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tv   Bloomberg Business Week  Bloomberg  October 20, 2018 3:00am-4:00am EDT

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♪ carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. carol: the future of retail. e-commerce giants amazon and walmart are after global expansion. next stop on the battleground, india. jason: plus, sears files for bankruptcy. why eddie lampert couldn't keep the retail giant of load. the politicsto
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section. it has dominated the conversation this week, the disappearance and the suspected killing of a journalist in istanbul, which has set off a geopolitical reaction as governments are looking for answers from ray at. story -- the story is titled damage control in the kingdom. riad hamade was here in new york this week and helped us put into perspective. riad: right now, i think it is in limbo and the sense of the plan, vision 2030, that the prince has espoused. he wanted to transform the country economically and socially. people aret a lot of now questioning whether he is going to be able to push through with that. you see efforts also by the u.s. and you see the trip from pompeo. you get the sense that one aim behind all that is to ensure that it does not derail completely some of the changes that the crown prince tried to bring in.
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carol: what does he mean by transformation? i am thinking, this is like china, embracing to some extent certain market principles, but yet the government is still very much in charge. riad: i think that is not a bad comparison, actually. china is on a match bigger scale -- a much bigger scale, but he never wants to transform our change the political system in saudi arabia. everything he said was he wanted of hisench the rule family, his own rule. he really focused on the economic side of things, the social side of things. and initially, mainly on the economic side, he hinted he wanted to liberalize the social aspects. when i say liberalize, nobody is talking about making it a liberal country where you can wear what you want. but just a little bit more relaxed.
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and he has done some of that. carol: is it shame on all of us for misreading things? we have been excited about the ipo -- the aramco ipo and thinking things are moving much more rapidly than they are. riad: i don't know if it is shame on us. we have written a lot about the fact that things have turned more authoritarian in the last couple of years. that peopleten who do not necessarily agree with some of the policies have been told to get off twitter or not say critical things on twitter. we also have written about arrests that have happened and then heavily criticized, especially after the women activists were arrested. there was already heavy criticism coming in. something like this now, but it was not that he is getting away scott free on this. carol: how will ultimately, though, the disappearance of
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this journalist in terms of how it plays out -- it can play a couple different ways whether or not it directly -- that saudi arabia and the crown -- is is seem responsible for the death. how will that change the future? bed: i think it is going to a factor now going forward in every company and every businessman going into saudi arabia is going to be something they, at the very least, ask about. whether they come to the conclusion and say we do not want anything to do with this, is ok, it happened, but this still an opportunity to make money, i don't know. we will have to see. let's remember, the saudi's, the turks, and the americans are clearly trying to figure this out, to figure a way out of this
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without a major of people. -- major upheaval. how it will end at the moment is anybody's guess. but i think this will remain something that people -- it is stuck in people's minds now. i imagine people years from now are still going to remember this and if you are talking about investors, they are going to wonder. they are going to wonder whether this is something that can happen to anybody. is to a journalist in a consulate. jason: you also wonder what sort of questions the companies will get from their investors. riad: exactly. i think this is what we are hearing already. the banks and big ceos got calls, people asking questions. i think that is not an easy thing where you snap your finger and it goes away. jason: we are here with editor joel weber. joel, an interesting week.
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we heard from riad about what is happening in the middle east, the global implications. how do you weace this magazine together? joel: this is the most frightening story any of us have heard about her a while and we are still trying to figure out what it means. to this is an opportunity make this be more about geopolitical stuff. the saudi-u.s. relationship is something that has lasted for decades, yet something like this becomes a test of it, because now you have turkey and suddenly turkey, which is not known for human rights activists, it has become a flashpoint in all this because of so much we know about this situation comes from their intelligence agencies. carol: the full implications are unknown. let's stick with politics, but much closer to home. in two weeks, u.s. voters go to the polls to vote in the midterm elections. for the democratic party, the turnout may be the key for taking votes from the gop
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in georgia, that is front and center. there is margaret newkirk. margaret: there are allegations of voter suppression, allegations of cheating, all kinds of things going on. stacey abrams is trying to ride a wave of minority, new voters in the state she hopes will bring her to victory. carol: it is interesting. i think she has been preaching this for a couple years, playing into changing demographic shifts, especially in atlanta. so many people have moved in, and trying to get the minority vote. margaret: that is what democrats are hoping. plus, there is the blue wave and the year of the woman. all of those things possibly making it more potent. people expected it to deliver in 2014 and 20 16, and it really didn't. jason: early voting started on monday. what are we hearing at all about turnout?
