carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." we're here at bloomberg's global headquarters in new york. carol: we have conversations from the year ahead summit. >> some of the most influential figures in his miss and politics spoke at this event.

we talked with the mayor of flint michigan about the aftermath of the city water crisis. >> and doris kearns goodwin. dynamicoulter made a person tatian on investment opportunities he sees in 2019. this was something recently presented privately to his own investors. >> and cannabis and the power of influencers. we have been talking about big data for a while. it is extraordinary. the tagline we are using to , we are our thinking seeing for a couple of years how this is being used more broadly.

i am thinking about the impact of data, where we are in the cycle. the first oil well drilled was in china. era is ourit a new ability to gather and refinement. when you have a new industry that shows up this early consolidation, we have this massive consolidation in the world of data. created.itans some interesting things happen. the industry gets shaped by hacks. hacks, are seeing is changing regulations for data around the world. testimonies for scandals. inn i watch mark zuckerberg

front of the senate, i flashed back to when rockefeller was in front of the court and the senate did not have the ability to subpoena people. they did not lay a glove on mark rockefeller. later, they broke up standard oil. inre are political scandals the oil industry and we are in the middle of one right now. oil and data are going to have a disproportionate effect on history. pearl harbor had it because we cut off the oil supply. data shape the politics of the world. we tend to focus on the scale of the data. it is all about the products. this is about the products enabled. is awe are seeing today

monetization of data. the idea of data products that are going to dominate the years ahead. we are seeing job opportunities where youcare today can get reductions on your health-care premiums. there are people now who will take your fitbit for a walk. you can pay for things with data. coffee shops. if the students will give their information, they can get free coffee. the information is sold on to recruiters. jpmorgan uses it in japan. around the world, you are paying for things with data. google, these are

not free services. you are paying for the data, what is the value of the data. spotify now partners with ancestry. we're doing tax season. .e run the metering system here across our companies, thousands of data products are popping up. focus on data, there is a note of caution. it often takes 50 years before we have an faa. jason: i sat down with another important figure in the world of

investing, the president and coo of blackstone. this was his first year at the helm of the presidency, and we talked about volatility in the market, what will happen to asset prices, what they will be buying and selling in the year ahead. >> i don't think we should be shocked by that. there was a great run in asset prices for a long time. the fed has begun to raise rates. we have some trade tensions out there. we have some issues in europe as well. oil prices have come down sharply. it is natural you have this kind of volatility at some point during the cycle. i don't think that is bad.

if asset prices keep grinding higher, it is hard to find opportunities. this business model like we do, where you have capital tied up for long periods of time, and because you are not short-term financed, you are not forced to sell. say, there are lots of assets around the world that have been moreced and this could be of an interesting investment environment going forward. jason: what was the capitalist? >> you look at the global stock markets. i mentioned oil prices. percente fallen 30 plus in a short time. i think in certain asset classes, the energy sector in

particular, there has been more displacement there. when youhave grown overlay this decline in prices. the stock market is trading something like 15 times. help us understand the investing environment versus the economic environment. interrelated. but they are correlated, it feels like, right now. >> people are nervous, given this volatility. if you look at the numbers, consumer confidence is at an 18 year high. unemployment is very low. corporate earnings have been strong. what we are seeing with our

company is generally pretty good. the issue from my earlier comments is that as the labor naturallyans, the fed is going to move toward raising rates. that is going to put pressure on multiples. that is the shift we are facing. you could see a decoupling. up, thatages go impacts the bottom line of companies. valuations don't grow as the same rate -- at the same rate as the economy. much moreo become selective and how you deployed capital. >> what is in store for consumer brands, coming up. >> and weight watchers. that transformation

at the company is continuing. jason: more from the euro head to summit. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. jason: and i'm jason kelly. join us every day on the radio. carol: you can also find us online. of consolidation in the face of competition and a change in consumer tastes. no one knows that better than our next companies. jason: the president and ceo of ahold and the chairman and ceo of mandalay international tell us where they see growth in the year ahead.

