"all sites are green." all of which helps you do more than your customers thought possible. comcast business. beyond fast. emily: i am emily chang, live from san francisco. in the next half-hour, amazon confirms what we already knew, it is splitting its second headquarters between new york and virginia. are excited and others are calling it a bait and switch. paypal cofounder joins us to talk about why he is rebranding his new company in hopes of becoming a household name and betting big on travel.

curving tech conduct, airbnb is the latest company to and forced arbitration for sexual harassment and discrimination. will it be enough to keep employees happy? first our top story. after 14 months, amazon has ruled out 230 locations to two. it has confirmed it is opening to headquarters. one in long island city, the other in arlington, virginia. that has been confirmed as of tuesday. nashville will become the so-called operations center with more than 5000 new jobs. we caught up with the senior vice president jay carney to talk about the plan. shareholders and board of directors meetings in headquarters, employee meetings in new york and the d.c. area like we have in seattle. he will move around. the last of leadership will move around and as these headquarters

grow, will have senior leaders based in each of these locations. i am in the leadership team. i live in washington, d.c. and come back and forth to seattle. i will be going a lot to new york now which i am excited about. company,seattle-based but we long ago became more than just seattle. have employees in 46 states. we have 18 centers around the country, we have invested $160 billion in the u.s. in the last seven years. as you know, we hire a lot of folks and we pay up and down the income scale. some of these jobs will bring positive benefits to new york and easy -- and dc. emily: how do you feel about the backlash that amazon took advantage of cities and got data in return or that a company of your size doesn't deserve such big tax incentives? jay: first on the question around ada. the data were used we are based on about 100 different metrics that were publicly available

about education and housing and transportation. that citiesrmation readily provide to any potential investor or that you can find in surveys and other research if you are looking to invest. us make our helped decision and it should help other companies as they look to invest. one of the things we learned through this process is there are great places that may not have been the right place for us to create 50,000 or 25,000 jobs, but great cities across the united states and north america that are very appealing for tech investment. process, we've announced over 6000 jobs in cities that were in the 20 finalists but were not selected. cities like vancouver, san diego, birmingham. we think this process has been positive for us, but also for the cities that we're chose.

a dance foring in this growth instead of growing organically like we did in seattle. we started in a garage and now we have more than 45,000 employees here. we're working ahead of time with new york and virginia to make sure that this growth has a positive effect on those communities. emily: that was senior vice president of amazon, jay carney. talk more about amazon's decision display its second headquarters between new york and virginia, i want to bring an open markets institute executive director who joins us from washington. also in new york, bloomberg opinions. now that the suspense is over, who do you think the real winners are? >> amazon is a big winner because they made this selection process highly public and it generated a year of free publicity, both nationally and in each of these cities in which

-- in each of the cities that was applying for the location of hq two, places like birmingham and calgary. amazon is the biggest winner here. emily: i know you're a skeptic about this. do think amazon took advantage of cities in this process? barry: absolutely. there is no doubt about it. we were just talking about amazon got an immense amount of data from cities all across this country and it is not just probably available data. this is data about what kind of deals will these -- tax deals, tax breaks, subsidies -- will these administrations put forth in order to lower investment by -- lure investment by amazon. that data is secret, it is available to no other company. amazon as was just mentioned, is a huge winner in this and this

is a general problem across the country in terms of how we treat large companies. emily: what did you think of jay carney's response to that? as a company this big that is creating this many jobs, shouldn't they be getting these tax breaks and if the data is available to all, couldn't it be useful? barry: -- point is right that amazon was in secret negotiations with economic development authorities said it has a good sense of what those cities and states are willing to offer. this is a company that had 600,000 plus employees. it operates warehouses and data centers and other facilities in just about every state in the u.s. and around the world, and so it needs to have information to figure out what are the best places to put our growing demand for warehouses and white-collar offices and data centers and places like that.