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obviously that will be the key indicator here. margaret: the first day was monday, and turnout was triple what it was in 2014. jason: we are still here with joel weber. the midterms loosening -- looming large.how do you cover them. joel: we try to find case studies. we think this gubernatorial race in georgia is one of them. stacey abrams could be the first female black governor in u.s. history, and she is going head-to-head with brian cap, who is straight out of an americana ad. he has explosions and guns. stacey abrams represents what americans hope will happen, this massive demographic shift that should benefit them. the early turnout seems favorable. it is three times as much as it was a couple years ago like we learned. but now it is a question of what can be sustained.
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it will be close the matter what, everybody agrees on that. it is one of those case studies i think everyone will be watching for. carol: i love the magazine because you are staying on the news in what is going on in the middle east and midterms, but you do a special section on retail this week, and it too is in the news considering the bankruptcy. joel: that is the best part of this. we can look way back in american history and say, sears invented what retail would look like for america. it helped build malls, and you could order a house from a catalog and it would get delivered to your property somewhere in america. boy, those days are gone. what will the future of retail look like now? one of the stories that in this, what is the future of retail? emerging markets. emerging markets with 1.3 billion attentional customers is india. it is amazon versus walmart, modern-day sears going head-to-head investing bureau --
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billions in india, and they are neck and neck in getting market share. jason: coming up, we will have more about that story from brad stone. he went to india and has great details. joel: it sounds like a great job. jason: you have a great job, too. joel weber, thanks so much. it was spooky quiet until markets were hit one week ago with a storm that came out of the clear blue's type. what changed and why? carol: we just talked about sears finally selling out. we will have more on that story. jason: "bloomberg commodities edge -- this is this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪
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carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." jason: join us for bloomberg businessweek every day on the radio from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. wall street time. you can also catch up on our daily show by listening to our podcast. carol: and you can find us
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online at businessweek.com, and on the mobile app. president trump targeted the fed again, calling it is biggest threat. jason: he blames monetary policy for the sharp selloff in the stock market. we spoke with peter coy about the nasty surprise and what is worrying investors moving forward. peter: the stock market has been remarkably calm.the five call list orders of the last 20 years have come since the beginning of 2017. people got used to the dow and s&p fluctuating in tiny little bits, trending upward over time. in thet of the blue first half of october, there were two days in a row where the s&p fell a total of 5.2% in back-to-back sessions. carol: everybody kind of woke up. peter: where does this come from? it as if a hurricane hits the sure that had not been on the radar. not that it was the hugest
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decrease ever, except in terms of the change from the background. according to goldman sachs calculations, the ninth biggest spike in volatility from a background level. jason: break it down for us. what did you see in those couple days as you talked to people? obviously, market experts everywhere scrambled to explain it, but also to do the big sweeping what it means pieces for where we are and maybe where we are going in the near term. especially because we are in the midst of the longest bowl run in history. peter: right. people naturally jumped for whatever explanation suits their proclivities. the democrats immediately said, this is trump's trade war finally showing up, scaring the market. trump turned around and blamed the federal reserve.