>> i think that if you look at our sectors, in this moment where the growth is coming from, it is about certain segments to be in. not everything needs to be the same in food. if you are at the center of the store and largely north american focused, that is probably not a good place to be. if you are in snacking, and 75% of our business is outside of north america, you have a better brand in place. if you focus on the segments that you really want to be in, and those are good growing segment, you will do well. if you are a little all over the place, that is probably a difficult place to be in. i am not sure that consolidation is the way to go from a growth perspective, and i believe that we are fine as we are in the snacking space. there is plenty of opportunity around the world for us to grow, and that is really the direction we are planning to take. what i think is going to happen, those north american, center of the store focused companies that are having more difficulty getting growth, they will need to find other ways to create value.

then you can expect that consolidation and cost reduction, it could be a way to go. my opinion on that is ok, once you have done that, what do you do then? you are a bigger company that has the same problem of not growing. where you grow after that? i think there will be a shift coming, and growth in food is going to be recognized as the way to go. >> doesn't make sense for a retailer -- i am thinking amazon, as opposed to food retailers like yourself, and brand producers to get married? >> we don't know a lot about retail. that is what i wanted to say, when we do it online, we do it

largely to people who well know how to do that. so i personally do not see easily -- maybe some super premiums in our own stores, high-end chocolate, i could the us do that, but for the rest, i do not the us getting into retail. for you, it is different i guess. >> for us we have the private labels. we run our own grandson the u.s.. in holland, it was 60%. we try to make the differentiation there as well. when you talk about who is going to survive in these markets, which are very competitive -- or are not only things about market share and those kinds of inks, there are also things about who consumers will trust in the future, how consumers would like to shop. can your technology support and offer a more sufficient journey in a store, more time efficient, digitally supported? are there new assortments in the store with fresh produce today? this

is nice to see. but the transparency in the supply chain -- we had this whole romaine lettuce scare, and i think a lot of customers will be more conscious about food safety, where his food coming from, how was it produced? not only in a safe way, but a social compliance way. i think transparency will also be supported by technology. we have a trusted brand for food safety, but also for example, data privacy, another topic, worse. those customers will also earn the trust of consumers as those companies will grow. jason: so those two ceos continue to adapt to their changing marketplace, and we turn to another ceo managing some massive changes as her own. what used to be weight watchers is now ww. carol: mindy grossman is

steering the 55-year-old company through the transition. >> we currently have a health solutions business, but just like we have spent a lot of time relaunching our consumer business, we will be relaunching that business in the first quarter of 2019 to really provide the same ecosystem of support, but with a dashboard that can really help those businesses measure efficacy of health care costs, absenteeism, productivity, satisfaction. when we laid out our roles through the end of 2020, we said, here is what is going to happen in 2018. we will start the relaunch in 2019 of our b2b and health solutions business, provider, etc..

we have also been doing a lot of work around the emerging markets. we do not currently play in latin america and asia, with the exception of a small business in brazil. we think it is an opportunity, but priority one was relaunch the brand in the markets we are in and have that trajectory, then enter new markets. those were really the components. the last component was expand our products. healthy kitchen, wellness, travel, and hospitality, and wellness check. >> so a big launch for the company -- it is going to be a big year. you have a marketing campaign coming out with oprah? >> it is actually our most comprehensive mobile brand campaign that we have ever done in the history of the company. oprah has been a great partner as we have been developing the

strategies around the brand we launched in the campaigns. we have two new influencers that we will be announcing. >> you could announce them here? >> no, i want people to be surprised, but they will promote wellness out of the u.k. and the u.s.. but it is also telling real stories. real stories of people's lives and how we have been such a partner in transforming people's lives. that is what we aim to do. >> is that the most effective, brand ambassador? it is hard to beat oprah as a brand ambassador. >> every market is the pyramid of ambassadors. they have the evangelists whose lives have been transformed by what you offer, and then there are micro influencers. it could be chefs in a particular category, it could be great body positivity bloggers. we are one of the biggest proponents of body positivity -- what does healthy mean to you? and then yeah, what we call celebrities. but like our partners, we put