carney is right, but also that doesn't tell you the whole story about what amazon got out of this process. emily: barry, amazon had said this process was going to take two decades. two decades from now, how do you think this will change arlington, virginia and long island city? barry: i think the issue is how it changes them today. what it reveals is that officials in long island city and new york city and in virginia but that the local and state level are willing to give away a whole lot for not that much. we have to remember that they were originally promised the whole deal. they were promised the whole headquarters, the whole second headquarters, and in each case, they got at best half of it and it looks like it will be less than half, is of some of the other investments that have been revealed. , if you're a

taxpayer, if you are a citizen of new york city or northern virginia, you can say, what did my officials, what did my mayor and my governor just give away? these subsidies, these tax breaks, that is my money. emily: at the same time, you have google talking about expanding its presence in new york, but not getting all of this fanfare. is that fair? shira: it is interesting. for some ofpplied the tax subsidies that amazon maybe has gotten, although google is mostly in manhattan and amazon is coming to queens, so there is a difference there. ,ust to be fair to amazon economic development is a little bit of a controversial process, particularly this idea of giving tax breaks to already affluent companies like amazon for high-paying jobs that are good for a city, that also have the potential to make income

inquality even worse expensive like the washington, d.c. area and new york city. it is always a give and take of benefits and drawbacks. when you are lowering -- luring high-profile employers like amazon to replace the has a large workforce, but also a high cost. emily: you certainly do have some state legislators very excited about this. thank you both for weighing in. coming up, a firm is struggling to become a household name. will we bending and focusing on travel change that? if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio and the bloomberg app. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: paypal cofounder max levchin has built a $1.8 billion business i offering installment plans to consumers. the problem, most shoppers have no idea they are using his company when they choose to pay at checkout. now, in an effort to make his name synonymous with online payment plans, the firm is rebranding. he will list all of the retailers it works with on its website and focusing on travel, letting shoppers pay for travel overtime. julie.ith us, we have max, why no? -- why now? max: we are ready.

we've spent an enormous amount of time and a multi-month effort to really hone down, what is our story, what is the look of a firm -- affirm going to be? as we go into the christmas sales, we will see the largest number of sales yet and we want them to meet the new affirm. emily: in the middle of a changing economy, interest rates going up, a trade war, political uncertainty, historically low unemployment rate, what trends are using in consumer behavior? max: i think the economy is still generally strong. from our vantage point, we see a slice of the economy extraordinarily well, witches consumer buying, but not everything. my opinions are colored by what i read in the news. from our point of view, our customer, which is everyone in the u.s. -- we serve everyone

from the highflying 1% or's all the way to brand-new college students with a lot of loans. everyone of them seems to love our flavor of transparent. they are still buying. they love the products that are launching for the christmas season. people are gearing up to do their shopping. on the credit quality, we hear from large banks that they are starting to get more careful, they are reserving more for losses. in our experience, that has not been the case. from our point of view, credit is performing just as well, which means we're that much closer to the next recession, but who is to say when? emily: one other thing you did on top of this relaunch is you made a bigger push into travel, which is something you got into in 2017. not that long ago, in terms of your six year history. what trends are you seeing their? traditionally, consumers don't

like using credit pay for vacations. max: the reason we got into travel in the first place is because we started noticing that our buyers would associate some of our usage with travel plans. they would buy something they plan to wear during a trip or book a hotel, which works with online travel agencies, so we started asking, can we bring these purchases together, because ultimately, when you are going on a trip, you are probably going to user credit card to shop and you would like to have a clear idea of how you are paying for the way of getting there and what you are bringing their with you and where you are staying. funneling into all product seem like a good idea and relaunched with a few partners and it took off. the trends in travel we're seeing with younger customers, affirm generally skews younger, 67% of our errors are millennials. -- of our borrowers are

millennials. the rumors are true, they prioritize experiences. we learned that they want to go to more places, experience more things. we want to help them with that. emily: cyber monday, black friday coming up. how big are the holidays going to be for you and how is it impacting the companies you work with? max: we work with both highly cyclic and completely acyclic merchants. some of our partners are getting ready and stocking and making sure everything is ready to go, and isthers are yawning saying they will get all that traffic and we will be here when they need to buy something in january. we're expecting another record q4. we have grown rapidly over the last six years. i think the u.s. economy looks good to shop and i think people are not going to stay home.

withmerchants that we work are actually getting ready to do their version of cyber friday in january. we don't get a reprieve. we have to ramp up for december and january. julie: one other thing you talked about a lot when launching affirm was you said you had better data and algorithms to figure out what consumers can afford and how to underrate for them. i was looking for some bankruptcy filings and in the past 30 days, hundred 50 people affirm as a creditor. you have given out far more than 350 loans. is there room for improvement on that and what are you doing about that? max: the sad reality of human life is that bad things happen to good people. our approach to underwriting is that if we don't believe you can loan, we will not lend to you. we approach credit he same way we approach every thing else, with extreme black-and-white.