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of course, he has been on a campaign to complain about the rising interest rates, the federal funds rate put on by jay powell, his pick to chair the fed. and then we had other people talking about oil prices or inflation and so on. so when i started asking around, it was funny because some people said, trump has a point here in that high interest rates rapidly are a factor in the market, stock market. they don't necessarily agree with trump that the high interest rates are wrong, or that the fed is making a mistake. many people say it with the economy moving this hot, three point 7% unemployment, a record number of job openings over 7 million, that it is inappropriate -- it is appropriate to raise rates. you don't want the economy to overheat. you get too much inflation and the fed has to the inflation by really cranking operates, which
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often causes a recession. the goal is to raise rates. it is a tricky process, but to raise rates enough to keep the economy growing, and yet not overheating. carol: for more on the mike pence, here -- for the markets, here is michael novogratz. jason: he is one of the prominent investors in digital currencies. they started their currencies on -- the conversation on currencies and bitcoin. not see usdo breaking 10,000 by the end of the year, but if the institution is coming in, it could put in new highs. eric: you trade crypto. you go along, you go short. how do you feel about it right now? michael: we are long. bitcoin has held really well, above 6200. it gets you scared. there seems to be support there. is in theteresting last six months, people have divided the world into bitcoin and everything else. and bitcoin seems to have vested restored value.
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eric: except last wednesday. bitcoin drops 5%. what is up with that? michael: it will not be without volatility. we are still a very young asset. eric: mike, you are a macro man at heart. i want to talk for a moment about the markets. you cannot ignore them when you talk about bitcoin, and you still run the operation outside galaxy digital, if i am not mistaken. if you look at the s&p 500 at $2765, the 10 year at 3.15%, high-yield spreads at 3.50% over, dollar index at $95, i could go on. what does that tell you? eric: michael: we have had an unbelievable run for nine odd years. trump has got a big election coming. my instinct is he gets beaten badly in the house.
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but even if he doesn't, even if you just gets beaten, the trump drove the flask run out has degraded a bunch, because he will have a house going after him like little chihuahua dogs, nonstop barking, investigations. his ability to get anything done, we go right into the 2020 election. i think you are losing political support for the market. if you look at the rate charts,3.50% looks like the next step, then 4%. you look at amazon raising their own minimum wage, everyone will be forced to move that way. oil prices going towards $100. short rates, short stocks. i think we put in a cycle high in equities. call.s a big i could be wrong, but it feels that way. the stock market looks very vulnerable right now. i think short stocks and short
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rates is the right trade, especially going through the election. eric: it did not feel last week like election nervousness was the catalyst for the selloff. what is it going to be? michael: it was rates. oil, rates,you have the election. there is no way the election -- unless the republicans when the house, then i would change my mind. i do not see it happening. maybe they will do a little better in the senate, but i have a feeling you will see the blue wave show up. i think he loses the house. you lose the political support you have had for this market. says, tax cuts and regulation, now you have a president who will literally be attacked 24 hours a day. carol: how eddie lampert road sears to bankruptcy. jason: the future of retail and amazon's quest to win india. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪
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jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek. carol: you can also listen to us on the radio on siriux xm, channel 119. and on a.m. 1130 in new york, 106.1 in boston, 99.1 f.m. in washington, d.c. jason: and a.m. 960 in the bay area. as well as in london on dab digital, and the bloomberg business app. carol: in the finance section, rick wham! -- requiem for a retail heavyweight. sears finally filing for bankruptcy. i grew up with the sears catalog. it was such a great thing to get and go through all the toys. this is the fall of sears, but specifically the sears wish book, which came out around the holiday season. take a look at the number of pages. what was it, close to 600 back in the late 1960's.
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you can see how it trailed off. jason: it peaked when we were kids. i remember. gearing the pages, circularity -- circling it and giving it to my parents. carol: it is a big indication of how retail shifted away from sears. was not exactly what people wanted. a change in its destiny. jason: let's get another look at the numbers, so here we have taylor riggs. taylor: while you are looking at the decline in the pages, i am looking at the market caps and share price. let's look at the market cap on the right-hand axis. these are the white bars. we have gone from $30 billion market cap, falling now to about $44 million. this does coincide with the drop in the share price we see on the left access -- axis on the blueline. you are now getting $.40 on the dollar. eddie lampert became ceo around
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2013, could not do much to turn around the value of the company. carol: there was so much hope and optimism when he took over, but it was a decline pretty much from its peak over the last decade. great chart. it was hardly is a price, but that does not mean it was a simple story. there are a lot of moving parts over the last decade. i spoke to reporter kathy burton about why eddie lampert could not keep sears afloat. taylor: he started his fund -- kathy: he started his fund when he was 25 years old, but he already had these very big people as investors. he had george soros, richard rainwater. he had all these people. and he was a very, very good stock picker, a value guy. and he made these massive returns, like over 20% until the early 2000's, over 12 or 13 years. he made a lot of money. but then, the switch came when he decided he could be an
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operator of the company. and i talked to one investor who stock, itrted that doubled on me, and this is the only time i have ever done this, but i held on because i knew it was going to zero. carol: because he changed his philosophy or his investment strategy, as you said becoming an operator, that is when he started to lose investors. kathy: exactly. carol: i think you said his fund was $15 billion? kathy: now it is a little over $1 billion. carol: what went wrong in the sears investment? i think people thought there was some value in the stores. what happened? kathy: there were a lot of people who jumped on as shareholders after eddie did the merger because they thought there is a lot of real estate value.