them through our purpose -- do they want to inspire people to lead healthier lives through their actions? and it is not just able to need to lose weight, it is people who want to live healthier, or this is how i live my life. we just did a body of qualitative work or we asked thousands of people about their perspectives on health and wellness. if you ask those people, would you like to lead a healthier life, they will all pretty much say yes. you asked what the first thing they need to do is, and 70% say lose weight or eat better. we know we are not going to give up our science of so many years of being the best program on the planet, but we know people need more to have it be sustainable, and we know what people -- we know that people want inspiration, so that is what we

are trying to give to them. carol: mindy came to the company in 2016, 2017. this past year has really been about getting into the transformation of the company, offering up new services, and they will put it out in 2019. it is going to be a big year for the company. jason: it has to happen now. big moves, bold moves, even renaming the company. carol: still ahead, the political action group she should run helped a record number of women to office in 2018. jason: and the energy industry is grappling with the threat of climate change. one ceo speaks frankly about the strategy of her company. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ jason: welcome back to

"bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: and i'm carol massar. you can also listen to us on the radio on sirius xm and in new york, boston, washington, d.c. --

jason: and in the bay area, and in london on dab digital and on the bloomberg business app. this week, our focus is looking around the corner with insights from the annual bloomberg "the year ahead" summit. carol: duke energy's lynn good spoke with joel weber. the conversation very quickly turned to climate change. >> we take this very seriously, and we have a team actually looking at the report that was issued last friday, and it really continues conversation started with the u.n. report a few weeks ago. at duke energy, we have been focused on carbon reduction for over a decade. climate change is an issue that is going to be important to our customers and communities and investors. and i think the important thing to recognize -- the u.s. has made great progress. our greenhouse gas and emission

reductions are leading the world, and we are building on a solid foundation. our carbon emissions are down 30% at duke. we are on track to meet our commitments around standards and we will continue. we have been able to use natural gas and renewables. we are also investing in our grid so it is more flexible and able to take the technologies that will be important as we continue to transform, but it is front and center. i think the focus of our industry remains very high on this issue, and certainly duke as well on carbon energy reduction. joel: let's talk about what that portfolio right now that you have looks like. where it has been, where it is now, and where it might go? 2030, when you look out to the future, that is what you are trying to build towards.

talk about the progress you have made, where you are now, and where you want to go. >> going back to 2005, 2008, duke would have been primarily coal and nuclear. now we are increasing our renewables, about 10%. we are one of the largest nuclear operators. located in the southeast, we have 11 reactors located in the southeast. so if you were located in the carolinas, 50% of the power is coming from carbon free nuclear. maintaining those plans as long as we can is an important part of our strategy to keep carbon emissions low. joel: nuclear does not get a lot of love. >> it gets a lot of love at duke. joel: why do you think this is such an overlooked asset for your portfolio? >> it's interesting. our industry has been a behind-the-scenes industry.

you for the switch, it works. there has not been a lot of discussions about how does it work, what is making it work, doesn't work all the time? that conversation needs to continue. a nuclear plant runs 95% of the time. it produces carbon free energy and is an incredibly valuable resource. when you think about running a power system that runs 24 hours a day. natural gas is also an important resource. half the carbon emissions of coal are very complement three to renewables, then you bring in solar and wind and battery technology and energy efficiency -- you should be painting a picture of a portfolio. we have never been as a country or a world dependent on one form of energy. and i do not see that continuing to be the case as we go forward. jason: coming up, i love this conversation. carlyle group's david rubenstein interviews presidential historian doris kearns goodwin. carol: record numbers of women were inspired to run for office in 2018.

the founder of "she should run" says this is just the beginning. jason: more from the founder's summit. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ jason: welcome back to

"bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: and i'm carol massar. jason: two individuals solving problems, including the mayor of flint, michigan, and the person working on saving new york subways. carol: first, we have to talk about politics. this guest is one of the world best-known political historians. jason: david rubenstein hosts

his eponymous show on bloomberg television. he sat down with doris kearns goodwin to talk about her book on leadership. carol: this contains lessons for business leaders as well. doris: leadership is about human nature and the way a businessman or a politician builds a team. are you able to build a team of people with diverse opinions and bring that team together at critical moments? this is what abraham lincoln and franklin delano roosevelt did. eleanor roosevelt was always willing to question his presumptions and speak truth to power. i think any team needs that, in business or not.

they said about her that whenever she wanted something done, she would bring a person he didn't want to speak to to the dinner table because he brought in an alternative point of view. fdr loved to have people who were down in the bureaucracy come into his office so he could question them against department heads. he put people against one another and said a little bit of competition does a good thing. he would give the same assignment to two different people. they all had ways of getting new opinions into their heads. carol: a great conversation. you can get more in an upcoming episode of the david rubenstein show. jason: in early 2019, more than 100 women will be sworn into the u.s. congress.

you had a record number of women running for local, state, and national office. carol: you had organizations that were incubators of sorts, and the nonprofit says the loss of hillary clinton in 2016, it has set the stage in 2018. she tells me why she was inspired to start the company. erin: i've been working in politics for a number of years, and often with women putting themselves out there to run proving their viability to institutional players. i look at all the money that goes into politics.

the hours spent. you would look after the election and see more often than not, we are going backwards in women's representation. the overall numbers were not changing. there were incredible individual stories. the research shows that the number one reason why women don't run is because they are not recruited and encouraged at the same rate as men. it is a natural part of the cycle. if you have a majority of men represented in elected office, when a position opens, it is more likely you will pass it to someone who looks like you and someone you know. it is harder for women to break into that. in 2011, we wanted to figure out a way to provide men and women alike an opportunity to tell us about great women they know who should be thinking about running for office so we could build that bench. we launched the program. carol: how many did you start with? how many do you have now considering a run? erin: we learned a lot of lessons on how to get someone to tell you about somebody they think should run for office. we are just over 21,000 women

who have been asked to run for office through our work. 14,000 of them are preparing to run for office. [applause] carol: significant. that is pretty cool. if hillary clinton had won, would we be having the same conversation about the midterms? erin: we would not. we did a big sweep before the 2016 election to look at the landscape and look at where we could add work to a logical place for women to start. we built out the incubator. women come to us to get a feel of what it was like to run for office. we launched that program before the 2016 election. we were assuming that hillary clinton was going to be elected president and our work was going to get much harder. we had planned for small

numbers. we had planned for how difficult it was going to be to get people into the program. election day came and went. i was thinking of rewriting everything we were doing, and then the floodgates opened and we got thousands of women in the program pretty immediately. carol: we ended conversation talking about what women might be running for president in some 2020, of the usual suspects came out, warren, harris. we will see what happens. jason: it will be quite a field for sure. another prominent woman in politics over the past year was longtime justice department official sally yates.

she was fired by president trump for refusing to defend that travel ban in 2017 when she was the acting attorney general. carol: that was just within a few days of the trump administration. she says the independence of the d.o.j. is still in peril. she spoke with our bloomberg editor-in-chief. sally: you can debate whether you agree with a particular decision by a judge, but trying to undermine the very legitimacy of that judge or our judicial system is something that is not only new but really dangerous. we cannot expect at the end of this presidency that we are elastic enough to where the public confidence bounces back to these institutions. for a lot of the reasons we were talking about a few minutes ago, these institutions really only function properly if the public

has confidence in them. the department of justice can only function if the citizens of this country respect and believe decisions are being made based on the facts and the law. >> are the questions being asked about this similar to watergate, is it worse now? sally: i don't think the justice department took the same hit in watergate. i am not suggesting decisions at the d.o.j. are being made based on political reasons, but it sure is not for lack of trying on the president's part. carol: the mayor of flint does not just want the problem fixed. she wants people held accountable.

