzker. >> the time to sound the warning is when everybody is making a lot of money, it means that the market is going up and enthusiasm is incorporated in prices and behavior. you cannot sound a warning after the thing has turned over and died.

so, i think that we see a market in which there are lots of uncertainties, prospective returns are low, asset prices are high and people are engaging in risky behavior. that is the kind of climate in which we should take a hard look at what we're doing, and i think, reduce risk. erik: you have rung the alarm bell before. in 2000, a very timely ringing of the bell, as well as in 2005, which as you yourself has acknowledged, was a bit early. >> right. erik: does it feel more urgent to you now than it did then? >> in 2000 my comment was not about the market, it was about the tech stocks and another was much more urgent than today. they really looked offbeat in those days. 2005, it was not quite that urgent but the market had another two years to run at which time it became urgent.

i would not describe it as urgent today. the economy is still clipping along at a modest pace unlikely -- and likely to do so. there is not been an economic boom, so i do not think there has to be a bust anytime soon. i'm not really commenting so much on the fundamentals, i'm commenting on investor behavior and asset prices. >> dow 30,000 is going to happen. whether before the end of this decade? i tend to doubt it. not impossible, but i think we are looking at the early 2020's for a dow 30,000. vonnie: what is your near-term forecast that you are working from? jeremy: well, you know, at the beginning of the year, i did say that 10% was possible.

we are very close to that. most of it has been on the back, not of the trump agenda, not on good earnings and a lower dollar. that has been very important for boosting earnings. i still think a corporate tax cut is coming this year. i think that that could raise after-tax earnings another 10%. i know there is a lot of pessimism after the fiasco with the health care, but i actually think that makes the republicans more determined than ever to say, well, let's get something on taxes, and actually corporate taxes is where i think there is more agreement. so i think that if we get a corporate tax cut, and i think 2017 is still possible, that is another 10% in the market.

alix: this week, i had the opportunity to sit down with goldman sachs' chairman and ceo lloyd blankfein, goldman's lackluster performance in fixed income trading has worried investors over the last couple of of quarters. i asked him to address those concerns. ♪ vonnie: how can something not be wrong with it after the last two quarters? lloyd: well, we did not make as much money, so that was wrong. first of all, we are a diversified business group and everyone performed very well, so well that we actually did well as a firm. our return on equity has double-digit r.o.e. that said, we did not perform ic, it is a risk

business. we do not always perform well. that being said, other people performing in the same environment did better than us. and so we are on the balls of our feet. we are concerned about it. in my 35 years of doing this, there have been periods, a lot longer than this one, where we have underperformed only to outperform. it has been newsworthy, not because we are a chronic underperformer, but a chronic outperformer. that being said, we know what we have to do and we are doing it. it is an execution matter for us and guess what? that is what we do. alix: so, execution seems to me like it is cyclical. there are many saying that there are structural problems in the commodity business. many other guys have dumped irs and you stood by yours. what do you think of the view? lloyd: well, we had to cut back a lot, but the fact of the matter is that if we were simply bigger and had more assets, we would have made more money. that's why i tell you it is an

execution issue because we should have the expectation to do better and historically we have. and we really have not. we know that there are several reasons, in retrospect, that we can look at and say we may have slipped up. we tend to be overly weighted in our business to a terrific client base, which we will never abandon, but we were disproportionately involved in trading kind of clients who trade a lot. again, we are an investment bank. the more corporate banks tend to have more business with corporates and others. that is something we should fix, and we should not have let it get that disproportionate. but we did, and we will fix it. some of the products we tend to focus on -- we're in the commodities business. commodities has been in recession and not very many -- but very few of the other banks compared to us are in that business. if you look out and about and other firms that transacting commodities, commodity firms, oil companies, that has been in a bit of a recession. that is a cyclical matter. do i think that oil will always be this price, within three

dollars of this price, for a long time? i do not think so. but still, we have to scale it to the environment we are in. whether it is the kind of things we trade we have to focus on. whether it is the people we serve. we should be serving everybody, and not a disproportionately more focused base, but we are working on it. i will tell you, i cannot say that we are right all the time, because we obviously are not, but i will tell you that we have a good reputation the resilience and adaptation and that is our core skill set. alix: i also discussed the current regulatory climate with lloyd blankfein, president trump has promised major policy changes, but will they fulfill the high expectations of the business community? blankfein told me what he thinks washington can deliver. lloyd: the one thing that people are talking about, the