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there are people jumped in, but over time they realized he was bleeding the company. he did a lot of things under standard value investor maneuvers. for example, he did a $5 billion share buyback. this was when the shares were near their highs. it was completely a ridiculous thing to do, it made no sense. carol: the moves he took, did he benefit technically -- typically from those moves? kathy: yes, because as the biggest shareholder, when they spun off the company, he would be the biggest shareholder of whatever they spun off. they spun off a group of real estate and he became the biggest shareholder of that. carol: so he did benefit. kathy: i think what happened was he thought he would be a good operator, and when that did not turn out to be true, he tried to position himself to be in the best decision possible for what came.
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jason: still ahead, the modern space race. a growing number of chinese investors. carol: plus, an e-commerce that'll royale on the other side of the globe. here is chris nosenzo on the cover image. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." chris: we have this story about amazon and india. it is a new market for them. they are trying to figure out how to get into it. we sent a photographer to shoot a lot of different locations and situations. the photos of these two agents delivering packages on a boat felt like it got you into the story and really explained the measures they are going to. it was an interesting, arresting image. we have a great photos so we don't have to do too much work with the display or the design, so we kept it simple and direct. and i think it works quite well. ♪
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♪ jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: i'm carol massar. the devil instagram's prada. making a comeback on social media. jason: plus the backup cloud is held together with tape and is in trouble. why amazon, microsoft, and google are worried. carol: let's get to this week's cover story. both seed walmart
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opportunity. both retail giants are spending billions of dollars to turn indians into devoted customers. jason: but a proposed law and india could force changes in how those companies operate. the global technology senior editor brad stone joins us with details. point 3 billion people, the second-most populous country in the world. ofna is in the iron grip alibaba, so india is the big opportunity. it is a decentralized retail environment. . this is what surprised me. stores andlory of carts and animals running around, and infrastructure that needs a lot of work, and here is amazon and walmart via this acquisition competing to dramatically modernize this economy. jason: one of the things you talk about is that india by virtue of what you just described skipped a couple steps that we saw certainly in the
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united states around how people buy things ultimately. retail chain as it works is not in the same evolution. brad: the department stores and malls and big discount stores like walmart, it never really happened there. there are some moderate size players, but for whatever reason , probably having to do with legal structures and a cash-based economy and poverty, it did not happen. but there are very cosmopolitan populations in the major cities, and that is where amazon is starting, where flipkart started 10 years ago. flipkart, founded by former amazon engineers who started selling books, trying to copy the jeff bezos recipe and proved that there was a market. years ago, amazon came in and started competing head-to-head, fueled by this amazing capital market. flipkart was able to raise a lot
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of money from softbank and tiger global and other companies, and it was off to the races. jason: but amazon -- carol: but amazon wanted them as well? brad: flipkart was independent. amazon started investing. flipkart started to wobble a bit. they raised money from microsoft and ebay, and then amazon actually started to talk to flipkart, these secret talks we report in the story, and walmart got wind of that. they had talked about investing in the cart in the past, and it had never happened. and the value of what cart went from $11 billion to $20 billion. amazon made the higher offer, which will surprise a lot of people. but the flipkart board went with the walmart offer because they thought it would be easier to be efficient, they would not have the antitrust review, which the amazon guys were confident they could get past. but for cart went to walmart.