when we think it is right, we will support you and when it is wrong, we'll tell you you should not borrow money from us. sadly, people have emergencies and part of our promise is that we will be with our customers when it happens and we will stand behind them and if you file bankruptcy, we will sadly but them have their bankruptcy and get out of their way, because that is what bankruptcy is for. our underwriting has proven to be excellent and has generally exceeded every industry metric. it would be silly to say there is no room for improvement, because there always is. every merchant, every bar were we learn a little more. i don't think we have so much better data as better processes and often better people when it comes to processing all kinds of data that comes in from our borrowers. ofly: max levchin, ceo affirm. thanks for sticking with us. i want to ask of us and broader tech trends. thank you so much, julie for

joining us today. falling out of love with tech, what has got investors fretting about the things? we'll discuss next. bloomberg tech is streaming on twitter. global to follow our breaking news network on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

emily: is love for the fangs fading? they are the lowest since february 20 -- 2009, according to the global manager survey for november. 18% of those polled were in the sector. wire investors fretting? week the state to ceo max levchin. lots of issues, election meddling, fake news, apple deciding not to report unit sales for the iphone. do think the concern is overblown or do you think there is something there, like this will be a prolonged low point?

max: i am the first person to admit that i have no idea how public markets value tech stocks or any other kind of stocks. you're getting it stared from someone who doesn't know anything about this. i think tech has been so strong for so long, almost anything now causes investors, especially ones that don't have a deep long-term leases to say, maybe i should cash in. you see this in a market where are nonstop. every, their single percentage movements up or down on your favorite stocks. my guess is it is people saying, i made a lot of money, maybe i should get out. emily: i have a chart here in my gtv library showing the performance of the faang stocks, still outperforming s&p. something to that argument that maybe it is overblown, but still down from our tech stocks had been. is aspecifically, there lot of concern about facebook

and privacy and if facebook can continue to grow and in overall feeling of tech hate. there seems to be a lot of anxiety about tech and anger toward tech. do you think that lasts? max: i think it is the tech industry to address or ignore at their own peril. a lot of the brands that have been built on this implicit notion of benevolence, technology to write all wrongs, wrongs, of course you trust us, we are here on your screen. it is not so rosy and you have to re-earn the trust. a lot of this is being transparent and telling the story, being there with your customers, telling them what you are and are not doing for them. i'm not completely convinced the tech companies have ported -- have handled this well. there are a lot of examples were they react quickly and smartly.

google comes to mind, would have been responsive and said, you want to respond quickly. a lot of other companies have and a little more glib said, able blow over, at least the perception from the outside looking in was that is what it like to them. i don't think any of these are on addressable -- unaddressable. they have the leverage to address these problems with code as opposed to more humans. it is real work to do. emily: do think facebook can keep growing as it has been, or will it -- will this this and gently with social networks change the course of growth that we have seen? max: the thing that is powerful is network effects. you might not like other handling your data, that doesn't change the fact that the baby pictures from your cousins and ants will be there for most people. there is an enormous amount of attention that comes with that territory and they done really

well capitalizing on it. the disenchantment if it is a lasting thing is a very slow trend. on the flipside, facebook already has a majority of the people in the world, if i am not mistaken. it is a lot of people in the world who use such things. user growth is something that has to slowdown. there are many markets where they are not available, so there are opportunities. on the revenue side, there is probably room for a long time. emily: what is your outlook, given the slide? max: i have always been a crypto moderate. it is hard to call me a crypto skeptic. i love the technology. every time, it is not a good currency, you can't expect it to hold its value, can't expected to be there tomorrow. there is nonstop legal uncertainty. it is not a great commodity. for a while, it could only go up

and for a time, it was going scarily in the other direction and, now it seems to be unknown territory. in a long time, at the giggly valuable. emily: so you buy it? max: i do not. i'm not a speculator. you will who are buying it today are speculating another run up and hoping to get out in time, which is what people who bought in january are probably thinking about. i buy into the technology value. moree now seen more and real-world first applications of blockchain and cryptocurrency and it is making me think, it is not just a camera looking for nails, but it still sore others. as a pragmatist, i believe in usefulcan see as a thing, as opposed to a speculation. max levchin, ceo of affirm and cofounder of paypal. thank you so much for stopping by. great to have you here. coming up, curbing tax conduct.