administration -- there are some things already getting done that you have to say, a bit of a change in sentiment, and attitude. i think that the way rules are implemented, the attitude of the new class of regulators that are coming in -- and again, we operate within the financial services, but we are big corporate advisors in mergers and acquisitions, so we get involved in every industry. every industry is regulated, and to tell you the truth, more highly regulated than they ever have been. so, almost an instantaneous thing, and in some cases, it does not need approval, in some cases it does, but it does not need legislation, and that is the way regulations are implemented. existing laws are implemented. and attitude towards it. i think we are already witnessing, in some of these industries, a change in sentiment. alix: we heard the office of the comptroller of the currency is starting a process on where

people like you can comment on where you want to see rollbacks. can you help quantify what the volcker rule did? if it was still in place, what you would like to roll back? lloyd: when going through financial regulation, you could regulate the amount of capital, you could regulate prophecies, leverage, you can regulate activities. you can do this transaction, you cannot do that kind of a transaction. what the volcker rule did was it imposed a state of mind test. you could take positions, but they wanted to damp down speculation. but the line between speculation, which as a word seems very easily that we should all back off of, and market making, facilitating other people's trading, taking the other side of what your client wants to do, is also a risk-taking principal activity.

the line between the two is very blurry and indistinct. the volcker rule says in effect, if you are taking positions, points of view, in anticipation, or in connection with a specific client operation, that is good, and if you are doing it, away from that specific, it is not good. but if you are a market maker sitting at a desk, it is hard to know where that distinction is. because what really makes a market is a million people, all at the same time, buying and selling because someone thinks it is going to go down, someone exits going to go up, and clients joining that process, which is called a moving market. it is cumbersome, hard to do, makes people who were sitting on trading desks very nervous. i think what it has done is it has had a dampening effect on

liquidity in the marketplace. i think the regulators -- the regulators did not cause that. they were filling in the regulation statutes, but i think that now that it has been in place for a while and we see how it operates, i think there is a consensus that it has to be re-examined. ♪

♪ alix: you are watching bloomberg best. i am alix steel. it has been a busy week for corporate earning reports. let's review the biggest headlines. hsbc had a parade of reports for european banks. >> hsbc second-quarter profits beat estimates and the bank said it will spend up to $2 billion buying back stock. >> we were happy with the first half of 2017's performance, we have revenues heading in the right direction across all major businesses and regions.

good credit control, and good cost control. so, another $2 billion worth of buyback we are announcing today, which over the last 12 to 15 months we will make a $1.5 -- $5.5 billion buyback. >> hsbc it is shifting to a growth story, with two quarters of good numbers now. the investment bank performed well on the advisory side. not on the trading side. that suffered a bad quarter. as did a laudable street. -- as did a lot of wall street. but also you had the pivoting to asia, where margins are getting higher and loan growth is there. fewer below the line items, fewer misconduct charges. a few other issues. really we are seeing a much better quarter than this time last year, but they are still not totally out of the woods. >> we have had these numbers from another french banking institution. they posted a net revenue increase of about 20% in the second quarter. you are one of the few investment banks that had growth in bond trading revenue in the second quarter.

how did you manage to achieve that? >> effectively in the bond trading in the fixed income era -- fixed income area we had a 13% rise in revenues in the second quarter in a market where most of the company had decreased revenues. i think it is an illustration of a change in our business model. we have moved from a traditional house in this business to a much solution-oriented focused house, and we have been able to develop our relationship with our clients all over the world. from the asian client base to the u.s., and it has been very successful quarters on quarters, and this is another illustration of that success. >> the litigation issues have weighed on shares, the third-largest bank in france. inside 28% drop in profit, with $350 million of extra provisions. more discouraging news from

commerce bank as a report it's weakest revenue since 2014 as it struggled to make money from new clients. >> definitely it's a very interesting set of results. commerzbank. frankly, nothing positive on revenues, but again the markets showing you that there are still interests in the banking sector. if you look at it, nothing really wrong with the results, a bit lackluster, but momentum is stalling, i think. francine: is this expectation? i'm going to the figures in a taking is it just dividends? do shareholders want dividends in banks more than they ever have? >> no, topline growth is what it is about. banks that are delivering topline will continue to outperform. but there is fatigue for certain investors. mark: let's go to standard charts, they seem an uncertain future. chief executive bill winters says that the overhaul of the bank is imperative. shares falling for a third straight day after it reported

revenue gains. give me probabilities on this year, 50, about 50, below 50? it will be reviewed at the end of the year. we said really that there would be two things important for us, one is that we are comfortable that there is a profit stream and an earning stream, which is going really well. we announced nearly double profits. the second one was making sure that there is enough capital for other banks who have been paying their dividends. their decision is the continuance of a dividend. whereas our situation is a little different. we stopped paying the dividends a while ago, and the decision to recommence it is one that we hope to make confidently and when we do make it we hope to be able to pay it going forward. >> raising in business per share. broadly stable in 2017.