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the walmart ceo visited flipkart and gave it have talk. as we speak, both are in their big holiday periods, because the wally is coming in india. carol: jeff bezos is also a member of the solar system's most executive -- exclusive club. they are dominating the industry of commercial spaceflight. jason: now they have a with even deeper pockets, china. here is max chafkin. max: what china has been doing is encourage private sector companies to compete with the big aerospace giants and the big national space agencies. carol: the government has lucian -- has loosened regulations to loosen the monopoly the government has in this space. max: as we write in this issue, there are three of these upstart rocket manufacturers. ing thee all kind of ap
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spacex model, taking the launch market. they are starting with lighter, low earth orbit launches rather than trying to do the big, heavy launches, which is what spacex can do now, and following the elon musk playbook. if you take a step back, this is what china has tried to do in other parts of the technology agency, encouraging the manufacturers to get into developing their own intellectual property, and trying to take this model of transitioning from a lower end manufacturer to developing actual intellectual property. jason: one of the things interesting to me is tying it into the belt and road initiative. this is part of a bigger macro chinese effort, as you say, to really evolve and expand the economy. max: when you turn the clock back to 2003, 2004, when elon
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musk was starting spacex, this was a brilliant move by nasa to put a little bit of money behind these rocket companies, because what they were trying to do was lower launch costs. at the time, it was expensive to send anything into space, so they gave these contracts to and other people, including jeff bezos, to launch into space at a lower cost. it has been incredibly effective. share ofs in or miss the market because they are so cheap. and because telecommunications is an industry of strategic interest to every country, china can get its own launch costs down and it will be a huge thing for its economy, and probably for its defense interests and strategic position. jason: as you say, really positioning itself in the market as one of the only big alternatives to spacex. max: we saw recently the
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russians, who had been a major player, basically getting out of the market, focusing more on space services, designing satellites, because they cannot compete with the chinese and elon musk. the other thing that is interesting is these are -- there are spacex clones in china, but also in the u.s.. it is not as it china is really one who says this was a good idea. we see this worldwide. carol: a deep dive into demographics. how real estate investors use data on seniors to drive decisions. jason: plus, we hit the mountains with a new test of the royals -- new rolls-royce suv. this is "bloomberg businessweek ." ♪
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carol: welcome back. jason: join us for bloomberg businessweek every day on the
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radio from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. wall street time. you can also catch up on our daily show by listening to our podcast. jason: -- carol: and you can find us online at businessweek.com. jason: in the technology section, a brutal legal battle between sony and fujifilm has big tech scared the backup system is actually reels of magnetic tape at risk. carol: let's get more from susan decker. susan: the backup cloud is magnetic tape. it is not quite the cassette tape that we all remember from , but or the vcr for movies it is the same underlying technology that has been around for 100 years. you still go old school when you want to make sure stuff is saved for posterity. jason: now it is the subject of a massive legal battle. on thisaw your name story, i thought this is going to be a juicy one because this means the companies are going to war. it is quite a battle here. susan: it is.
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there used to be six manufacturers of these magnetic tapes. they are the equivalent of a cassette tape, but different in terms of looks. there used to be six of them, now there are only two, sony and fujifilm. they have gone hammer and cons at it for the last. . we are starting to see movement where one or the other might be banned from the market. carol: what are the charges against one another? susan: there is a basic technology, a standardized technology called me near tape open that has been developed by the companies that make the drives and libraries. but they need the tapes to actually put the data on. these companies each have come up with patentened features to reduce the noise or make it a little less susceptible to humidity, and click patented those.
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they each said, you are using my and have filed complaints against each other with the international trade commission, asking the commission to shut the other one out of the market. jason: i want to back up one step to talk about the fact that what we are talking about here is your data, our data. so much data that is being stored on a daily basis. you do a nice job of talking about the sheer volume of this. help us understand what we are talking about. susan: every day on the internet, there is an exabytes of data. that is the equivalent that it is about 300 times the total holdings of the library of congress created by the entire internet at least once a day, sometimes more than that. a lot of that data ends up in ether.