google employees walked out and forced change. now airbnb is taking a step further, ending forest arbitration not just for sexual harassment but also discrimination. we'll discuss next. this is bloomberg. ♪ s is bloomberg. ♪

emily: this is "bloomberg technology." i am emily chang in san francisco. last week, thousands of google employee is across the world walked out on the job, furious over the company paying and executives like the android creator to quietly leave after credible allegations of sexual harassment against him. rubin was given $90 million to walk away after allegedly forcing a subordinate into a sexual act. google has since ended forced arbitration in such cases, and other companies are taking notice, like facebook, which said it would do the same. airbnb monday said it was ending forced arbitration in all cases involving discrimination.

that includes a racial, gender, religious, and age in equity. something my next guest says is a crucial missing piece in google's policy. jean christiansen is a partner in the law firm specializing in employment litigation. he is also currently suing over -- uber and avon. you are the person to talk to. how significant do you think these changes are, that airbnb is making, compared to what google and facebook have done here? >> i think it is really important that companies like airbnb are saying they are eliminating arbitration for discrimination. using that word instead of using the words sexual harassment and sexual assault is really important because hypothetically, you could have a female employee who happens to be of a minority or dark skinned, and sexual harassment claims could be tied into racial

claims, so with a policy like googles, you are left thinking -- is she going to have to arbitrate race claims, but she's free to go to court about sexual harassment? it doesn't make any sense. it really needs to be all discrimination claims because sexual harassment is just a component of gender discrimination. emily: alphabet's ceo, google's parent company, says she walked out with employees. and the same time, the company says they have fired 48 employees over the past couple of years for sexual harassment. what they do not talk about is the culture that led to 48 people engaging in some kind of that behavior. is 48 tu, for a company of that size, is that a lot? >> it is still a lot. 48 is a lot anywhere. that 48, that is what they are disclosing, that's what we know about.

as a lawyer who practices in this area, i have to think there .ould be a lot more the culture that allows such conduct to exist in 48 cases, it is hard to say that cannot be happening companywide. it's a lot, but that's why arbitration is such a problem -- because there's no transparency and companies can hide if it is for employees, -- four employees, if it's 40, if it's 400, and that is what has to change. emily: google is not waiving anti-harassment legislation. how much do you think these changes, ending arbitration for sexual harassment claims only how much do you think it will , change the culture? will it prevent these things from happening, or well other things have to happen as well? >> i think it is a start, certainly not the cure or the ultimate fix, but it is a start because you need to empower

female employees with the knowledge that if they do speak out, that they will be taken seriously, that they will be listened to, and that their claims will be investigated. the best way to do that is to be transparent, so by not keeping them in arbitration, you are giving women the ability to speak out and know that they will be heard. emily: i am curious with the rise of the me too movement, increasing reporting on these allegations, the allegations of christine blasey ford, have you seen an explosion in the volume of cases you are getting, the women you are talking to? >> i love this question because i have been doing this a long time. it has always been there. the sexual harassment that the whole world seems to just be hearing about now has been going on for years. the difference is that people

are actually paying attention to the work that i do and other lawyers in this space, so the volume of cases or the number of women contacting us is not really that different, but what is different is that people are listening. i think we are on the tip of the iceberg, and i say this over and over again, because many women are still very afraid to speak out about what has happened to them, and it is changing, but it is slow. emily: you are expecting more women to come forward in the future? is that what you mean? >> definitely. emily: i want to ask about one last story, the ceo of flipkart, an e-commerce company that walmart bought in india, has stepped down for misconduct. how do you handle these cases when you are a global company

operating in different places with different laws and different cultures? >> at the end of the day, if you are a company that is doing business in the united states, you will be held accountable to let people think here is the correct standard. i don't think people are willing to say "i'm going to give , so-and-so and pass just because they are operating in a different country or different culture." in manhattan, we have people from countries all over the world, and we are still able to have new york city antidiscrimination laws, and i think that is what has to apply. emily: jean christiansen, llp, thankwigdor

you for joining us. blockchain startup ripple is gaining new customers because financial firms are looking for faster, more up-to-date technology. >> you are seeing more and more institutions into the crypto space. recently, ice announced a crypto exchange. when i was in singapore a year ago at this same event, there were 30,000 people here. this year, it is 40,000 people. it is part of that regulatory certainty. there is institutional interest. you have seen fidelity make announcements, and last quarter, we announced there was more institutional interest. people were coming to buy x rp. i think you will continue to see that grow. it will be exciting to come back next year and see how far we have come. >> how soon do you think, though?