the pharmaceutical firms earnings beat the second quarter cost of and cells of older vaccines and investor drugs that had previously been expected to roll over. how do you keep the momentum going? will the newer drugs do that? >> we are expecting some new things. we have a new drug which is the first biologic made available for epidemic diseases. we started with a strong start, which is 26 million euros. a bit low of course, but looking forward, we think it could be a very significant driver and drug buster in our system. -- in our sector. >> we are waiting to see how the bp is going to open this morning. second-quarter numbers from the company did beat estimates. analyst have been sharply reducing expectations for the

company over the last couple of weeks. they hopped over the bar, but it is a lowered bar. meanwhile, debt continues to build as their cash flow cannot cover dividends with payments to the u.s.-gulf of mexico oil spill. >> it is a very mixed bag. there is good news. they are generating a bit of cash. but the macondo payments continued to be a drag for the company, and it is starting to differentiate them from the rest of the european oil majors. we had some upbeat statements from shell, but it is harder to get excited about these numbers. most importantly, debt continues to rise. they have added $10 billion of net debt in the last 12 months. it is probably going to be ok. they can cap better in the second half, but it does leave them vulnerable to another slump in oil prices. >> rio tinto reaping the benefits of an iron ore rally, and its investors will get bigger rewards. the world's second-largest mining company is beginning a billion dollar share buyback this year. plus, they will pay $2 billion dollars into dividends.

the company reported earnings of more than double from a year ago. >> a very strong set of returns today, $3 billion of cash returns for shareholders and $2 billion of dividends. it means that in practical terms, it is one of the largest dividend in the history of rio tinto. on top of it, we did put another $1 billion in buyback. so we did do well in the uncertain and volatile environment. where we are today, he have the momentum and value of our volume. the entire company is focused on continuing to develop the cash returns for investors, day in and day out. >> tesla shares are swinging in late trading after reporting second-quarter earnings. the electric carmaker lost share, far less than the $1.88 than analysts had expected. revenue reported was also a little bit less than expected. $2.8 billion.

the big question now is how much cash ceo elon musk company burned through before unveiling its most affordable car yet. he spent heavily leading to the rollout of the model 3, it's going to start at $35,000, and has racked up more than 500,000 reservations. what are the highlights? >> it was a beat across the board. they spent less. i mean, they said they would spend a lot, but they spent less than investors feared. model 3 reservations are through the roof. they have started installing the solar roof. and it looks like the fears of cannibalization are not as severe as some have been concerned about. shareholders said that they have seen an increase in reservations since the model 3 was revealed. emily: also out with earnings, square. its quarterly results topped analysts projections thanks to increasing sales of its business services. what do the results look like? >> they beat extremely high expectations he would they be on the top line, the bottom line,

we saw growth statements volumes increase. the largest sellers continue to contribute their platform. they added more sellers as well. the largest sellers have more money to buy into the software services, ranging from loans to food-delivery to instant deposits and employee management services. >> we are continuing to build a business. reaching more of our small businesses, and more of our independent contractors. as we said on the call, we realized recently we are not really competing with financial institutions and banks and traditional lenders. our average loan size is $6,000, so we are competing with people going to their friends and families and asking for a loan. that is a massive market. ♪

♪ >> i brought the ccrb screen up. we do have a slight dip now from the first month to the second month. the problem is the rest of the curve the sharply up. if i go five years backwards and compare the charts, this is the current slope here. it was down, down, down. >> this is a great function, srsk looking at venezuela. bet on a venezuela default climbing.

probability of a missed payment over the next few years has risen to 64%. the government's $3 billion of bonds are due in 2022. following to a 15-month low. 41 u.s. cents on tuesday. >> this is the sdag function, i have done it for the vix. i will click over here, a cool function, a new one we have been using and it is really useful. i will set the period to 20 years. it is showing us the degree which the vix moves in any given month over the past 20 years. alix: there are over 30,000 functions on the bloomberg and we always enjoy showing you our favorites. maybe they will become your favorites. here's another function you will find useful, quic , which will lead you to our quick takes where you can get important context and insight into timely topics. here is a quick take from this week. ♪

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the many quick takes that you can find on bloomberg. you can also find them on bloomberg.com, along with all of the latest business news, and analysis 24 hours a day. that will be all for bloomberg best this week. thank you much for watching, i'm alix steel. this is bloomberg. ♪ we check our phones 85 times a day.

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♪ >> the united nation's sanctions on north korea. confident they will bring the nuclear program to a halt. regional tensions in manila. they say beijing's actions in the south china sea have you wrote it trust. >> gathering for the annual conference. m&a and strengthening the agenda.