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it is your text messages or things like that. but financial data or health records or scientific research, there is a large amount of that that has to be kept. some for regulatory purposes, like health records or financial records. and do some of it has to be kept because they do not know what to do with it, like the research data where scientists would go back and say, this was stuff we worked on 10 years ago that has relevance now. you need a place to store that. you do not want it attached to the cloud, because the cloud can be vulnerable to hacking. most of the time it is secure, but if you get a software bug or malware packets into a program, then -- malware that gets into a program, then you have a problem. the way they were able to recover is we back everything up on tape. they go to the tape and they download it and put it back up into the system.
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if it is disconnected from the in a vaultt is stuck in a limestone caves in pennsylvania, then you are not as susceptible to hacking. that is the overview of what the market is going on. carol: staying with data for a moment, m.i.t.'s age lab is partnering with a real estate firm to use the graphic data for seniors to make decisions. jason: we caught up with joe coughlin. al: we are investing in senior housing, and health care real estate. it is the primary dynamics that -- demographically driven, highly fragmented sectors that have operational intensity. we look to a first mover advantage, and really look for outside knowledge that gives us the capability to generate -- generate outside investor returns. the vast majority of our investors have been in that
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sector. we see significant room moving forward. carol: that brings us to joe and the m.i.t. age lab. you have done a lot of work in demographics and what that tells us about what is going on in society. demography is destiny, but it is not necessarily history. one of the things we are looking at is the new expectations of an older generation creating new demands. isrite in my book, there more technology, more education, more money, and greater expectations to live longer and better. carol: that brings us to your development. al: on the senior housing side, we are looking at experimental dynamics -- experiential dynamics. we are not looking for people to age comfortably, it is more about experience.i think the expectations have been ratcheted up. this sector, while having been around for 30 years, is a nascent sector.
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the first few years was not-for-profit. the last 15 years you have a four prius -- for-profit model. theou put 2008, 2009 and downturn in there, you have 12 years of operating history in a sector that is $1.5 trillion today and likely to double. jason: you are very much in the for-profit business. you have institutional and personal investors who want to make money on the other side of this. where does the money come from? al: the money comes from us taking investors' money. we are typically buying assets that are transition assets or under managed assets. we recently acquired a property in brookland rum the jehovah witness for $202 million. we are in the process of putting $100 million into that building and converting it into the highest and senior housing that exists.
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that will be a home run not just for tenants, but financially for us as well. carol: financially, it makes more sense to target senior living or senior audience than the younger audience? al: we see in dohring demand dynamics. you have un-american turning 70 years of age every -- you have americans turning 70 years of age every second. in raw numbers, that is 40 million americans 65 and older in 2010, to almost 80 million in 2030. that is not the end of the story. joe: 70% of discretionary income in the united states is controlled by the 50 plus. this is not your grandfather's old age. they expect more, and they will buy it. carol: can we call it a prada bounce back? details on the company's
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attempted turnaround. jason: plus, an off-road test drive of the first ever rolls-royce suv. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪
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toon: welcome back "bloomberg businessweek." carol: you can also listen to us on the radio on siriux xm, channel 119. also on a.m. 1130 in new york, 106.1 in boston, 99.1 f.m. in washington, d.c. jason: and a.m. 960 in the bay area, as well as in london on dab digital, and the bloomberg business app. in the features section, miuccia prada and her husband patrizio bertelli oversaw prada's rise as a global luxury powerhouse. now struggling to turn the country around after three years of declining profits. carol: i spoke to stephanie baker in london, and she told us how the brand is making a comeback on instagram.