jason: the president of the new york city transit authority. can he get the subways in shape in 2019? it is a tall order. carol: they both have full plates. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." jason: and i am jason kelly. join us every day on the radio. carol: you can also find us online at bloomberg businessweek.com and on our mobile app. jason: when you look at big global issues, some of them can best be understood by looking at some local examples. carol: exactly. lack of access to clean drinking water is a problem we see around the world. notably, the emerging world. that is not always the case with flint, michigan, dealing with the aftermath of its water crisis.

karen reaver is leading the way. she does not mince words. karen: what happened in flint was criminal. when you have kids poisoned, and actually a whole community, we note children under six and pregnant mothers will be impacted for the rest of their lives. when we have people have died as a result of legionnaires, they are looking now at the high cases of miscarriages and stillbirths during that time. one of the things they are looking at now are some of the numbers of deaths attributed to pneumonia. they are wondering if that was really legionnaires and what was going on there. when you look at the mental health implication, i was talking to someone earlier and i was saying it is really easy to put a cost on infrastructure, but when we look at the human cost, we don't know what that will be. carol: is it a reminder our society values people differently? karen: yes. what happened in the city of flint, even though there were

other cities in michigan taken over by emergency managers, they put cost over the public health and welfare of the people. the small cost of corrosion control and this would not have happened. carol: one last question. should he be gone after? karen: yes. we've said that for every level of government. we want everybody from top to bottom to be held accountable. if that means the governor, the governor as well. carol: do we now know what happened? are all the pieces in place? karen: there are still some unknowns.

carol: because we don't want another flint to happen. karen: i hope people are paying attention to what happened in flint. one thing i have said is don't let us go through crisis and not learn from it. this should never have happened. it should not have. carol: where are we today? we have talked about you are fixing 18,000 pipes. you are almost there? karen: we had three years in which to fix these pipes. we said we would do 6000 a year over three years we have until to we have until the end of next year. we are ahead of schedule. we have less than 150 to go. carol: is that a problem fixed? karen: not quite but we are on the right track. after they are fixed, we are still on bottled and filtered water. the reason is because with the amount of construction going on in the city, the epa has labeled it a public health risk until we get those pipes removed and replaced. carol: what guarantees can you give your citizens this won't happen again? how do we ensure that does not happen again? karen: we have talked about

looking at changing the standards in place. we should be able to take water quality standards for granted. but we can't. the standards are old and outdated. they need to be looked at and raised. we have been working on that in the state of michigan. the other thing is i have told them i am not signing off. i haven't told anyone to drink water from the tap and i will not until we get all of the lines replaced. even though they have been identified, we want to check the other if we're going to do it ones. right, let's do it right. we are going to check those. but then we have to have the medical community to sign off. that is when the all clear will be. carol: flint has had troubles for decades. some have been the result of conditions ignored for years.

you might say the same for the new york city transit system. jason: the new york city transit system is massive, old, and complicated. in january of 2018, he was hired to fix it. he is a u.k. native hired all around the world to fix it. this looks to be his toughest challenge yet. andy: the biggest problem is reliability of the service. that is the biggest challenge. that is what people want. there have been decades of underinvestment in transit and the fact the service has relentlessly declined in many ways. i would remind people we do move 8 million people a day. most people most days are not delayed. but there has been a slow

decline in the reliability of the service. we can harvest that to build a compelling case for what needs to be done. i said on day one it is not tinkering, it is all out modernization. jason: your day one was not that long ago. 10 months ago? january was your first day on the job. you knew what you were getting into to some extent. this is not the oldest system you have worked on. you worked on the tube which is even older. what has been your biggest surprise? andy: the biggest has been the scale of the task. i had a big job in toronto, the third-largest transit in north america. it had myriad problems that needed to be fixed and have. seven bus depots. we 27 bus depots. new york city transit has 50,000 employees. ccc carries around 2 million people a day. we carry 8 million people a day. i think it is the scale of the job and the challenge. we are dealing with equipment, signals, some nearly 100 years old, that is ridiculous.