regulators have all kinds of perspectives. >> part of the challenge is you need a global framework and you are seeing some countries lean in and be progressive and provide that clarity. here in singapore, the mas has been a leader. that is also true in thailand and to some degree, the philippines and japan. other markets have been slower. even in the united states, there is lack of clarity, particularly around the sec. there is still work to be done. until that clarity is there, it is hard for companies to invest in a big way. to your point, i would have predicted 2018 is the year of institutional adoption of crypto, yet here we are in q4, and it has underachieved but i would have guessed, largely because of regulatory uncertainty, and also in terms of solutions and from a security the support and

institutional adoption and usage of crypto. reporter: i would like to address some of the rumors circulating around, that your biggest rival swift could be joining you. could you shed some light? >> swift is owned by the banks. we are here to help the banks. we feel blockchain technologies are a massive step forward in terms of how banking has historically worked. the technology the bank sees today that swift developed decades ago really has not evolved and kept up with the market, so we feel like we are here to help the banks. swift is owned by the banks. there have been opportunities that we have been able to bring to fruition, but we will keep focusing on solving the problem. swift said not that long ago they did not see blockchain switching to correspondent banking. many other customers disagree. i hesitate to comment on any rumor because if you comment on the false rumors, you have to comment on the true rumors.

reporter: is it possible ripple could take over swift one day? >> i think what we are doing and executing on a day by day basis is in fact taking over swift. we have signed over well over -- we have signed well over 100 banks. some of the largest banks in the world are using ripple technology. just last week, we saw a remittance company using ripple technology. they reduced the price per transaction from per transaction $20 to two dollars, and they saw an 800% increase in usage overnight, and that is the type of dynamic swift is not able to support that we are able to address right now. that is something we saw in the last couple of weeks. we want to see banks succeed and take advantage of these technologies. if we can work with swift to do that, that's great. with: the ripple ceo bloomberg haslinda amin. coming up, taking the pledge. companies and tech firms signing

onto an international cyber security pact, but why is the u.s. opting out? we find out next. this is bloomberg. ♪ ♪

emily: the u.s., china, russia, israel all said no, but microsoft, google, samsung are some of the big tech companies saying yes. what do they disagree on? signing up for the paris call for trust and security in cyberspace, a pledge led by french president emmanuel macron in reaction to the cyber wars that impact elections and future attacks on businesses. microsoft president brad smith threw his weight behind this pact, saying that almost never

does a world come together in a way that is global. there are stepping stones to a global consensus and it is important that like-minded countries to come together. , let's go to this the founder of the national security institute at george mason university. before that, he was senior counsel to the permanent select committee of intelligence to the u.s. house of representative's. to me, this is a bunch of countries and some companies agreeing not to attack each other in cyberspace during peace time, but if the u.s., china, iran, north korea, israel, russia are not signing on, how much weight does this actually have? part of the challenge with the paris call is it is a statement of principle. it is not really binding in international law. it is a set of common things the companies in these countries agreed to. everyone agrees these are positive things that are useful for the world, but there are the

details which are complicated and probably the reason why some likeese major countries allies like australia did not sign onto it. emily: how is this actually going to work, and how will they make sure that the folks who sign this are standing by their agreement? >> there is a lot of implementation left to go on. this is not an internationally binding instrument. it is a statement of ideas. what is interesting about this accord is the majority of signatories, almost 200-plus, our universities nonprofits, , companies, not nationstates. universities, nonprofits, companies, not nationstates. it is not your typical participant, and they are seeking to bind the classic participants, nationstates. emily: what do you read into the u.s. opting out more specifically? >> part of it is, there is a lot

of the devil in the details here. we're talking about international law, international human rights law. the u.s. is typically very careful in this space and once andants to define things wants to know what they mean. we've seen also to documents be used in international litigation that say you agreed to this, so you have to stand by every single last word. the u.s. usually very cautious in that space. emily: the u.s. midterm elections are over. beingare some votes counted. there are recounts happening in florida. also outstanding decisions in georgia. that said, what do you think the biggest threats are right now? >> when it comes to cyber, we have nationstates threats, countries like china continuing to seek american intellectual property, and russia still actively looking to manipulate the u.s. electoral system, not necessarily for outcomes but to

create dissension in our banks. while they may not have gotten involved in this election, there is still 2020. we need to be vigilant of that. companies have to come together, create collective defenses at home and abroad with our allies. a lot of work to do to find a solid path forward. emily: what kind of threats from russia do you think we should be looking out for? how do you imagine they might change tactics into 2020? >> we revealed a lot about what we know. what we knew about these communications between some of the actors. they will be more cautious about what they do, sharper about how they act, but part of what this is about is not just messing with our elections. frankly, they want to be known to do that. it's not just about messing with our elections and our institutions, but it makes russia look bigger and more powerful than it is. its economy is not strong. it is not in a good place internationally, but it looks like a bigger player by monkeying with us and making our own politicians go at each other's throats.