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stephanie: they had a perfect storm. in 2015, the slowdown in china hit, partly driven by a crackdown on corruption and lavish gift giving, which impacted a lot of luxury companies. that was the same time i think the luxury fashion industry really changed. instagram took over as the main trendsetter in terms of determining what fashion -- what is fashionable, taking over a role held by volk and elle for many years. it was at this point that product thought it should have, realizes now, it should have embraced all things digital. a coordinated social media campaign, as well as rolling out online shopping, e-commerce sites globally. i think both things really held them back. in the past year, they have gotten their act together,
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taking social media much more seriously, have started rolling out a global network of e-commerce sites selling their whole collection online, and getting caught up to where the rest of the luxury industry is now. carol: i find it is interesting, and you pointed out, you think of prada as a brand. they were always several steps ahead of the other luxury brands when it came to trends. it is kind of surprising they missed this trend, the social media trend. stephanie: it is. and it is hard to determine exactly why that is. both miuccia prada the founder and her husband and co-ceo patrizio bertelli, who we both interviewed for this story, they are a bit of rebels in many respects. i think they dismissed the whole social media world initially as something irrelevant to what they were doing. they have a very intellectual approach to design. and are very bookish
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philosophical in their whole approach. and i think they did not realize how instagram was changing the world's fashion. i think introducing their 30-year-old son lorenzo to the business, i think he helped explain to them the importance of social media. he is 30 years old, has his own social media profile from having been a semi professional rally car driver. so i think his decision to finally join the family business helped move the company forward on the social media front. jason: from high-end passion, to high-end cars. carol: hannah elliott got to take a spin in the rockies in the latest roles. she relived the experience, and no doubt, she has the best job ever. hannah: it is exactly what you would expect from a rolls-royce off-road.
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you have the same magic carpet ride you get in the panama the ghost, except you are up even higher and going up the side of the mountain. jason: what is the market for this? you said you went out to idaho? hannah: jacksonville, wyoming. jason: what was it like driving it in those conditions? hannah it is a little counterintuitive at first because you think, rolls-royce, very urban, very cultured or cosmopolitan, then you have it in this outdoor setting. but when you remember, harrison ford has a place out there, sandra bullock, kanye west, all of these world leaders has a place other. there is a lot of money out there. they were candy when they said we will put our off-road vehicle where people who can afford it will want to drive it. carol: they have a show room? hannah: they have a show room, but they did their launch there. they have a very small
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footprints, but the launch was there. jason: give us the numbers. the cost, the power. suv.h: this is a v-12 the price starts at $325,000. 563 horsepower, so very powerful. back to the price, most will cost close to a half million dollars with options and customization. standardll us what is on a rolls-royce suv, and what are the options? hannah: standard on the cullinan is the umbrellas in the doors, you have the deep pile lambswool carpeting, the starry night sky that looks like a constellation, you have the champagne cooler in the rear seat, you have the picnic tables that are like beautiful wood that opens so you can work, massage seats. massage seats i think are an option. all of those come in the
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cullinan. and on top of that, especially for the cullinan, you have this new rear door that opens like a hatch, and there are two seats in the rear so you can tailgate. jason: i love that the back, the trunk is separated unlike a lot you don't really need to be exposed to people putting your luggage in. hannah: this is a very big thing. do not let your valets disturb you. we will separate it. youn: one of the things point out, that i understand is just part of the rolls-royce mystique, is that it is unbelievably quiet. hannah: it is kind of hearing in a way. -- it was eerie in a way. the only sound you hear is the bugs hitting the windshield because it is very show real -- surreal when you are off road.
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it is tilted up like this because you are going up at such an inclined, but perfectly smooth, perfectly quiet. carol: nice ride? hannah: incredible. it has six off-road driving modes, and this is the first ever four-wheel-drive from rolls-royce ever. engineered by a woman, which is great. carol: bloomberg businessweek is available on newsstands now. jason: and online and our mobile app.what is your must-read ? carol: i like the story susan decker wrote. it reminds me that is a backup cloud and it is held together by tape. it is interesting there are very few companies in the market and legal battles. jason: it is a good story and we did learn a lot about o it. my must-read, india. he literally wrote the book on amazon. this is amazon, walmart, and one of the world biggest economies going at it. some big opportunities and challenges. carol: when i grow up, i want to
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be hannah elliott so i can go rough routing in a rolls-royce suv. jason: more bloomberg television starts right now. ♪
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emily: hello, i'm emily chang and this is "best of bloomberg technology." coming up in the next hour, we go inside facebook's selection war room where they are running interference on attempts to undermine the vote but will it be a enough? and we have a conversation with sasha and adele a -- sasha nidela. and a tesla tear down.

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