jason: so old that the manufacturer does not even make it anymore. may not even exist. andy: we make our own parts. jason: are you kidding? andy: what it says to me is we must prevail in this conversation we started on day one to say if we want to rebuild this thing and give new yorkers the transit system they deserve, we need to have a plan. we now have a plan. it was put together within 100 days of my arrival. it is called the fast-forward plan. we don't need tinkering. we have modernize transit from two top to bottom, every aspect. renew the signaling system, rebuild the stations, rebuild the track and critical infrastructure. make the system fully

accessible. it comes at a cost of it can be done. jason: what is that? andy: billions of dollars, around $40 billion over 10 years. jason: up next, joe 11 looks ahead to 2019 in the digital world. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. terrell: and i am carol massar. you can listen to us in new york, boston, washington, d.c. jason: and in the bay area and on the bloomberg business app. we cannot look ahead to 2019 without checking out two spaces continuing to evolve quickly, digital media and luxury. carol: we need to talk about the first, digital space.

they dug into the price of data and privacy. >> when we think about data, we think the most important thing is that the price and value exchange has the user consent but also passes the smell test. consent can be a tricky thing. >> even people who are relatively tech savvy do not understand what they are giving up. >> correct. it is hard to explain what they are giving up. you need to give control to consumers. it needs to pass the smell test. cambridge analytica did not. it was some personality test thing that had no real value to consumers. in exchange, the data went a lot of places we would not have imagined. it is a big problem. i think a lot of those things were accidents. operators of businesses have to be doing a price to value

exchange on a valid basis. they have to really on the look themselves in the mirror and say we charged a fair price for that thing. the fair price was the users' data. when it is not, that is a big problem. we generally favor subscriptions. you pay $20 a month, and you get access to this. >> let's say cambridge analytic a is a rotting fish. where does facebook sit on the spectrum? >> i think they are figuring that out. i don't think they were doing it with bad intentions. i don't think they said let's see how much we can extract from users. >> there is a responsibility --

>> i think people were surprised by the power of that platform. including people internally. and the extent to which misdeeds would or could be done. that was a wake-up call for a lot of people. it's perhaps possible that facebook did not even understand fully the price they were charging. when that data can be used in this other weaponize way, people give up much more in ways they did not understand. >> you do a lot of business with facebook. >> we have advertisers on facebook.

we have business partners. i don't envy what they are going through. it is hard. it is a tough spot. i think they will come through. i think they have been incredibly smart and innovative as a company. this is going to slow them down. i think they will power through. but it is probably an unpleasant time right now because everyone is piling on. carol: last, we have to talk about luxury. jason: the perfect person to talk about it, the person who created the concept of a boutique hotel.

ian: what has happened in europe, which we usually follow, in london, you have the aristocrats. you don't have much of a middle-class. you have a big segment of the population. unfortunately, i think we are heading in the same way which is why i think luxury has to be responsive. we have the 1% and then you have another big group. what i found in the hotel business is that wealthy people want to get a good bargain. if you stay in the hotel room and you get the same kind of feeling and experience you get in a much more expensive hotel, wealthy people would also like to get that bargain. if you can stay in a hotel and spend $200 and feel as good and have the same access to entertainment and excitement, rather than staying in a hotel where you pay 10 times more, people will take it. not millennials, not people who don't have as much money. anybody. carol: "bloomberg businessweek" is available on newsstands. what can you take away from the conversations? jason: i loved getting that sneak peek of talking to john

gray, talking about volatility. private equity guys love that because that is where they make their money. what about you? carol: i loved talking about data and digital technology. we have enjoyed bringing you the highlights from bloomberg's your ahead summit. you can watch the entire year ahead to summit on bloomberg live's youtube channel and on bloomberg.com. jason: check out our daily podcast. more bloomberg

television starts right now. ♪ ♪

>> ladies and gentlemen, the winner of the stirling prize for architecture 2018 is the bloomberg building! caroline: bloomberg's european headquarters was awarded the stirling prize for the u.k.'s best new building by the world institute of architects. on the one-year anniversary of its opening we look at , bloomberg's office in london as a model for workplaces of the future. welcome to this program about bloomberg's new e