that is something we need to avoid as a nation and work together in a bipartisan way to avoid these threats. emily: thanks so much for stopping by. coming up, how global luxury brands are preparing for brexit ahead of a busy holiday season. ♪

emily: it has been a tough second half of the year for global luxury brands. the s&p index that tracks the largest publicly traded luxury companies is down more than 5% since january. they have been contending with a slowdown in china, a trade war, along with a secular shift we are seeing in retailers. in the u.k., another big potential disruptive force. that is brexit. bloombergs emma chandra spoke with the managing director of harrods and how he is continuing to draw people to the stores. >> everything we do is experiential. reporter: it's not about the products? >> it's about exclusive product

and unique products. it's also about the relationship you build. reporter: experience is at the heart of value proposition. would you say it is what differentiates you? that is absolutely what differentiates us. it is two or three other things. it is the retail experience. walking into something and looking at the beautiful areas, almost having a look of wonderment. and the service. i think people have forgotten it is a privilege to serve customers. we teach people within harrods that it is a privilege to serve. it that relationship with that customer then builds because really good service is not very often these days. reporter: to that end, you are actually investing more than $200 million in story development. how is that going to help enhance the experience and drive sales? >> i will give you a good example in beauty. we're doubling the size of beauty. we are already the largest in the world.

one of the things we will be doing that is part of it is we will be putting almost a theater, which has got television recording rights in it, so that when we have the owner and developer of a brand with makeup artists actually on the stage with our customer, with an audience of people who want to learn how to create that look, and they will put it on social media. we put it throughout the store. it is about building that look for that customer because the product is becoming secondary. it's about how do you look amazing. the beauty products i guess is something more inclusive as well for a harrods customer. price points, though still high, they are lower than other things harrods cells. >> that is why we are investing so heavily. it is the entry point into beauty. if i look at millennials, they are about 18.5% the european customer and 13.1% the chinese. -- 31% of the chinese. 33% of our customers in beauty are millennials. it's how you build that relationship and move them from beauty products into luxury products.

reporter: let's discuss luxury more broadly. you are also the chairman of the sector body for luxury retails. 80% of what the british luxury sector produces actually goes for exports. while luxury is slightly more insulated from some of the other more disruptive factors we talked about, there's one big disruptor when it comes to british luxury. we are talking about brexit. how well prepared is the sector for brexit? what could be the prospect of a no deal? >> i think the sector is reasonably well prepared, but we still have a lot of unanswered questions, and until those questions are answered, you cannot put those final places into the planning. part of it is it is still about logistics. how do we get products to customer? we have just done a promotion with dealer, which was unbelievably successful. every day, we were getting handbags from paris because it was so successful.

we will not be able to do that under brexit. the redefining of our supply chain is very important, but british luxury is important. -- very adaptable. we are used to all of these things and we adapt quickly. reporter: how are you adapting when you look at things like supply chain issues? >> at the moment, we are putting index the stock to make sure we go through the initial cushion, and we will see how that plays out over the course of the next 12 months. itorter: are you worried could be detrimental for harrods as well as the broader luxury market? >> i don't think it will be detrimental to us. i think we will be able to weather the storm. actually, march is a good time for the fashion industry. we have a hundred percent -- 100% new products for the new season. we will be in a good position. as i say, luxury has been this amazing barometer throughout the whole of the world that we have weathered all these storms when everyone told us six years ago luxury is dying. it is not. it is still in phenomenal growth. we are here in the

u.s. you are here as part of the annual delegation with walpole. how important is the u.s. to british luxury retailers? >> if i look at the walpole quartersp, three identified america is being the place where they wanted to develop and grow their business. british brands have got this fantastic alignment with what we call soft power. the traditions of britain, so following on from the crown, everybody wants a little bit of britain, and that is bringing luxury brands to new york enabling them to showcase it. everybody gets that little bit of britain. harrodshat was the managing director, michael lord, with bloombergs emma chandra. that does it for "bloomberg technology." be sure to follow our global network tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

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